My ex was a fiddler in a bluegrass band. To hear him play, I immediately pointed out that he didn’t have a sense of rhythm. He hit all the right notes at the right time, but something was just off. Perhaps his bowing attacks were sloppy. I knew I was right, and still do, but I just can’t explain it. Anyone know what I mean?
If he’s hitting all the notes at the right time, how then is he out of rhythym?
I do. I’ve played bluegrass percussion and winds before, and my ex played fiddle. (Or “violin,” as she called it, when she was playing in a symphony orchestra, as she had. But she could play a damn fine bluegrass fiddle.)
Anyway, according to my ex, bowing was important. You started on a downstroke, or maybe an upstroke, but the conductor would tell you what to do. And all the strings would have to do the same thing at the same time. If you’re all used to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” starting with a downstroke, then starting it on an upstroke would be jarring to everybody in the band. It wouldn’t sound right, melodically or rhythmically, even though it was the same note and on time.
If they’re using the term the way I use it, they don’t mean they’re out of rhythm. They lack an automatic feeling of the rhythm.
There are other aspects. You can play the note on time but not end it properly. You can have it too short or long. You can have no real variation in notes, especially the differenece between syncopation and being on the pulse. You can lack the minute dynamic changes.
All of this is so much easier to get right if you feel it, and aren’t trying to execute it like a robot.
Most non-violinists think of the left hand (fingering) as the primary challenge to violinists, leaving the right hand (bowing) to run on autopilot. But the bow is at least as important and challenging. It’s actually the bow that creates the sound; all the fingers do is establish and manipulate pitch. The trick is to totally coordinate the two. My ex could probably have played in the back of the second violins of an amateur orchestra, but to be a bluegrass or orchestral soloist, he was just not convincing.
I was in a (terrible) garage band back in high school. The guitarist only wanted to play guitar solos, and not rhythm. I finally figured out why: he had absolutely no sense of timing. He simply couldn’t strum in time. We didn’t last long.
Musicians that play strictly by counting can sound robotic and artificial. Counting is the first step in learning rhythm.
The best musicians develop a feeling for the groove or pocket. It’s hard to describe or teach. It develops through experience playing with other musicians.
I’m still working on it after many years of playing. I don’t have enough time to play in a band. That’s limited my growth in music.
I took music lessons for years as a kid. I never, in all those years, understood rhythm. As in, I didn’t understand how 2/2 was different from 4/4, and if you played me any piece of music I wouldn’t be able to tell you where the “1” happened, if I could even count the beat at all. I could identify it on the sheet music, but I didn’t hear it at all.
It was only when I took ballroom dance classes as an extracurricular in college and had to learn to physically move my body to the music and always start on the 1 that I began to hear the beat. It took months, even then.
I wish my music teachers had figured out that I was missing this key component of musical understanding and worked harder on it. So many things about music started to make sense after I understood it.
I guess it depends on what you’re defining as a “sense of rhythm,” but I wouldn’t really call that lacking sense of rhythm so much as lacking feel for the style of music they are playing. I’ve played with people who truly do lack a sense of rhythm who always seem to be playing “out of time” and that sounds different to what you’re describing. To me, it sounds like his phrasing and accentuations/articulations were not appropriate or different than what is expected in bluegrass.
Without hearing the playing, I couldn’t say for sure. But get someone steeped in the classical tradition with very little outside influence to play jazz lines and you’ll often notice they’ll have a great sense of rhythm, they’ll know where the beat is, but they typically will play with a different feel, accenting and feeling the pulse differently than a jazz cat would. I don’t call that musician one who lacks a sense of rhythm --they just don’t have the jazz “feel.”
Yep. They can’t swing, as jazz musicians would say.
Even some jazz musicians who grew up in the classical world were criticized for their lack of “swing.” Dave Brubeck comes to mind. Not his group (Paul Desmond could certainly swing, even in weird time signatures, as could Wright and Morello), but Brubeck himself as a pianist.
I played some classical duets with my ex. He truly had no sense of rhythm in either genre. The notes were all at the right times, but there was no “feel.”
Syncopation can really mess with your timing.
I’m relearning Wonderful Tonight for our anniversary. It starts on the 2+ with 5 eighth notes.The last 8th is tied to a 8th in the next bar. The quarter note starts on the 1+.
Then there’s the rests in every bar. The stopping and syncopated starting makes it hard to get any sense of a pulse.
It’s like your jogging and someone throws marbles under your feet. I’ve played this song before and will relearn it. I’m playing along with Clapton’s recording.
Here’s the first page. (sample preview) The melody is easy to read. It’s my body that I’m fighting. The constant rests are a bit challenging.
https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0044827