Developing Musicality, part 1: Rhythm
Music is only possible because of time. We cannot hear all the notes in a musical piece at once, or it wouldn’t be music anymore. Rather, music unfolds moment after moment, shifting around its components like a constantly turning kaleidoscope, in which we experience only some musical ingredients at any given moment.
When the music changes, the previous combination of musical crystals shifts and disappears. While most music will return to previous configurations periodically, with variations on the same core ingredients to give us patterns and throughlines across the x axis (duration), it is actually a series of temporary musical sand paintings that are blown away after they are experienced, swept away once they are heard (except when there is a recording and you listen to it again, but even so, it is still always sequential rather than all-at-once).
While we can only ever be having one musical moment at a time, through the stringing together of moments there is a wholeness spread out over the duration which can cause it to have a feeling of cohesion, but like a film or a dance piece, it can only ever be experienced piece by piece. (As opposed, for example, to a painting).
Rhythm has to do with how we decide to divide music into sections, where we draw the line between one moment and the next. In a zoetrope or animation, as metaphor, you make a decisions as the artist, which visual information belongs to which slide.
In general, we like these subdivisions to be even. Because we ourselves are so rhythmic, the human nervous system appreciates things being regular in music. (Though of course for artistic effect you can change how you portion out the music into these separate musical moments, and that is lovely too).
Regardless of whether you feel a strong connection to rhythm or it feels more remote to you, it is part of every musical encounter.
I am currently in a process of recovering basic trust in my rhythm. This is not my area of expertise & I consider rhythm to be my weakest/most wounded aspect of musicality. So from one wounded healer to another, here are some invitations.
I.
My Invitation to You for Developing Rhythm, part 1: Breath Beats
The most basic rhythm you have is the rhythm of your breath. To begin with, sit with your drum (or clap/snap/tap, if you want to use your body as the drum), OR your instrument, and only make a sound/note on each breath.
There are three levels of this exercise.
Level 1:
The first level is to do it alone, with your own breath rhythm, as described above. The next two levels involve doing this with another person.
This will feel very, very, very slow. That’s on purpose. The slowing down will attune and calm you and bring you to a state of refreshed, balanced readiness for further play.
Level 2:
With a second musician, both only play a sound on the in and the outbreath. In other words, you are synchronizing your breaths and you will need to pay attention/look at each other and sense into each other’s breathing to be able to do this. As you do this, agree that the breaths will be even, as long slow counts of 1-2-3-4 on both the exhale and the inhale.
Level 3:
The third level is for you to hold a breath rhythm, while the other musician is permitted to play around. You are keeping the beat, long and slow as it is, so that the other can play around and not worry about keeping it. This is a kind of musical holding, which is a competency music therapists need to develop.
You are essentially holding a space, in musical format, which the other person can relax and express themselves freely and safely inside of. In this example, the one in the holding role, the therapist so to speak, is playing multiple strums per breath, but always only changing chords on the slow, even breath-count.
II.
My Invitation to You for Developing Rhythm, part 2: Walking Beats
The second easily available inner rhythm is your walking beat, the natural back and forth that you do all the time, assuming you walk.
In part 1 of this exercise, just walk around the room at faster & slower tempos, while counting:
1 - 2 -3 -4. (then repeat, over & over).
You can also clap the quarter notes with your walk as you do it:
Clap Clap Clap Clap
and/or you can also say the syllables TA TA TA TA (one TA per footstep).
TA TA TA TA
Once you feel you have this locked in and it feels very comfortable, start adding the in between counts, the eighth notes:
1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and
Clap-clap Clap-clap Clap-clap Clap-clap
TA-KA TA-KA TA-KA TA-KA
Try to keep your walking rhythm the same as you now are making twice as many musical sounds (2 sounds per footstep).
Now you can try it with triplets. (Triplets sound a little bit like the word “happiness.” If you clap the beats of that word you have a triplet. To start, you could also just say the word on every footstep.)
1-and-a 2-and-a 3-and-a 4-and-a
Clap-clap-clap Clap-clap-clap Clap-clap-clap Clap-clap-clap
TA-KI-TA TA-KI-TA TA-KI-TA TA-KI-TA
Now try it with sixteenth notes:
1-ee-and-a 2-ee-and-a 3-ee-and-a 4-ee-and-a
Clap-clap-clap-clap//Clap-clap-clap-clap//Clap-clap-clap-clap// Clap-clap-clap-clap
TA-KA-DE-MI TA-KA-DE-MI TA-KA-DE-MI TA-KA-DE-MI
And so on.
The point is not to do it perfectly and easily, but rather to find the edge where it is hard for you, but not so hard that you can’t even get in there at all.
A good video for learning about rhythm & putting the pieces together for more rhythm complexity (& from whom I got the TA-KA syllables:)
III.
My Invitation to You for Learning Rhythm, part 3:
Play a basic walking beat on an instrument:
The second level of this exercise is to practice holding the walking beat as a musical container while someone else plays around. (The walking beat is the same as above, all other sounds are played by the second person - it’s a little hard to hear).
Level up to holding slightly more complex beats, again holding musical space for others.
And I do mean sticks, by the way. I am playing two little pieces of driftwood I found on the beach.
Finally, hold rhythm for someone to play another kind of instrument over. Not necessarily harder, just different.
IV.
My Invitation to You for Learning Rhythm, part 3: Improvise
Don’t skip the part where you get to be the soloist, while others hold the beat for you.
To do this, play along with a basic drum backing track and mess around as much as you please. Here is your space for making lots of mistakes & learning from them. Your body has a sense of rhythm and whenever something is off, you’ll notice it. If you catch yourself noticing that you are off, that is what you celebrate. For example in my above examples I can hear parts where I dropped the beat or missed the mark. I can choose to celebrate that I can hear it, or I can feel shame about it, my choice.
Happening to get it right is not as important as getting yourself back to the beat once you are off. We all fall off the beat sometimes, that’s normal, and if we are beginners, we should expect it will happen a lot as our hands are learning to level up skills-wise to what our bodies already sense.
And we all fall into the beat, too, that’s also normal, once we entrain and really synch up to a strong rhythm held by someone else. Becoming “good at rhythm” means gradually becoming someone who can hold a steady beat firm and strong (hold the container) internally, but then without losing that also express more fluidly on top of that sometimes only implied container.
Rhythm is extremely relevant to the therapeutic aspect of music. Noticing we are off beat (aka disregulated, activated, confused in the moment), and figuring out how we get ourselves back to regulation/peace/balance/attunement, and then internalizing that experience of, oh it’s ok if I get off, I always find my way back is the essence of trauma recovery.
Here is a lovely resource if you are starting with some degree of rhythm-trauma (like me):
Healing Drums playlist (Christine Stevens)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kCkmCMZNPSAD1YluwYK7EPide7pNS6BPI
Enjoy!
In Developing Musicality, part 2, we play with Tone.