"It's
got a good beat and you can dance to it."
On American Bandstand,
Dick Clark had a segment called “Rate-a-Record. During the segment,
two audience members each ranked two records on a scale of 35 to 98,
after which their two opinions were averaged by Clark, who then asked
the chosen members to justify their scores. This segment gave rise to
the catchphrase above.
The rock beat has been
said to inspire everything from devil worship to teen rebellion to
sexual behavior and violence. From its inception, rock has relied
greatly upon its rhythms for mass appeal. The surging, pulsating
energy of rock stems largely from the 4/4 time signature, although
some rock classics have been penned in triple meter like 3/4 and
12/8. Rock tempos vary immensely, but many rockers favor a range of
100 to 140 beats per minute.
He used to
carry his guitar in a gunny sack
Go sit beneath the tree by the
railroad track
Oh, the engineer would see him sittin' in the
shade
Strummin' with the rhythm that the drivers made
The
people passing by, they would stop and say
"Oh my, but that
little country boy could play"
Go go
Go Johnny go!
Johnny B.
Goode!
– “Johnny
B. Goode” by Chuck Berry
The “beat” works
pretty much like this:
Syncopation
occurs when a rhythmic pattern that typically occurs on strong beats
or strong parts of the beat occurs instead on weak beats or weak
parts of the beat. Most rock songs have a mixture of syncopated and
“straight” rhythms. In rock, syncopation typically involves
taking a series of notes of equal durations, cutting the duration of
the first note in half, and shifting the rest early by that half
duration.
For example, a series of
four quarter notes, all sounding on the beat, can be transformed in
this way by making the first note into an eighth note, and sounding
each successive quarter note on eighth note early – all on the
offbeats.
Ready for some music
theory? A little more technically …
“This process
(syncopation) can occur on any metrical level. If the duration of the
series of “straight” notes is two beats, they will be syncopated
by changing the first note to a single beat and shifting each other
note early by a beat. If the duration of the straight note is a
“beat,” the notes will be syncopated by a division (one half beat
in simple meter). If the straight notes are each divisions, they will
be syncopated by shifting each note by a subdivision. The unit of
syncopation (the duration of the first note, and the amount of shift
applied to the following notes) is always half of the duration of the
straight notes. All of these syncopations are relatively common in
contemporary pop/rock music.”
(“Syncopation in
pop/rock music.” Open Music Theory.
http://openmusictheory.com/syncopation.html.)
Is all of that straight
note syncopation talk too confusing? Never fear. It all comes down to
the ever-familiar beat and groove we know so well. We are all born
with a predisposition for music, one that develops spontaneously and
is refined by listening to music. You have the music “in you.”
What do you feel? The
popular notion that TWO and FOUR are the strong, or accented
beats in rock is due to the overwhelming success of the rock-n-roll
style. This is the famous “backbeat” – referring to emphatic
percussive accents on the so-called weak beats of the measure,
typically played on the snare drum.
In 4/4 meter, the most
common meter in rock-and-roll, the 2nd and 4th beats are defined in
standard music theory textbooks as the weak beats, while the 1st and
3rd beats are considered the strong beats. The backbeat is an
inversion of this fundamental convention of Western music as the
nominal weak beats are emphasized. It is used to create rhythmic
tension and anticipation, eliciting more active and participatory
listening
Do you want to hear it for
yourself?
Just check out seminal and
classic rock like “Rock & Roll Music” or “School Days” by
Chuck Berry, “Twenty Flight Rock” by Eddie Cochran, “Twist and
Shout” by the Isleys or by the Beatles, “Tequila” by the
Champs, “Money” by Barrett Strong, or “You Can't Sit Down” by
the Phil Upchurch Combo … the list is never-ending.
We associate this pattern
of stresses, this way of marking and sculpting time, with blues,
jazz, rock and roll, funk, hip-hop. These styles of music don't exist
without it.
I've got
no kick against modern jazz
Unless
they try to play it too darn fast
And lose
the beauty of the melody
Until they
sound just like a symphony
That's why
I go for that that rock and roll music
Any old
way you choose it
It's got a
back beat, you can't lose it
Any old
time you use it
It's gotta
be rock and roll music
If you
wanna dance with me
How the Brain Perceives Rhythm
It turns out that the
Rate-a-Record teens were right all along. They knew innately what
scientists have proven about rhythm and music. “Beat” and “dance”
are just so “human.”
