Rhythmic Perspectives

Covers cutting-edge drum concepts and offers mind-expanding exercises to further develop the study of rhythmic illusions and multi-dimensional rhythm. These concepts are mind rudiments" for a unique way of thinking about rhythmic structure, rhythmic composition, and higher rhythmic awareness."

Created for drumset players who find themselves in a creative rut, this book and audio package easily breaks down the mystery behind subdivisions, rhythmic modulation, rhythmic scales and beat displacement. The author makes the transition from mathematics to musicality with an easy and systematic approach.

. An accompanying compact disk enables the reader to work closely with the sound of African speech and song discussed in the book.

Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm offers new understandings of musical rhythm through the analysis and comparison of diverse repertoires, performance practices, and theories as formulated and transmitted in speech or writing. Editors Richard K. Wolf, Stephen Blum, and Christopher Hasty address a productive tension in musical studies between universalistic and culturally relevant approaches to the study of rhythm. Reacting to commonplace ideas in (Western) music pedagogy, the essays explore a range of perspectives on rhythm: its status as an "element" of music that can be usefully abstracted from timbre, tone, and harmony; its connotations of regularity (or, by contrast, that rhythm is what we hear against the grain of background regularity); and its special embodiment in percussion parts. Unique among studies of musical rhythm, the collection directs close attention to ways performers and listeners conceptualize aspects of rhythm and questions many received categories for describing rhythm. By drawing the ear and the mind to tensions, distinctions, and aesthetic principles that might otherwise be overlooked, this focus on local concepts enables the listener to dispel assumptions about how music works "in general." Readers may walk away with a few surprises, become more aware of their assumptions, and/or think of new ways to shock their students out of complacency.

Miscellaneous Percussion Music - Mixed Levels

An exploration of rhythm and the richness of musical time from the perspective of performers, composers, analysts, and listeners.

One of the defining aspects of music is that it exists in time. From clapping to dancing, toe-tapping to head-nodding, the responses of musicians and listeners alike capture the immediacy and significance of the musical beat. This Companion explores the richness of musical time through a variety of perspectives, surveying influential writings on the topic, incorporating the perspectives of listeners, analysts, composers, and performers, and considering the subject across a range of genres and cultures. It includes chapters on music perception, visualizing rhythmic notation, composers' writings on rhythm, rhythm in jazz, rock, and hip-hop. Taking a global approach, chapters also explore rhythmic styles in the music of India, Africa, Bali, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Indigenous music of North and South America. Readers will gain an understanding of musicians' approaches to performing complex rhythms of contemporary music, and revealing insights into the likely future of rhythm in music.

THE writer of this book presents a view of music, which is as novel as it is interesting, and which throws a strong light on the fundamental principles underlying the art. She takes the rhythmic element in music as the formative principle of unity, and works out her conception both from the historical and psychological point of view. Rhythm is defined as "the periodic quality, undulating, circling or putative, of all movement"; and as, according to Herbert Spencer, rhythm is a necessary characteristic of all motion, it is obvious that here we can obtain a unifying principle. A study of history shows us that rhythmic feeling was the common origin of poetry, dancing and music; and that the basis of all folk-music, as far back as we can trace it, was rhythm pure and simple. The general law of musical evolution is laid down, and proved to exist in the actual development of art; and so modern music is shown to have had its origin in folk-song, and not in the Church art of the middle ages. The progress of all art is shown to be from the Strict to the Free (which is equivalent to passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous), and thus from the somewhat strict outline of ancient music we pass to the endless variety of modern music. A strict standard is necessary. But when once this standard is grasped, monotony must be avoided by the free utterance. Coming to the psychological part of the work, the authoress shows that what she terms the Rhythmitonal Idea is the result of the synthetic intuitive action of the imagination, and not the analytic reasoned processes of the intellect; it must be intelligible not to the intellect, but to the emotions, of the hearer. In her opinion the emotional element in music has actually assisted to develop a considerable part of musical technique, by creating the movement of absolute free form. She discusses the association of the poetic idea with music, coming to the conclusion that the evolution of music is not advanced by the influence of another art, but proceeds in its own natural and inevitable path of development. The book is one that merits deep and careful consideration. From all points of view it is a notable addition to works on musical aesthetics, and, whatever views may be taken of the questions at issue, it conveys a theory that cannot be overlooked or ignored. -Zeitschrift, Volume 9

Miscellaneous Percussion Music - Mixed Levels