Movement or procedure with uniform or patterned recurrence of a beat, accent, or the like.
Questions tagged [rhythm]
741 questions
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Why can't drums produce melody?
A note is a vibration at a certain frequency. A drum produces a tone with a certain pitch much like a string percussed with a mallet.
Why is a drum unfit for playing a melody while a string inside a piano (or any other melodic instrument) is very…
Three Diag
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How can I teach a student who seems to have no rhythm?
I've been teaching a highschool kid acoustic guitar lately and even though everything related to the left hand is progressing well, he is having major problems with his rhythm.
To give you the full picture my opinion would be that he has no rhythm.…
xray1986
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How to tell the time signature of a song by listening?
Every song has some kind of time signature; even if different parts of the song have different time signatures, there is always a time signature. When learning a song by ear and no score, knowing the time signature and where beat 1 is significantly…
Dom
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When to use a dot or a tie in music notation?
Let's say I have the following piece in 4/4, Should it be notated as:
or
Are there any specific rules? From my previous experience, I believe the second one is the correct notation since it shows all the beats in 4/4, am I correct?
rexcfnghk
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What exercises can I do to improve my timing?
I recently made a recording consisting of overdubs in GarageBand. Playing it back, I was horrified to hear that while I felt as if I was in the groove while recording, I had actually been wildly inconsistent with my timing, despite playing with a…
slim
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When playing drums behind the beat, what instruments define the actual beat?
As a drummer, I'm trying to improve my micro-time to put more feeling in the grooves I play. For certain songs (ballads for example), you usually try to get a "laid-back" feeling by playing slightly behind the beat. Then the question is, if the…
groovingandi
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How do I know when the next note starts in sheet music?
I can't understand the note duration notation very well.
In the image below, the highlighted A in the second measure seems to start half a beat between the first and the second beat. But shouldn't we wait for the bass A two beat duration to finish,…
George
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When counting in, why do people often do it at two speeds? (1_2_1234)
Something simple that I've found curious:
When people 'count in' a tune, to get all the players ready to start at the same time, I often hear them do it first at half-speed, then at full speed.
e.g. if the tune is in 4/4, and there are 4 characters…
HarryApp
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How to help students remember Half vs. Whole rests
The symbols for the half rest and whole rest are pretty much the same and in the literature my students play we rarely encounter them.
Is there a good, memorable way to describe which is which to students?
Josiah
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Is there a name for this famous “memeish” rhythm?
I wonder if there’s a name for the famous rhythm heard many times around the web. I’d like to know its origins but I can’t google it without a name. I wrote it down but I can’t describe anyway differently, so here it is:
It should be one of the…
puccj
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Two voices for a solo singer written in a sheet music
I was reading the score for Mozart’s insertion aria for his own opera Idomeneo “Non Temer Amato Bene”, K. 490. In it, Idomeneo’s son Idamante (scored for soprano; trouser role) expresses his undying love for Ilia.
In the Allegro Moderato section,…
The Lad of Leipzig
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Performance practice of Viennese Waltz
Occasionally, when I listen to an orchestra playing a Strauss waltz or something similar, I hear something interesting in the background rhythm of 'boom chik chik' in that the first 'chik' happens somewhere before beat 2.
Take, for example, this…
NReilingh
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How is it that 12 eighth notes fit in a measure labeled as common time?
I am looking at Franz Liszt's Consolation S.172 No.3. I have checked out two different music scores of the same composition and they both have the same time signature (standard), however the base line includes 12 eighth notes (making it a 3/2 time…
KJ Price
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Varying rhythms on bass
I've gotten into something of a bad habit in which I either play things in a steady rhythm, in triplets, or galloping, but without much variation, and I feel like I'm stagnating. What are some good ways to develop other patterns and work them into…
Kaji
22
votes
3 answers
What is this beat and why is it so popular
In many concert etudes, along with several rock songs, there is an accented pattern that often serves as a link to a new section of the music. It also works as a great fill. It usually comes from the drummer, but I have heard it on other instruments…
Cody Guldner
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