A Trick For Tricky Rhythms

[Fab4]

Okay, I woke up thinking about this and I had to do something with it. One of my bands is learning all of The Who's "Tommy." By and large it's pretty straightforward, but Pete Townshend is a quirky songwriter and the guitar riff from "I'm Free" was giving us fits. It sounds like it starts on Beat One but it really doesn't., which messed us up when we came out of the riff at the part where Roger Daltrey sings "and I'm waiting for you to follow meeee!"

So, I applied a crutch that I use occasionally when I'm having trouble counting things and I thought I'd share it with The Fret.

THE PROBLEM:

The guitar riff to "I'm Free" is a group of seven eighth notes - EE GG AAA (and then F#F# AA BBB) - one eighth shy of a full measure. The trick is to hear beat ONE and the eighth-note rest in the right place in the measure. What everybody WANTS to hear is this, which is wrong:

/ ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR (-) / ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR (-) / (The dash in parens is the eight-note rest.)

There are no drums at the start of the track and Townshend's guitar gives each note the same stress, so you can't help but hear the first note of the riff as ONE (listen to the track and you'll see.)

What you NEED to hear, though, is the entire riff offset by a half beat:

and / ONE and TWO and THREE and (-) and / ONE and TWO and THREE and (-) and /

THE TRICK:

Counting (for me, anyway) can be a little counterintuitive, so sometimes it helps to put lyrics to the riff that have the right number of syllables and that naturally put the accents in the right place. That can help me find ONE even when I can't feel it.

So how about:

i / LEARNED a SONG from TOMmy (-) i / LEARNED a SONG from TOMmy (-) i /

or maybe:

let's / PLAY the RIFF corRECTly (-) let's / PLAY the RIFF corRECTly (-) let's /

or maybe something a bit off color:

the/ DIRTy LITtle BAStard (-) the / DIRTy LITtle BAStard (-) the /

as opposed to: / Got the Beat a Little Wrong (-) / Got the Beat a Little Wrong (-) /

Maybe that will help you out sometime (or maybe not) but it's a look inside my musical brain, which is a scary thing.

[tot_Ou_tard]

Fab trick Fab!

[markb]

Yep, here's a useful folk musician's trick for those odd metered Balkan tunes.

5/4 = yu-go-sla-vi-a
7/8 = for-mer-yu-go-sla-vi-a