Stewart Copeland was such a busy drummer I doubt he ever missed the opportunity to hit the 2 and 4, except in those cases where he was so busy on the hi-hat that he skipped the snares completely. Anyway, I know The Police catalog pretty well and I think I’d remember that, but I’d love to be proven wrong!
Oh, there’s plenty of songs where he’s not wailing on the backbeat the whole song-- “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” starts out with no snare, eventually introduces it on the 3 and doesn’t kick into a backbeat until the chorus. “Driven to Tears” has a similar approach, with just ride for awhile, then introducing a side stick on the 3 (which, granted, can be heard as a 2 & 4 in a half-time feel though I hear the kicks as quarter notes), and then full backbeat in the bridge into one of the coolest guitar solos ever.Roxanne’s intro starts out with snare only on the 2, no four, and takes a few bars before the full backbeat is introduced (plus it’s a great example of the “one drop” rhythm – note there is no kick on the one until the chorus.) Etc.
Stewart likes to move the kick around in unexpected places and to accent unusual beats, so that’s why I thought somewhere in the catalog there must be an example of a displaced 2, but I can’t think of it.
Ack, double checked and my brain is playing the song wrong. The guitar solo comes ealier. It’s not until the instrumental outro bit that the song ventures into a strong backbeat for several bars. (Actually, now that I listen to the song, yeah, you can hear it as a half-time groove, so it being played on the 3 is pretty much equivalent to 2 & 4. He does throw in a couple side-sticks very occasionally that are not on the 3, though.)
OK, got one for the thread: Korn’s Die Yet Another Night.
If funk is okay, then Grover Washington’s It Feels So Good is a clear example for those who might not quite know what we’re talking about to get an idea of what we’re looking for. It doesn’t have to be that exact beat, as long as that first snare hit comes earlier than pop music would lead you to expect.
So, it fits in rather conveniently with this thread, that I have over the past week started playing drums - after playing bass seriously for 19 years and playing guitar half-seriously for about the same time, but only ever dabbling in drums, messing around on someone else’s kit. Now that I finally own a detached house, I’ve set up my own drum set and started practicing in earnest. This past year I’ve already been in one band (playing bass) and jamming weekly with another group including one other member of the same band, and regularly being in proximity to an amazing drummer, I can’t NOT want to also play drums. So I’ve been playing drums. Therefore I’ve been THINKING a lot about drums, more analytically than I had been before.
As it pertains to this thread: what we’re looking for is syncopation, specifically an early beat before the ‘2’ of a 4-count beat. I really want to try to discover other songs that have the same feature; the OP really led me down a rabbit hole here. So I’ve been grinding away the gears in my brain trying to think of songs with that little early snare hit. What I think, is that it’s likely to be found in songs which - for lack of a more precise term - feature a sort of rolling, intermittent sixteenth-note groove underneath a more steady four or eight count drumbeat.
Take this live recording of Iko Iko by the Dead, for instance. Listen at 1:18 onwards. There are snare hits in places, but it depends on what you percieve the count of the song to be. Is it 1 - 2 - 3 - 4? Is it 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8? Is it anchored by the groove of the hi-hat cymbal, or is it anchored by the sixteenth notes of Jerry’s solo? Whatever it is, you can hear the snare hits (sometimes they’re toms, but sometimes they’re snares) in that same place.
But they don’t stand out as much. Why not? Because in Soul To Squeeze and The Freshman, there are fewer other beats bouncing around at once, so that snare hit takes on increased significance.
More on this later, have to run… but please keep trying.
It may not be exactly right since it is a reggae style rhythm… but its the first one I recalled after hearing the other samples.
Mutabaruka “Every time I hear the sound”
drums start at about :20
Close. That one plays with the 4, or at least that’s how my ears hear it.
That sounds like a take on a New Orleans 2nd line groove. There’s a clave rhythm underlying it (something like the “Bo Diddly beat.”)
Right - it seems to be on the “3-and” but it is before the second snare hit.
A couple courtesy of Manu Katche:
Robbie Robertson’s Somewhere Down the Crazy River
The chorus of In Your Eyes
Nice one. That’s another one that I my brain was trying to pinpoint.
Maybe that drummer just doesn’t know how to hit on the two and four?
I’m loving this thread! Funk definitely counts – I put Chameleon and Transformations right in the OP.
ETA: In Your Eyes was a great find! I know that song so well, but never put two and two together. Or, that be one-a and four together?
I’m pretty sure that someone like Manu Katche does .
You might also like Richie Hayward from Little Feat:
Fat Man in the Bathtub (or just play it from the beginning and wallow in it)
IMO what you’re looking for usually falls within some variation of the aforementioned Bo Diddley beat/3-2 clave. On the snare most drummers play ghost notes through most of the measure and come down hard on 4 (Late GD Not Fade Away) as opposed to loudly anticipating 2. 95% of the time anticipating 2 (or the —a of 1) occurs with the kick or a tom or both(Early GD Not Fade Away).
Here’s another (if obscure) example of what you’re looking for that comes to mind:
Jean-Luc Ponty Saaka Saaka
That’s an anticipated 4. So there, the snare is on 2 & 3-and. Right idea, wrong snare beat.
Modest Mouse - Dramamine. Although this one is subdivided into 6/8 by the hi-hat, so I don’t know if it’s proper to call it 4/4/
Dame Tu Cosita has some kind of Afro-Carribean-influenced (I think) drum pattern going on where, if you’re counting the kick as four-on-the-floor, the first snare definitely hits right before two. (It’s snare on 1a, 2&, 3e, 4&.)