Skip to main content

Playing 'After beats'

 ( This also explains a student's mind shift when hoketing [see Amadinda])

One of the more common rhythms for snare drum in a concert band are 'After beats', the Bass drum plays the 'Down beats (1,2,3,4,etc.) and the Snare drum plays the 'ands' of the beats. Normally the instruction process starts with the teacher having the student counting all of the eighth notes (1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &), but playing only on the &'s. This is a good introduction but it shouldn't stop here. As the student improves with their stick control, their ability requires a different way of thinking.
The first thing is to find the Tempo that the student is comfortable playing. I choose a Tempo slightly slower than this.
  1. I have the student play all of the eighth notes along with a metronome.
 2.  They continue to play all of the eighths but the downbeats are played on the rim of the drum. 
  3.  Now they play the downbeats either in the air or on the side of their leg. At this point they hear the metronome on the down beat and the drum on the after beats.
  4.  Unbeaming the eighth notes presents them with visualizing how the 2 parts fit together.
  5.  At this point they play only the 'Afterbeat', and they can feel the interplay of the 2 parts.
  6.  This is where the mind shift takes place. As they are playing, they think of their part as the 'Downbeat' and the metronome is playing the 'Afterbeat'.  If they think they are playing the 'Downbeat', they feel they have control over the tempo and the metronome is following them.
  7.  The final step is for them to not think of 'Downbeats' or 'Afterbeats' but rather hearing 2 voices producing 1 rhythm. Now they are ready to increase the tempo. 

This is not achieved in 1 lesson, it takes weeks of practice for the student to play afterbeats properly even at a moderate tempo. However, with time most of my students have been able to play afterbeats at 144 bpm. One particularly adept student was able to play them at 240 bpm!

















Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amadinda

  The Amadinda is an African xylophone originally made from slabs of wood or even large sticks, with or without gourds for resonators. There was no reason for this project other than to see if I could make a simple mallet instrument. The box was made from plywood (which also acted as the resonators) and the bars were made from maple.  Since this was to be a true xylophone, the bars were all of equal width. Tuning was done by cutting the bars to different lengths and removing material from the bottom. Using a router I created a sort of 'stepped pyramid' instead of the traditional arc cut found on marimba or xylophone bars.  Cutting the underside is not only for tuning but it focuses the pitch and creates the characteristic overtones of the instrument. Since I wanted to play this with other 'Western' instruments, I chose to use a pentatonic scale of 2 2/5 octaves (C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#). Two people sit on either side of the instrument and strike the ends of ...
3 comments
Read more

La Caverna del oro

 One of our first backpacking trips in Colorado was in the Sangre de Christo Mountains. One mountain in particular drew our attention. Marble Mountain was the location of a famous story of a Spanish cave of gold. There are many places on the web that tell this story better than I could, suffice it to say that we wanted to locate it and see the iconic 'Maltese Cross' located at it's entrance.  In 1974 after I got out of the Army we invited some friends to join us on this trip. We parked our car at the trailhead in the Wet Mountain Valley and backpacked up Marble Mountain to 12,000 feet. In one of the culverts we found the entrance to the cave. Maltese Cross at the Caverna del oro It turned out to be a real thing. The large red cross was still visible after 400 yrs. According to legend the Spanish put it there in the 1600's. I did have the courage to crawl into it but only a few feet. After about 10 feet there is a vertical shaft that drops about 750 feet!  The Cross is v...
3 comments
Read more

Matte Black

 I just realized that this sounds like a 'James Bond' type spy thriller. Actually it involves my attempts to produce a non-reflective finish for so many of my aluminum projects. Powder coating and anodizing are the typical processes to produce this finish but they are expensive or require car battery chargers and caustic chemicals for the DIYers.  I've tried a flat black paint using etching preps etc. but they all resulted in the paint chipping off quickly when tossed around and hitting other things in an accessory case. Since I use a 2 part epoxy to connect the parts of the Nickster together with perfect results, I thought about using this as a bass coat for the paint (see my Nickster Commemorative post). This result had promise but the finish became glossy even though I used the matte black paint in the mixture.  I came up with this idea from an accident. After the epoxy/paint mixture experiment I left some of the mixture out and some of the paint had dripped on the mix...
2 comments
Read more