On a recent long walk, as often happens, a persistent rhythm took shape in my consciousness and stuck, riding along with my steady stride. Which is not to say it was rigidly confined to an arbitrary 4/4 or 12/8 measure. Rather, only after I started thinking about it, did it lend itself to such possibility. As it happened, I did try to time this one to a regular cycle, and found that it settled comfortably – yet with a sense of fluid space – into a span of three full steps before repeating.
When I finally arrived home with the rhythm still strong in my mind, I sat down to notate it, curious to see where the individual notes landed, in what I expected to be a 3/4 measure (i.e., three quarter notes, representing my three walking steps: L R L (then R L R) or conversely, R L R | L R L.
To my annoyance, on paper the notes lined up not in a 12/8 measure, but in 4/4:
_______ _______ _______ _______
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
g d - T P - - T g d - T P T - d
In fact there are eleven notes in this pattern, which only leaves one space if you try to cram them into a 12-beat measure. So how could they line up with my three steps? The obvious solution is to double that 12-bar measure to get 24 total beat-spaces to work with: 11 notes plus 13 spaces. With more room to move in, the pattern might look something like this:
_______ _______
| | | | | | | |
g d - T - P - -
_______ _______
| | | | | | | |
- - T - g d - T
_______ _______
| | | | | | | |
- P - T - - d -
Sure it fits, but is that the same rhythm I heard when walking? It’s not exactly the same as the 4/4 version, but close. Sped up to a brisk walking pace, the spacing shrinks to fit so the difference is moot. Mechanical becomes organic, grid becomes fluid.
Exercise 2.
On my next walk, the same thing happened, with a different rhythm pattern. Later on paper it wanted to translate to the habitual 4/4 measure…
_______ _______ _______ _______
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
x - x - x x - x x - x x x - x x
… when live it was more intuitive, spread into three strides. Perhaps like this?
_______ _______
| | | | | | | |
x - - x - - x -
_______ _______
| | | | | | | |
x - x - x - x -
_______ _______
| | | | | | | |
x - x - - x x -
Here the difference is more stark, especially in the middle of the phrase. So let’s focus on those bolded notes around the middle sections:
4/4
x x – x x – x x x
12/8
x – x – x – x – x – x – x –
To savor the flavor of this exercise, walk or talk it both ways, swinging back and forth and finding the middle ground. Then play it on the drum, stretching and compressing the spaces as needed between the irregular feel of the first version (from 4/4) and the regular count of the second version (from 12/8).
Conclusion
This walking/talking/drumming exercise recalls some work I put in early in my journey with the djembe, to practice “rudiments” of stick drumming from a classic Ted Reed booklet. One key learning was to apply different beat counts to the same size measure: 1 stick beat per step, for instance, then 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, up to 7, within the same size step. Even with the most common variation, between 2 beats and 3 (i.e., a “triplet”) you can feel the elastic stretching of time-space.
Bringing it back to djembe patterns, especially when soloing, you have the flexibility to play with the elastic possibilities of time-space, not worrying about counting individual notes, as long as you still land on the larger cycle of measures the other players are following. Or if playing alone, just try to maintain a consistency of feel. As a further challenge, take the same pattern playing in your head, and line it up to a different number of steps (e.g., four steps instead of three). If you can do that and still keep the same feel, you have achieved a fair level of “independence” and freedom while honoring the underlying rhythmic structure.
For more adventures in stretching time-space, see Lesson 1 in Roots Jam 3, or the exercises in “Unirhythm” and “Stretchin’ the Swing” in Roots Jam 4.
Get all four Roots Jam books in one convenient volume, Big Tamale (also includes the entertaining memoir Friday Night Jam).
And now enjoy the bonus track, “Stretchinit,” a bootleg improvisation from Strange Moon (the Moonrise album).
You may also enjoy the conceptual journey of a footsoldier for natural truth, from “My Country” to “My Earth.”
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