Can someone please help me understand what a backbeat is? I did some reading on it and basically what I read was it means emphasizing beats 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 3. If this is correct what’s the difference? Such as, what makes it backbeat if we still emphasize in the same pattern?

To a drummer,

. . . one TWO three FOUR (backbeat)

is a very different pattern from

. . . ONE two THREE four (straight)

And if it's different to a drummer, it should be different for a pianist as well.

Listen to some rock'n'roll -- some of it is "straight", some of it is "back-beat". You'll probably be able to tell the difference, after some experience.

I would love to hear an example if anyone feels like posting a couple of songs for comparison

This is one of my favorite Stax songs. Great backbeat and great to dance to.

Hi Sebs

The backbeat is the basis for the majority of pop/rock music, as well as Jazz (although in Jazz normally in a much more subtle way).

I took up the drums this year and it's the first thing you learn.
1 & 3 on bass drum. 2 & 4 on the snare. If you can do that and add either a 4 or 8 to the bar on the hihat, you can, as a beginner, play along to the majority of pop/rock songs and sound okay.

I was watching one of the classic albums series the other night, and they were talking about the Elton John track "Bennie and the Jets". If you don't know the track it was a studio cut on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album.

However to spice it up the producer added some 'live' crowd effect sounds and hand claps. And because the old joke is that the British clap ON the beat the hand claps are on 1 & 3, which probably explains why that track has such a unique feel to it.

Cheers

"Rattlesnake Shake" - by Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac has Mick (drummer) banging out an obvious and wonderfully feeling backbeat.

The drums are playing 2 eighth notes on the second beat , with an extra strong fourth beat.

I checked out some Beatles songs on my phone. "Taxman" is a great example of a straight forward backbeat. Listen to the distorted rhythm guitar playing chords on the backbeat...and you can hear the snare (I think it's the snare) on 2 and 4....and listen when the tambourine comes in around 35 seconds in playing 2 ...the & of 3...and 4.

Anyway, a good example of backbeat.

Listen to the late great Al Jackson on drum from the classic tune Green Onions by Booker T. and the MG's. Al Jackson was the master of simple drums beats that groove and make the music flow. The is the key to the Backbeat is to make the music flow. Listen to Rock, R&B, Soul, HipHop, Jazz, Fusion, Country and others they all have that 2 & 4 backbeat to make things move forward. Most of them the backbeat is on the snare drum, but Jazz moves it over to the hihat. Music based on 1 and 3 is more stiff like classical, marches who based their meter on the heartbeat. So for me it boils down to Flowing vs stiff.

It's easy to feel the difference is practice with you metronome clicking on every beat or 1 & 3. Now practice with the metronome clicking on 2 & 4. You should instantly feel the difference and that is why many Jazz, Rock, and other practice with metronome clicking on 2 & 4.



For fun here's Victor Wooten's great video on practicing with a metronome.

Ah, so that's what that's called! Thank you.

I'm also interested in the changing of ups & downs too (termed upbeats and downbeats ?) with the foot as metronome, but purely for slow practice exercises to help me acquaint with a piece in different ways and while hopefully honing the timing or gauging of accents I suppose. I also like the way entire bars (more often singular notes or more sporadic notes) can be shunted along with prescribed accent arrows in the published song standards notation (rarely followed in performances though), e.g. to start/finish the bridge on 'Stormy Weather', which I think might be termed syncopation (?).

Back to back-beat (or off-beat?)! On my immediate repertoire at the moment: 'Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea'; 'Blue Moon'; & 'I Surrender Dear', despite very different pieces,their published notation (note-for-note) is among other other things fantastically suited to either backbeat or otherwise. I keep prepared on each and again on my ups-and-downs, and I won't go on further to say the minutiae beyond that (such as sound:silence/weighting/sequence/synchronicity/etc... for me at my stage depending on tempo*) I suppose at the band's/player's discretion as to how far to take the gauging of notes and spacing.

[* However, do ignore this: coming eventually from self-training on concertina (learning notation rather than music in a way, but a notation of great quality that's been etched by many hall of fame writers on behalf of each other for publishers in great respect for what are really masterpieces, IMO, ready for another century of interrogation/study/enjoyment). More modern music notation is probably less intriguing since I suppose it's likely to be secondary to performance as opposed to being composition-led first for performance later; and therefore I don't think it has the same backbone as it once had in its heyday (i.e. published notation). Not to worry with all that, which peaked in the interwar, as time moves on!]

