The Back Beat Revolution

From a drummer’s perspective, “Rhythm & Blues” or “R&B” was a musical revolution. It was the revolution of technology and a trick of the rhythm, where the “back-beat” came about as the dominant rhythm in the last half of the 20th Century. Back when R&B was fresh and new, the “swing beat” derived from a lazy shuffle beat, had been the popular dance beat for more than 50 years, with its emphasis on the “down-beat”.

Recording equipment in the Jazz age was very delicate. It didn’t take much for the drums to get the needle skipping and jumping across the lathes. However, starting in the late 40s and the hi-fidelity of the early 1950s, the technology started to improve enough to be able to handle the high decibel snare rim shots from say Gene Krupa in the Benny Goodman band or Ralph Jones of Bill Haley & the Comets.

Previously, during the swing era of the 1930s and before, there was a great disparity between music that was “live” and therefore much louder than recorded music due to the limits of the technology involved. While the “live” bands it took a whole “rhythm section” of guitars, banjo, piano, bass/tuba, rhythm instruments and drums to keep up with the sheer high volume of the horns and reeds sections this made it necessary for equal stress to all four beats of the count in 4/4, “One, Two, Three, Four“.

Counting Rhythms

In rhythm music theory, “common time” notated as 4/4, “four/four time” or “four/quarter time” or as a large “C” for common, is depicted to the right of the G-Clef above, also depicted are 2/2, “two/halves” or “cut time” (a “C” with a line through it), as well as “two/quarter”, “three/quarter” and “six/eighths” note time signatures.

Time Signatures

The bottom number tells you the type of note to play, in this case it is a “quarter note”; and the top note tells you “how many notes or pulses are in a measure” or bar of music (a measure or bar is a unit of music, in this case of 4 beats).

Top Number:                     3 – (Number-of beats in a measure or bar)

Bottom Number:             4 – (Use quarter notes to count out “one, two, three”)

                                                                     OR

Top Number:                     6 – (Number-of beats in a measure or bar)

Bottom Number:             8 – (Use quarter notes to count out “one, two, three, four, five, six”)

 

This time signature can be counted in several ways such as “One, Two, Three, Four; One, Two, Three, Four” stressing the One count of each measure. Another way to count in the time signature of 4/4, which helps with marching and dancing, is on the down-beats, “One, Two, Three, Four; One, Two, Three, Four” which has its accents on the down-beats  or the odd-beats of one and three. You can also keep time by saying or thinking “Left, Right, Left, Right” in marching or “Right, Left, Right, Left” in dancing.

 

Counting the Back Beat

The “Back-Beat” is counted as “One, Two, Three, Four” which has its accents on the up-beats or the even beats two and four, which at faster meters such as 116 to 120 beats per minute (bpm) or allegro moderato, is a very easy pulse for dancing. This “Back-Beat” pulse has been used in all of the modern R&B derived dance music of the late twentieth century including “classic R&B”, “Doo-Wop”, “Rock & Roll”, “Soul”, “Disco”, “House & Techno”, “Modern Dance Music”, “Electronica” and many other forms of dance music.

With a drum-set you can further subdivide the “back-beat” count as shown below, counted as “One-And, Two-And, Three-And, Four-And” or “Bass-And, Snare-And, Bass-And, Snare-And” where the bass drum gets the down-beats, on the one and the three, and where the snare drum hits the accents, defining the “back-beat” on the Two and the Four beats. The hi-hat cymbals keep a steady count of (8), eighth notes, counted as ” One, And, Two, And, Three, And, Four, And” as seen below.

Tempos

The tempo of a song is very important, it is not merely a question of fast or slow but all the variables between fast or slow and its extremes. Songs at 120 beats per minute is standard for a good dance beat, close to the human heart rate at exercise. At this rate, dancing is very healthy for you, many people use music in concert with their jogging and other exercise routines.

Slower tempos of andante (76 to 108 bpm) or andantino (80 to 108 bpm) were used for ballads and love songs in popular music and also in slow metered country & western songs, for dancing it was just a good excuse to get close to your partner. Then there were the mid-tempo songs of moderato 108-120 bpm, where the great radio friendly, storytelling, hook that would stick in your mind for hours, songs off the radio in the 1950s came of age.

 

Pulse and Meter

Some of the slower tempos had a triple meter “One, two, three; One , two, three” rather than the duple pulse of “One, two; One, two”. Another popular rhythm in R&B, derived from the Boogie Woogie beat in Jazz which is a triple meter counted either as “One-Trip-Let, Two- Trip-Let” or as “One, Two, Three; Four, Five, Six”, which basically takes a duple meter like the one below-left and subdivides it into a triple meter like the figure below-right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, remember, top note tells you how many beats, and the bottom note tells you which note to use. In the figures above-left, quarter notes are counted, in the figure on the right, eighth notes are used to count. Notice how these examples of a duple meter and a triple meter can be mixed and intertwined.

So, simply by putting an accent on the Two and the Four of a rhythm in common time, popular music was transformed. The philosophy of the heart, the Thub-Dub, Left-Right, binary in nature and syncopation, “If there is a boom, then there is a snap”.