I’m starting to get the basic groove timing ok, but I was initially struggling as I found myself playing in what i’m going to say is swing timing - I’m not sure if this is the correct term from a jazz perspective but it seems to match the DAW terms.
So for the Basic Beat (Beginner course lesson 101) it sound to me that Robert plays the lone hihats (&s) closer to the preceding beat than the following beat (- am I mishearing this?). Then when playing the second Beat with the 16ths hihats it sounds straight. I suppose the ideal, it that you learn to play it all ways, but my question is whether this is discussed in some course (so far i just began Grooving and Improving…) swing vs straight, whether its advisable to play straight at first, or if its part of finding the groove.
The difficult i encountered is that if there’s a bit of swing (on the 8ths) then the 16ths aren’t regular and it doesn’t sound/feel right.
The basic beat in the beginner course is played straight. Both the 8th notes and the 16th notes. I’m not 100% sure why you’re hearing one of them as swing and the other one as straight. Since I’m just giving some quick examples the beats are not played 100% perfectly in time, so that might be it. It’s definitely not swing though. That would place all the hihats in between the kicks and the snares way more to the right (so later in time).
Another thing that might be happening is when I play the beat a little faster (just 8th notes) I play the in between hi hat hits a little softer, which is how a normal drummer would do it as well. That does create a bit of a bouncy feel. Not swing, still straight but very different from hitting every hi hat with the same velocity.
The reason I don’t talk about this in the beginner course is because in the beginning new students should focus on the basics a bit and just turn out some beats. I found that a lot of people just play swing by nature and it doesn’t work to tell them form the very beginning that they cannot follow their intuition in that regard. It’s much better to just let them play and then in lesson 5 of grooving & improving they will either get introduced to the swing feel or they’ll realise they were playing everything in swing feel.
If that’s the case that’s completely fine, since you want to be able to do both anyways, so nothing is lost or “wrong” or anything. As long as you learn to do both and you’re able to switch between, which is something Section 5 will teach you!
OK thanks Robert. I look forward to getting to section 5. I feel i’m playing straightish now but I was playing the ‘earlier in time’ at first (or at least thats how it felt).
Whilst it bothered me initially, once i got into playing some beats I found it wasn’t affecting my playing anymore but I thought it might be something others come across when starting out.
I might also record my playing in Ableton at some point and zoom in to see if its as straight as i think it is.
So in case you’re ever curious what is “good” and what is not, that might also be handy to check out. It’s not like you have to always be 100% perfectly on the grid in order for a beat to sound right.