When I first experimented offbeat (moons ago now) on the aforesaid notation of the song standards I thought I'd be doing this as a mere trial/practice exercise not in disrespect to the piece as such, and then found that the pieces were actually suited for experiencing the composition intrinsically in both modes. I've still to go through more numbers yet, but with these 3 so far, I'd say wow I hope that's the standard on the rest of my study list too. In all the genres mentioned above (pop/rock/dance/jazz/etc.) I imagine backbeat is more about performance and effect rather than it is (or once was) more a discretionary facet or quality of composition to embrace or ignore. I guess with jazz there's more scope for discretion, but with the other genres it seems a very prescriptive thing...! Interesting topic, thanks.

That was a great ( and educational ) way to start my Monday...thanks all

Thanks everyone for all the responses, it was very helpful.



Awesome! I'm happy I wasn't the only one interested in that.

If you go to Blues shows, also many Rock shows, sometimes the audience will clap to the beat.

If they clap on the Backbeat, i.e. beats #2 and #4, it is fairly easy to clap, and can flow with the music.

However, if the audience claps on Beats #1 and #3, it is unnatural to the beat, messes it up, and is one reason why the clapping does not keep up and ultimately fades away.

The only thing worse that clapping on #1 and #3 is when people try to clap on all of the beats, #1 and #2 and #3 and #4. That never works.

Both of those always fail, and make it harder for the musicians to keep the groove. For them it is like trying to add up a sum of numbers in your head as someone nearby shouts out a different set of numbers.

However, if you must clap, the importance of clapping on the proper beat, (i.e. the Backbeat) is why this t-shirt is sometimes seen at shows:

https://www.likesheroes.com/product...BhJiO8wIVBmpvBB0kAAgaEAQYBCABEgKqFfD_BwE

Does it throw them off this much? Where they have to stop and yell at the crowd? I feel like someone in the crowd should have yelled back "you mean the right beats not the notes" It's at 1:15 in the video.

The audience clapping is always a distraction. Even if they are all professional musicians, audience clapping never works out. Plus folks being a bit inebriated does not help with the precision.

Another problem with the audience clapping has to do with the speed of sound.

Even if they clap exactly right on the correct beat, there is a time delay between when the band plays a beat, and the audience hears it.

This is because the speed of sound is very slow. If you have ever been to a baseball game and you see the batter hit the ball and a moment later you hear the sound of the bat hitting the ball, that is the issue.

So the audience always will hear the beat a moment after it was played. Then, the same problem repeats because the sound of their clap will also arrive late to the bandstand.

Thus, what the band hears from the audience' clap is late twice. So even if the audience claps precisely on what they hear, what the band hears back is not on the beat. If the venue is big, such as a large ballroom room, it gets worse. If it is a large arena, audience clapping is a train wreck for the band. Which is why it eventually dies out.

Actually, instead of a T-shirt that says what beats to clap on, as I mentioned, there should be a T-shirt that says "Friends don't let friends clap at concerts"

Wow - Dawn Hampton is great. Thank you for posting those videos.

Mentioning earlier about emphasising that half step in advance of: 1) the on-beat or 2) the off-beat, which again I do to practice with (helping me hone my accent points; familiarise on a piece; expand on my comfort zones; etc.).

What is that called though: 1) whether emphasised by drumming to keep a beat; or 2) in accenting actual music with it (normally with arrowed accents to notes/chords/etc.)

It has the same effect as a backbeat, coming off the 1 & 3 OR even the 2 & 4, to the ½ & 2½ OR even 1½ & 3½. I don’t know if schooled/educated pianists follow such a rule of thumb in the gauging of accents, but I do to understand a framework that feels natural.

Practising all songs feels great whatever way you shunt them by that half. Feeling it in all these different half measures is tremendous to work with (unashamedly quartering your speed or more). When I come back to reality however (more often to alla breve rather than 4/4) on an actual tempo whether emphasising on or off beat I feel much freer - I think partially because of pushing myself onto the various different accent positions (sliding to whatever half measure: by starting/releasing - with up or down beats (with feet as metronome), and not forgetting among the other aforementioned aides, e.g. to incidentally help develop interdependence by treating the strands not merely hands of published score [compositional not solo transcribed] notation with breaking from syncronicity (of course keeping in sync with vertically clumped/tailed chording unless phrased as arpeggiated) and so forth.

However, to the point!

