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Looper's Delight
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As a musician who approaches music from the prism of the blues (and who does not consider himself a fucking genius, regardless of harmonic variance), I can agree with much of what Rick is saying here. Considering that blues music is primarily a juxtaposition of African rhythm (for both communication and storytelling) and European harmony (for the same purposes, though driven largely by the enforcement of Christian church attendance on many slaves in America), neither harmony nor rhythm supercedes the other. The necessity of secrecy in early African-American communication led to the adaptation of meaningful tribal rhythmic patterns that could communicate well enough over long distances to cause some plantation owners to ban drums and drumming among slaves. The planters were unsuccessful, however, in eliminating the classic double-entendre in lyrics that still lives in the more artistic blues songs of today (though primarily in sexual context now, whereas before it was social and political, as well as entertainment). Besides the four drummers mentioned, the recently-deceased Earl Palmer of New Orleans and later L.A. was one of the main codifiers of the-beat-played-around-the-world now, as American style pop music seems to have a huge presence in nearly all cultures. Earl took the striking backbeat from the shout choruses of traditional jazz (Dixieland) and installed it entirely through songs, along with the parade-derived syncopations of which New Orleans is the fount. Everything has been different since then. Why this is not considered a compositional attribute is beyond me. dave Exactly Andy!! As a drummer for most of my life, this last point you made has been a huge thorn in my side and is the reason for my post initially. There is such a bias favoring harmony and melody over rhythm in Western music that we consider some of the world's greatest drummers (and we've been talking a lot about what a strong contribution Mitch Mitchell made to the Jimi Hendrix Experience sound or Keith Moon or John Bohnam or Stewart Copeland to the Who, Led Zeppelin and Police sounds) to NOT be included in the composition category of those artists. I've had a tendency to be the leader of most of the all original bands I've played in during my life and despite the fact that I had a very large hand in shaping the musical and stylistic outcome of those bands (from the drumkit) I had to play a keyboard, bass or guitar part to be officially recognized as a composer in the piece. A drum beat can certainly be a composition, but it is not officially recognized by the legal sound writing conventions................that's just wrong! Play 'Sunshine of your Love" in a cover band with the backbeat on 2 and 4 and hear how radically different the feel of the song is with the original the Tom Dowd suggested drumbeat that plays the backbeat on the 1 and 3. This just gets my goat!!!! It's my belief that rhythm has a huge impact on composition...............after all, if you are playing a song with a single chord vamp during a section you are only allowed 7 scalar notes in terms of pitch. What determines how the song sounds is where you actually play those notes , temporally and in what order they are played...........that's rhythm. Additionally, I will run into really accomplished musicians (and this happens to me all the time) who seem to almost eschew learning about rhythm in a formal way...............whereas they have learned harmony and melody up one side and down another. I find this phenomenon is the rule rather than the exception even when it world class melodicists that we are talking about. So, I get a little frustrated. As a drummer (and budding melodist as a multi-instrumentalist) I am always trying to learn more about harmony and melody. I feel lonely sometimes when it seems that the bulk of harmonic/melodic players don't seem nearly as interested in rhythm. It's hard for me to accept the limited roll that rhythm has been assigned in western music (with the exception of a lot of later avant garde classical composition in the latter half of the 20th century) Now, I'm confessing an emotional response that is pretty reactive (just one based on a lifetime of experience) so I"m sure what I've just written will probably be shot to hell intellectually speaking, but I throw it out there, anyway, as a challenge to the rhythmically challenged western world. yours, Rick Walker (admittedly a bit cranky from a bad night of insomnia.......lol)