MAKING DUB WITH COMPUTERS - CHAPTER 6: TWO TYPES OF RHYTHM

Now that I've provided you with a set of four basic loops, you should be able to find some nice drum rhythms from there. But there is another additional piece of information, that I should give you before you're on you're way creating your own. I'd like to present to you two ways of playing a measure. A combination of these two can also be used, and as I repeatly say, no rule in music is golden, but it is good to learn some rules before you can break them.  So there are basically two ways of filling in the measure.

In reggae, a measure is 4/4. This means, there are four beats or counts in a measure. In the steppers beat, a bass drum hit is played on every count. So we divide a measure in 4 equal parts, named after their count: one, two, three, four. But if you would be playing only on the whole counts of a measure, then your rhythm wouldn't really be that interesting. Therefore, like the measures are divided in four counts, also the counts are divided into smaller sections. It's the way of dividing the counts, that can make a whole difference to your rhythm. They are both equally used within reggae, and I would like to present them both to you in this chapter. I'm using a 130 BPM One Drop rhythm in this chapter.

In the previous chapter I asked you to take a special notice to the bass drum. For the examples I will use in this chapter, I would like to ask you, to take some notion to the Hi Hat. The two different kinds are called Straight or Swing. Here they are: 

STRAIGHT

In a straight measure, you dived a count by four notes. So you'll have 16 notes in one measure. To keep it a bit simple, in the next example I divide the measure into 8 different notes. As you can see, there is a Hi Hat hit precisely between every two counts.

LISTEN: EXAMPLE0007.MP3 | EXAMPLE0007.MID

The rhythm is straight on. It is one straight line. You can also divide the measure into 16, or even 32 different notes but I will elaborate on these things later on. Let's take a look at the second rhythm:

SWING

In swing, the measures are not divided into 16 parts, but into 12 part. The time between counts are not four, but three. In a way, you could say it's a 3/4 measure within a 4/4/ measure. A One Drop in traditional swing is programmed like in the next example:

LISTEN: EXAMPLE0008.MP3 | EXAMPLE0008.MID

As you can see, you can't really speak of a straight line here. The Hi Hat hits between the counts are driven towards the right. Like I didn't fill in the 2nd and the 4th count in the straight rhythm, I didn't fill in the second one in the swing rhythm. 

Many artists have a preference for either swing or straight. Many also use both, but unmistakably there is a big difference in the two types. Because the straight rhythm is so straight and solid, it's very powerful. And because the swing is not straight, it gives a more danceable feeling to the rhythm.

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