Little had I known that during mid WWII these half-measure accent points really took off big-time with drummers – perhaps at the peak of swing - by way of expressing this very same accented timing off the beat (irrespective to 1-3 or 2-4). It gives the music proper (swing in most cases at the time) another but similar feel altogether. An example from My 78s follows below as a commercial example of what was tremendous commonplace live. Extremely Cliche even; and it took years (maybe at least until the end of the war ) to stray back off it.

I heard similar drumming rarely in the Thirties, but I think it was always a very commonplace striking point of course for swing guitar too (years earlier) though this 1944 example below reveals that in a different way that engages the drums and bass too as an audience is expecting that emphasis to dance with – it’d always been there courtesy of guitar, but this is the point where drummers practically take over that duty rather than augment it. And unlike guitar precedence they actually ghost on the beat to over-emphasise the accent over the actual musical beat. I’m suppose it’ll be better explained in tutor books!

[I think I personally had long ago already tapped into this kind of strumming that emphasised the half measure as well as the beat, which is most likely where I got my notion for accents from. It’s strange because I was more likely to be appreciative of heavy rock at the time of nurturing this kind of ala swing rhythm guitar on my nylons (oh, I started with an electric on lead, but even then I’d explore rhythm) – sorry to bore with going off on tangents. I’m now very proud of myself going through all those 78s now in the last couple of years to hear my style of strumming in the background; rather than see it as an embarrassment: though I’m sure it’s more a naturalism than something invented as such.]

Back to that whatever it’s called (hint hint, nudge nudge?): It's got a kind of gullas feel about it (upturning the lapels and combing back the grease, which did in fact transpire soon later), but perhaps not without this near half-decade's worth of expected drumming etiquette as it were :- people will remember it who're beyond their mid-80s ; or like me wading through the 100s to 1000s of AFRS concerts on archive.org to notice most bands' drummers doing so.

There will surely be name for it since drummers avail of it to the present day, if not so much guitarists since it’s rather old hat for them – unless of course for continuing swing jazz.

So again, anyone, what would the term for this off the beat emphasis be called?

All that said, I don’t see it as important as an actual beat or backbeat, but I do think playing with it and training with it – not so much as drumming or rhythm guitar – as a musician finds a feeling for swing, but more perhaps importantly an aptitude for composing when and when not to actually accent notes – I’m now surmising as I’m not educated in music, but it’s a kind of wonderment anyway...

‘Fever’ I guess was a latter day (or recent past) example of utilising it. Let’s see some other suggestions, but gallus is the word no(?) Silver cover for ‘The Game’ album for instance visually, which ties another like example at track no. 2 side 2, which again doesn’t take centre stage in the grander scheme of things – of course for that particular album and band let alone genre : excepting that moment when it was indeed central for a long time during the war, especially for the armed services and forces... In its WWII heyday a Light Classical piece by David Rose even bore it – and the armed forces seemed to love it – requested a lot and named: ‘Holiday for Strings’. I’ll need to listen again to the renditions to hear how they get the effect – I take it that it’s actually built in to the composition rather than a product of rhythmic support. So, it’s therefore not always about being “gallus”; or finding swing in another way; sporadic compositional device, it’s something else worth positing (or at least to name/mention) I think!

Over to anyone else to provide an actual word for it! It’s easy to confuse with backbeat. Here’s a link to a few AFRS One Night Stand’s https://archive.org/details/AfrsOneNightStand , a drop in the ocean of probably 1000s, but does I suppose demonstrate, through a lot of swing, backbeat, but occasionally the other THING worth mentioning. They’re half hour shows, so finding instances of the thing could take time, and so we’ll not be waiting up – interesting too for giving a snapshot of the period before taped/digital music takes hold.







tempo

In the UK we call it 'a massage'

Maybe it can be called half engaged back-beat as opposed to full backbeat on an actual 1 & 3 - it does seem to have the same effect as I said, but tighter somewhat against the composition, making for that different but related feel/flow. I think the above stave graphic with the slide notion symbol already perhaps points towards the notion that a "backbeat" can be set anywhere, but without mentioning the half within the half point - It's for reader/writer's discretion! Why didn't I say that to start with. If there's a word however rather than cvaariety of backbeat it'd be well worth having for one's glossary

Ah, I hadn't seen that (or heard of it). Many thanks. I'm just awake and sprumg top the keyboard to update

