12: The Beat

So far in Part II we’ve focused on the Pitch side of things. As noted in Chapter 7: Ear Training, this is because typically a musician’s ear skills are more under-developed for Pitch than for Rhythm. And yet, Rhythm is often the difference-maker—marking out a beginner-sounding performance from one that sounds clearly pro-level, and playing a huge part in how effectively the music connects with the listener.

For the average instrument-learner, it’s easy to take Rhythm for granted. As we obey the instructions on the page we tend to worry about “wrong notes” far more than playing notes slightly early or late. As a result, we don’t recognise that often it’s the rhythms tripping us up at least as much as the note pitches. If you’ve spent time with the practice techniques of Chapter 6: Superlearning, especially exercises involving the metronome, you have probably discovered this becoming painfully clear! And although your expressed rhythms may be “good enough” to be “the right rhythms”, the imprecision is not lost on the listener.

With Pitch Ear Training we are primarily interested in recognising note pitches by ear, to enable applied skills like Playing By Ear, Improvisation and Songwriting. With Rhythm Ear Training there is an equivalent (learning to recognise and choose rhythmic patterns by ear) but there is also a profound benefit to be gained for playing music “as written”, something we’ll explore more in the chapters on Expression and Performance.

So whether you identify most as a Jammer, Creative or Performer, dedicating time to honing your Rhythm skills can have a huge payoff.

You’ve probably noticed that it’s not this chapter but the next one which is titled “Rhythm”—because first we need to lay the foundation.

Even the rare musicians who do intentionally try to improve their sense of rhythm often make the mistake of skipping straight to Rhythm itself. They miss out on laying the firm foundation which makes it all possible: The Beat.

That’s why we’ll spend this chapter first getting deeply, intimately familiar with The Beat itself.

Here’s a way to think about it: as you play a rhythm, your notes and rests may all be the right duration relative to each other, to a decent degree of accuracy… but if they’re “floating” in time rather than firmly anchored to a steady underlying pulse it’s unsettling for the audience, and will sound loose and sloppy. Listeners often won’t even be consciously aware of this, but it’s still greatly affecting their experience and appreciation of the music you play. That’s not to say you must strictly adhere to the beat at all times—sometimes “floating” is exactly what we want to do!—but we want that to be an intentional expressive choice, executed precisely.

It’s been astonishing at Musical U to observe how so many musicians—even those who’ve been playing for many years—are fuzzy on what exactly “the beat” is, how it’s different to “rhythm”, and what more there is to do regarding The Beat than just setting your metronome to the right tempo.

Case in point: many experienced musicians still struggle to clap in time along with a song! And no judgement—I remember being there myself, as a multi-instrumentalist teenager, going to rock shows and feeling sheepish that I had to really pay attention to clap along with the rest of the crowd.

So let me say clearly at the outset: if right now you’re fuzzy on Beat vs. Rhythm, or you notice the exercises in this chapter seem much more challenging than you feel they “should” be, just know that it’s not unusual and it’s not your fault. “Rhythm ear training” wasn’t even a phrase being used online until we started to write about it back in 2009!

So before we get into recognising rhythmic patterns by ear or making your own creative choices with Rhythm, let’s make sure you are deeply, accurately connected to The Beat.

Overview

In this chapter we’ll refine the precision of your sense of The Beat (your “inner metronome”) as well as its subdivisions. Once that’s in place, all the rhythms you create on top will become more precise, and you’ll have a more fine-grained skill with Hearing and Hands to express rhythms, as we’ll explore in the next chapter. We will make use of our H4 Model to make sure that we are integrating The Beat into our Head, Hands, Hearing and Heart—in particular, developing a deep physical body-based sense of The Beat.