Hello and welcome back, I'm Joseph
Hoffman,
and in this lesson we're going to
practice counting rhythms with pick up notes.
Remember, music is made up of
strong and weak beats organized into measures.
The first beat in every measure
is a strong beat, and that first beat is called a downbeat.
The word downbeat
comes from the tradition of conducting.
A conductor is someone who stands in front
of a group of musicians, like an orchestra,
and waves her or his hands to
show the beat to keep everyone playing together,
and also to show the dynamics. Like if they want to play really loud they move their hands wide.
To play really softly they'll move their hands small.
Back in the Baroque period, which
was the 1600s and early 1700s, conductors would sometimes help
by hitting a staff on the floor on each downbeat.
Over the years though, conductors got a little
more subtle and eventually started using a baton
like this to show the beat using
patterns drawn in the air like this:
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Notice that beat 1 is always a down motion, which is how it got the name downbeat.
Let's check out some rhythms to practice.
Here's a simple rhythm using a 4/4 time signature.
Let's find the downbeats.
We've got a downbeat here on beat
1. 1 2 3 4, and then another downbeat
here at the start of this next
measure. 1 2 3 4
Those down beats are the strong beats,
but sometimes a composer may not want to start a piece on a strong beat.
So what do we do then?
Well, the composer can add an extra weak beat at the beginning called a pick up beat.
This quarter note would be a pick up note.
It comes before the first full measure, and that's how you know it's a pick up note.
Now if the downbeat is beat 1,
then we just count backwards to know what beat
we're starting on. So this has to be beat 4.
So to count this rhythm we
go: 4 1 And notice that I made this a gentle beat
to lead into our first strong beat.
4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Now, some people might be
like, oh now we have this extra beat 4,
things aren't balanced now.
Well, what composers will do sometimes to make up for that
is they'll borrow the
beat for at the pick up beat from
this last measure.
Now we've restored balance.
So this measure only has beats 1 2 3
so beat 4 can belong up here.
Let's try this one together: 1 2 3
4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 Double bar line means we're done.
Pick up note, and then our first downbeat.
Here's another rhythm example.
What's our time signature?
It's 3/4, which means we have 3 beats in every measure.
So, do we have enough beats here
for a complete measure?
No.
This is only 1 beat before this first bar line,
which means this must be a pickup note.
So we have our first downbeat here.
Where's our next downbeat?
Here's another beat 1. It's always beat 1 after the
bar line, and then where's the next downbeat?
Here, so these are our strong beats, but the composer wanted to start on a weak beat.
So what beat would this be?
Well, the before beat 1 is always the last beat
of your measure which has to be beat 3.
So we'd count this 3 1 2 3-& 1 2 3 1 2
This happens to be the rhythm to "Amazing
Grace",
and that's why the composer wanted to start with a pickup note
because you don't say 'amazing,' you say 'amazing grace.'
So by starting with a pick up
note, it allowed the strong syllables
to fall on the strong beats so it matches
the words very nicely now.
Can you count and clap this rhythm with me?
So we'll count 2 beats as preparation, and then we'll start clapping on beat 3.
Here we go: 1 2, 3 1 2 3-& 1 2 3 1 2
Here's another example: What's our time signature this time?
It's 4/4, so where's our first complete
measure?
We don't have enough beats here, so we know these must be pickup notes.
This must be our first complete measure.
So here's our first downbeat, which makes
it our first beat 1. So,
what's different this time? This time we actually have two pick up beats
with three pick up notes. So we've got to count backwards. Here's beat 4,
this must be beat 3.
So in counting this we'd go 3 4-& 1
Can you try counting and clapping this rhythm with me?
And let's remember that whenever we have a downbeat to give that beat extra strength.
I'll count 2 beats to get us ready, 1 2, and then we'll start on 3.
Here we go: 1 2, 3 4-&
1 2 3-& 4-&
1 2 3 4-&
1 2
Why are there only 2 beats here?
It's to bring balance back to the universe.
Since we had beat 3 and 4 up here we end just with a 1 2 double bar line.
How many beats per measure in this example?
If you said ...