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April 1st Issue, 2008

Beat Displacement Preview from Funk & Illusion Drumming DVD!

The official release of the Funk & Illusion Drumming DVD set is only a couple of weeks off. Today I'm going to show you one of the many Beat Displacement ideas from the Metric Modulation & Beat Displacement disc.

In the F&ID DVD I go over how to displace by quarter notes, 8th notes and 16th notes. Today I'll show you one example from the 8th note displaced section.

DISPLACING BY AN 8th NOTE LATER

When we displace beats, we take the same thing we were already playing, but start it on a different count than beat 1 (assuming the beat we were playing started on beat 1). So let's take a basic 8th note beat to illustrate this..

If we displace this beat by an 8th note later, we play the notes exactly the same spaces apart, but instead of the first bass drum note starting on beat 1, it starts on beat 1+

becomes..

From there you need to shift all the other notes you played as well, so that they are still the same space apart as they were to begin with. Doing this will make it sound like you're playing the exact same beat (which you are) but an 8th later.

So this..

becomes..

Here's 2 bars of regular time followed by 2 bars of displaced time..

One of the things covered in depth in the F&ID DVD is the strength of the implied or displaced time over the top of the real time. There are many things you can do to any beat to further cement it into the listeners mind as THE time feel to listen to. Even though it's just a rhythmic tangeant over the top of the regular time.

Here's a couple of basic examples of things you can do.

1) PLAYING IT SAFE - keeping the quarter note pulse going through the displaced idea

This is a good idea if you want yourself and the band/audience to hear the original time; perhaps a stylistic decision. So throughout the displaced time you could play quarters with the hihat pedal..

2 - DRAW AWAY SLIGHTLY - accenting downbeats of displaced time with the RH

You can do this with or without the hihat quarter note pulse demonstrated above. If you want the implied time to sound stronger, you can not only play the bass/snare patterns, but accent with the RH on hihats or ride, on what sounds like beats 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the displaced time (which is really beats 1+, 2+, 3+ and 4+), like so..

3 - LOCK THE LISTENER IN - use more common beat phrases in the displaced time, particularly smaller subdivisions

To further lock the listener into the displaced idea (particularly with NO quarter pulse of any kind), play patterns in the displaced time which are common for that feel, which is exactly what this series of Ezybeats from F&ID will show you..

* REMEMBER: All the Ezybeats in the F&ID are played at 3 speeds, although the following clip demonstrates 1 speed *

The beats that I am displacing are notated below the video..