When it comes to
perceiving music, the human brain is much more tuned in to certain
types of rhythms than others, according to a new study from MIT.
You'll never guess what rhythm is most popular. That's right – 4/4
time.
A team of neuroscientists
has found that people are biased toward hearing and producing rhythms
composed of simple integer ratios – for example, a series of four
beats separated by equal time intervals (forming a 1:1:1 ratio).
This holds true for
musicians and nonmusicians living in the United States, as well as
members of a Bolivian tribe who have little exposure to Western
music. However, the researchers found that the Bolivians tended to
prefer different ratios than Westerners, and that these ratios
corresponded to simple integer ratios found in their music but not in
Western music.
“Both of these cultures
seem to prioritize rhythms that are formed by simple integer ratios.
It’s just that they don’t prioritize all of them,” says Josh
McDermott, the Frederick A. and Carole J. Middleton Assistant
Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive
Sciences at MIT and the senior author of the study, which appears in
the Jan. 5 issue of Current Biology.
For this study, the MIT
team devised a new way to reveal biases in the brain’s
interpretation of sensory input. These biases, called “priors,”
are thought to be based on our past experience of the world and to
help resolve sensory stimuli that could be interpreted in multiple
ways. For example, in a noisy room, priors on speech help you to
extract a conversation of interest by biasing perception toward
familiar speech sounds, words, and linguistic forms.
(Anne
Trafton. “How the brain perceives rhythm.” MIT News Office.
January 5, 2017.)
“In
a little honky-tonky village in Texas
There's a guy who plays
the best piano by far
He can play piano any
way that you like it
But the way he likes to
play is eight to the bar
When he plays, it's a
ball
He's the daddy of them
all
“The people gather
around when he gets on the stand
Then when he plays, he
gets a hand
The rhythm he beats
puts the cats in a trance
Nobody there bothers to
dance
But when he plays with
the bass and guitar
They holler out, "Beat
me Daddy, eight to the bar"
“A-plink, a-plank,
a-plink plank, plink plank
A-plunkin' on the keys
A-riff, a-raff, a-riff
raff, riff raff
A-riffin' out with ease
And when he plays with
the bass and guitar
They holler out, 'Beat
me Daddy, eight to the bar'"
– “Beat
Me Daddy (Eight To the Bar)” by Will Bradley and His Orchestra
featuring Ray McKinley (1940)
The Beat Is In Us
“There is music wherever there is
rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.”
– Igor Stravinsky, one of
the most important composers of the 20th
century
Beat induction, the
detection of a regular pulse in an auditory signal, is considered a
fundamental human trait that, arguably, played a decisive role in the
origin of music. Research shows that newborn infants develop
expectation for the onset of rhythmic cycles (the downbeat), even
when it is not marked by stress or other distinguishing spectral
features. Omitting the downbeat elicits brain activity associated
with violating sensory expectations. Thus, results strongly support
the view that beat perception is innate.
(István Winkler, Gábor
P. Háden, Olivia Ladinig, István Sziller, and Henkjan Honing.
“Newborn infants detect the beat in music.” Proceedings of
National Academy of Scientists. 106 (7) 2468-2471. February 17,
2009.)
Girls are
dancing all around them just for me
And the party wouldn't swing
if not for me
I've made you hearts jump, I've caused a heat
I'm
in demand I am the beat
When the
martian came to earth I made him dance
And who made the zombies
all tap their feet
I'm in demand I am the beat
Beat
Beat
Beat
– “I
Am the Beat” by The Look
Dance Is In Us, Too
“To live
is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins.
Everything living has a rhythm. Do you feel your music?”
– Michael
Jackson
We humans are movement. We
are the movement that is making us able to think and feel and act at
all. Think of simple movement such as walking down the street. Try to
do so without rhythm. It just isn't the same. In such moments, dance
emerges – patterns of sensory awareness that changes us. When such
an impulse courses through us, it relates us to ourselves and our
worlds in a new way. It aligns and it frees. The movement of our
bodily selves is actually “dance.”
