| The beat, the pulse, the rhythm, the groove. They exist by different names and come in thousands of different styles. As a creative musician, you know that a well-crafted rhythm track can not only be the foundation upon which the rest of your music is built, but is often the defining characteristic of the musical style you’re going after!
In his book Poetics and Music in the Form of Six Lessons (Harvard University Press, 1993), classical composer Igor Stravinsky wrote two very notable passages that I’ve always found inspiring:
Who of us, on hearing jazz music, has not felt an amusing sensation approaching giddiness when a dancer or a solo musician, trying persistently to stress irregular accents, cannot succeed in turning our ear away from the regular pulsation of the meter drummed out by the percussion?
This problem of time in the art of music is of capital importance. I have thought it wise to dwell on the problem because the considerations that it involves may help us to understand the different creative types. . . . |
