Hey DrummerWorlders, time to seek your guidance again... on terminology and how we communicate with other musicians this time.
What does downbeat mean to you? It seems to have a few meanings in music at least...
I always understood 'Downbeat' to refer to the 'quarter note pulse', thanks to Benny Greb, and he seems to use those two terms interchangeably. Obviously, in time signatures outside of 4/4 you may need to revise that to just 'pulse'. Anyway...
In general music terminology, I've come to learn that downbeat is the first beat of the bar, and the term got its name from the way that a conductor would move their arms from up high on the last beat of a bar, to down low on the first beat of the following bar.
So in a bar of 4/4, the 'drummers' definition is meaning all four quarter notes of the bar, and the 'general' music theory definition is meaning just the first quarter note of the bar.
And taking it further, I guess the general definition is on the level of 'which beat', whereas the other definition is on the level of 'which subdivision within each beat'. So, they are different in a few ways...
Has anyone ever got in a muddle when saying something like 'play that on the downbeat'? Is the first description a drummers only thing? Am I better off just saying pulse?
Any thoughts welcome on this discussion.
Cheers
Andy
What does downbeat mean to you? It seems to have a few meanings in music at least...
I always understood 'Downbeat' to refer to the 'quarter note pulse', thanks to Benny Greb, and he seems to use those two terms interchangeably. Obviously, in time signatures outside of 4/4 you may need to revise that to just 'pulse'. Anyway...
In general music terminology, I've come to learn that downbeat is the first beat of the bar, and the term got its name from the way that a conductor would move their arms from up high on the last beat of a bar, to down low on the first beat of the following bar.
So in a bar of 4/4, the 'drummers' definition is meaning all four quarter notes of the bar, and the 'general' music theory definition is meaning just the first quarter note of the bar.
And taking it further, I guess the general definition is on the level of 'which beat', whereas the other definition is on the level of 'which subdivision within each beat'. So, they are different in a few ways...
Has anyone ever got in a muddle when saying something like 'play that on the downbeat'? Is the first description a drummers only thing? Am I better off just saying pulse?
Any thoughts welcome on this discussion.
Cheers
Andy