“Jumping
from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is
easier than it sounds; you just can't fall when you get into the
rhythm of the dance.”
– Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Kimerer
LaMothe – award-winning author, philosopher, dancer, and playwright
– explains …
“Humans dance because
dance is human. Dance is not an accidental or supplemental activity
in which humans choose to engage or not. Dance is essential to our
survival as human beings.
“Without the barest
ability to notice, recreate, and become patterns of movement, without
the ability to invite impulses to move, humans would not be able to
learn how to sense and respond to the sources of their wellbeing –
to people, to nourishment, to ideas, to environments.
(Kimerer LaMothe. “Why
Do Humans Dance?” Psychology Today. March 31, 2015.)
Sad Sack was a sittin'
on a block of stone
Way over in the corner weepin' all alone.
The
warden said, "Hey, buddy, don't you be no square.
If you
can't find a partner use a wooden chair."
Origins Of the Backbeat
The backbeat is a
significant component of the Africanization of American music. Music
critic Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) makes the bold claim that “the only
so-called popular music in this country of any real value is of
African derivation.” He traces the spread of African musical values
into America via the slave trade.
The percussion-heavy,
improvisationally oriented and shouted/chanted music we hear on every
pop radio station is informed powerfully by those vestiges of West
African music that survived slavery. Generally speaking, African
music is rhythmically complex and harmonically static, an inverse of
Europe’s harmonically rich but rhythmically unsophisticated art
music tradition. American musical history is largely informed by the
collision between these two musical cultures.
(Amiri Baraka. Blues
people: Negro music in white America. New York: Quill.1963.)
The backbeat also traces
its popularity through early jazz banjo and piano accompaniment
patterns, “Chicago-style drumming (on snare and hi-hat or choked
cymbal), New Orleans processional drumming (with roots in Africa and
the Caribbean), hand claps and tambourine hits (in sanctified gospel
music), slap bass (in country and jazz), and staccato guitar and
mandolin accompaniment (in country music).
So the big question is
“Why don't we get bored with the classic groove, the backbeat?
After all, we hear it over and over.
Some theorize that the
possibility of continued repetition or a break in the pattern keeps
our mind in the happy groove – you could define it as “a present
that is continually being created anew.” We give particularity to
each repetition based on our memory of the immediate past and our
expectations for the future.
It is believed
“participatory discrepancies” add power and interest to the
groove. Music timbre, tone qualities, creative tensions, dynamics –
that tricky but interesting stuff – all adds texture to the beat or
the groove.
(Charles Keil.
“Participatory Discrepancies and the Power of Music.” Cultural
Anthropology. Vol. 2, No. 3. August, 1987.)
These researchers readily
admit music is about motion, dance, and global and contradictory
feelings. It's simply about allowing ourselves to get down in the
groove. So much magic is there, but we just listen and enjoy even if
we are oblivious to the complex structures we hear. Just ask those
Dick Clark Rate-a-Record teens, and they simple say “It's got a
good beat and you can dance to it.”
(Charles
Keil. “The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies: A Progress
Report.” Ethnomusicology
39, no. 1. 1995.)
“There's
something primordial in the way we react to pulses without even
knowing it. We exist on a rhythm of seventy-two beats a minute. The
train, apart from getting them from the Delta to Detroit, became very
important to blues players because of the rhythm of the machine, the
rhythm of the tracks, and then when you cross onto another track, the
beat moves. It echoes something in the human body.
“So then
when you have machinery involved, like trains, and drones, all of
that is still built in as music inside us. The human body will feel
rhythms even when there's not one. Listen to "Mystery Train"
by Elvis Presley. One of the great rock-and-roll tracks of all time,
not a drum on it. It's just a suggestion, because the body will
provide the rhythm. Rhythm really only has to be suggested. Doesn't
have to be pronounced. This is where they got it wrong with 'this
rock' and 'that rock.' It's got nothing to do with rock. It's to do
with roll.”
– Keith
Richards (of the Rolling Stones). From Life, his autobiography
(2011)
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