Is this really a clave?

[dea]

I found this site with a clave coordination lesson, but these do not sound like clave's to me. Am I missing something?

http://www.timemanipulation.com/workshop/pages/clavcoord/clavecoord01_e.html

[Garvin]

Great link!

Yeah, those are in 6/8, maybe that's what's messing you up. The tom patterns seem to be arbitrary. It looks like those patterns were to help with foot independence. Definitely worth a second look if you ask me.

Thanks again for the link!

[wy yung]

I just had a glance and it seems to me the confusion stems from the fact he is writing a 2 bar 6/8 phrase as a one bar 4/4 phrase for these exercises. This is not how I would have notated these. Clave typically repeats as a 2 bar phrase, whether in 4/4 or 6/8. Whether Cuban or Brazilian. But it is up to the individual how he or she chooses to notate it.

Here is a link explaining 6/8 clave.http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~pcastr/cs644/notation.html

[dea]

This material is wonderful...Thanks! At a glance, the 6/8 clave pattern in your material looks more like what the other site was trying to get across. Thanks again!

[PBW]

I found this site with a clave coordination lesson, but these do not sound like clave's to me. Am I missing something?

http://www.timemanipulation.com/workshop/pages/clavcoord/clavecoord01_e.html


Your notation shows the 6/8 version of the clave, which derived from the african 6/8 bell pattern:


1 + a 2 + a 1 + a 2 + a
x - x - x x - x - x - x (6/8 bell)
x - x - - x - x - x - - (6/8 clave - as shown in your example)

The 6/8 clave is where the "rumba clave" is thought to come from:


1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a
x - - x - - - x - - x - x - - - (rumba clave)

[dea]

Thanks so much folks. This is very helpful.

[MikeyOdrums]

The last example I think noted how you can metrically modulate from the 4/4 clave to the 6/8, or vise versa. You are playing the clave in the same "spots" but you can either play the sixteenth note subdivisions over it OR triplets, when you do one into the other you modulate the time. As far as the exercise is concerned the h/h pattern is the clave and it is beign subdivided by triplets there for it writes as 6/8 when subdividing it with groupings of 4 notes it takes its 4/4 shape. Hope that helps.
Mike o

[Alain Rieder]

Yes, this is basically an exercise I wrote and had been practicing WITHOUT the clave, so I just added the clave to it and used the one-bar format for convenience, although I'm well aware of the tradition of writing the clave in a two-bar format.

Then the idea is to modulate from triple to duple time and back, to be flirting with that sweet spot, right in between the 6/8 and 2/2 clave.

These are exercises I basically wrote for myself first, to get more freedom with my three other limbs when soloing over a left-foot clave.

Thanks for you interest.

Alain

The last example I think noted how you can metrically modulate from the 4/4 clave to the 6/8, or vise versa. You are playing the clave in the same "spots" but you can either play the sixteenth note subdivisions over it OR triplets, when you do one into the other you modulate the time. As far as the exercise is concerned the h/h pattern is the clave and it is beign subdivided by triplets there for it writes as 6/8 when subdividing it with groupings of 4 notes it takes its 4/4 shape. Hope that helps.
Mike o

[Deltadrummer]

Great stuff Alain. I'll have to work on some of that later. I guess one should bring out the clave in these exercises. Maybe that is what the original poster did not understand.