upbeats/downbeats

[Greg_L]

Is it pretty closed minded of me to suggest just play what the song needs? Like makes it's it flow? Like reading this thread is hurting my head and now i am worried it has broken how i think of drums.

No, you are right. Maybe it's because I can kind of play the drums, but I never think about this stuff. Ever. I never count anything. I don't worry about the ands and uhs and shit like that. Maybe some prog dork needs charts and maps, but most of the time you're fine to just go with your gut and play the damn song.

[WhiskeyJack]

Is it pretty closed minded of me to suggest just play what the song needs? Like makes it's it flow? Like reading this thread is hurting my head and now i am worried it has broken how i think of drums.

No, you are right. Maybe it's because I can kind of play the drums, but I never think about this stuff. Ever. I never count anything. I don't worry about the ands and uhs and shit like that. Maybe some prog dork needs charts and maps, but most of the time you're fine to just go with your gut and play the damn song.

Yea. Maybe i am too cookie cutter and i have the 4/4/ box i live in and that's enough for me. I don't mean to discredit the merit of thinking outside the box. But i wouldn't go out of my way to write a song in a weird pattern or some special beat just to say i did it. I mean the groove grooves or it doesn't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[mention]liv_rong[/mention] You do a lot of interesting shit in your songs drum wise. Do you ever have an idea for a wongo drum pattern or timing or whatever and try to write a song around it or do your drums flow out form what the rest of the song is doing? What steers your song writing?

[Farview]

The only time you need to count stuff is when you are trying to communicate an idea and you don't have the instrument handy...like over the internet.

[JD01]

Hmm, I was just interested cos someone mentioned downbeats in another thread and I realised that I’ve never known what it meant.

I think knowing a little will also help me learn stuff as I’ll probably be doing a fair bit of learning from YouTube videos and stuff so it’ll be handy to know the terminology.

[liv_rong]

@liv_rong You do a lot of interesting shit in your songs drum wise. Do you ever have an idea for a wongo drum pattern or timing or whatever and try to write a song around it or do your drums flow out form what the rest of the song is doing? What steers your song writing?

No, I usually just write the song then figure out the drums later. I can’t count or anything, and I barely know any time sigs, but I know I can play some different time sigs lol. I’m a newb really

[Greg_L]

Hmm, I was just interested cos someone mentioned downbeats in another thread and I realised that I’ve never known what it meant.

I think knowing a little will also help me learn stuff as I’ll probably be doing a fair bit of learning from YouTube videos and stuff so it’ll be handy to know the terminology.

Most changes in rock music happen on a downbeat. You get to the end of measure or passage and when the count starts over, like changing from verse to chorus, it happens on a downbeat most of the time. In 4/4 rock music the downbeat almost always coincides with a kick beat and most of the time there's a crash cymbal on top of it. And if a change does happen on an upbeat, you can't make it seem like a natural downbeat by how you play the pattern with the kick. Then it doesn't seem so odd.

[vomitHatSteve]

The only time you need to count stuff is when you are trying to communicate an idea and you don't have the instrument handy...like over the internet.

And that's when you learn who knows (or cares) about theory!

I was mistaken earlier in calling the "Bad Religion" beat the DnB beat. I misread JD's description entirely.