Topic: “Backbeat Variants in Five- and Seven-count Grooves”
Scott Hanenberg, Instructor of Music Theory and Technology, Virginia Tech
Room 130, Edward Johnson Building, 80 Queen's Park
Event is free and open to the public, and is followed by a casual reception.
Abstract:
Irregular-meter grooves define the sonic palettes of many rock genres. Despite recent analytical attention, common subdivision patterns and the instrumental cues that express them remain under-theorized. Irregular grooves necessitate unfamiliar metric structures, complicating widely held assumptions about meter. To better understand irregular rock grooves, I examine drumbeat articulations, which clarify recurring patterns of rhythmic successions. In this talk, I share my findings from a corpus of 350 songs released between 1967 and 2017. I focus on grooves that modify the standard rock backbeat, with snare-drum articulations on beats two and four, showing how drummers stretch this familiar rhythmic template to accommodate a range of uncommon metric contexts.