PS First thing’s first:- when I talked above about a half-back from the beat I really meant ¼ not a ½ before the beat (concerning 4/4). It is ½ in respect of a bar divided by 8 notes (so a 16th in real terms), which I usually do for practice, where the high-steps are my in-between 32s if you will, the foot lift and tap covering a 16th, and another 16th being a stationary foot. So on the same hymn sheet of 4/4 (dividing a bar by 4) the critical point being posited is therefore actually a ¼ (not ½) back from the 1-3 beat normally not whatever beat as I first assumed/asserted. It can also work on the common-time’s ½ beats back from 1-3 as well (as erroneously typed), but it’s not where I really have them – or from historical convention too. For me these actual ¼-back points start my strum that I then close/overwrite with a more abrupt and quickly dampened strum to close on the actual 1-3 beat (and maybe that too can be off the backbeat, but not normally). The ¼ back point being the pseudo or delayed backbeat on my ‘Forget Me Nots’ example from 1944, which then does away altogether with the 1-3 emphasis to sound very like a backbeat (shunted nearer to the primary beat), which inthe early to mid 1940s was so found en-masse by drummers too as mentioned. It emulates the same fluency/naturalism found with the earlier strumming style mentioned by striking the same point before the 1-and-3. I wouldn’t want to ever look at or dilute it to actual 4/4 half-backs rather than the ¼ back instance – so sorry if my post read that way. I’ve frequently said I divide a bar by 8 not 4 to help me understand music, but sorry for any confusion there, ‘on the halves’ front.

-

This follow-up reply will be a bit disorientated as it’s fairly spontaneous or ad lib (never certain, and more conversational I'm afraid) and as I’ve not had time to think on it or edit things –Sorry and besides someone else would be better anyway at describing some of it with the proper jargon from an educated background, if any of it is relevant or even slightly coherent. I however finish divulging how I tap and lift feet as my aforesaid makeshift metronome. Maybe there’s also a message about what ‘Swing’ needs to swing, at the end. So, here goes anyway:-

“Massage”!

An ‘Uplift’ from it certainly does; maybe it can also be termed a delayed-backbeat (delayed by commensurately 3x that same ¼ increment enroute to the primary beat).

It so happens, today’s upload by My 78s (link here https://archive.org/details/78_hiawathas-lullaby_dansorketer-med-engelsk-refrangsang) gives a somewhat basic 1930s example of the rhythm guitar hitting (i.e. typically) this exact same point enroute to the main beat: again, always and naturally that ¼ back from it. “quarter-back” could be another word for it, ha! Breakbeat is already taken as that could’ve maybe been another as it’s breaking from the beat. It's not very backbeat driven so I don't want to posit this over my previous much more ala backbeat variant, varying because of striking the same point (a ¼ back) before the 1-and-3, so hopefully since it's not from YouTube it won’t preview here.

Unlike the backbeat-like 1944 example I posited previously that does likewise subdue/cancel the main 1-3 beat emphasis, this typical 1930s example instead doesn’t and its ¼ back emphasis is conversely more subordinate (discrete or subtle) to the 1-and-3, but doing a like job: off the main beat, but closer to them rather than equidistantly from them.

Drummers finding this point en-masse was probably sometime after the very uplifting ‘Holiday for Strings’, which was 1942, until disappearing after the war. Elvis was a G.i. so will have had such grounding, hence perhaps ‘Fever’ - maybe a slower form of “swing”, but with an “uplift” because of the way the ¼ back accent point cancels out if not dominates any on-beat emphasis, much as backbeat does, but in a way that’s more unevenly shunted tighter to or less removed (evenly or maximally distanced) from the primary beat.

I think “uplift” since that’s the feeling it invokes; not necessary gallus, cool or mean - from being more lately executed than backbeat (cum slightly in advance of main beat), but more apace or indeed ‘swing with uplift’ in 3 words from having a more closely broken association/relationship with the main beat, which is maybe additionally akin to the movement and pace found in uneven 1-2-3-ghosted 4 or vice versa structure, e.g. for slamdance/punk/hardcore because of a like, who knows, unevenness(?) as why wouldn’t we simply half-back it rather than ¼-back it; & so why did these 30s guitarists strike at the quarter-a-beat-back point? Maybe maximising space is what’s most common in finding such uplift hence the very late entry of the offbeat emphasis. If slow enough though one can then half that ¼ measure again to add more unexpected quality or in other words to break even more from the anticipated or static quality with a bit of rattle as well as shake maybe, ha!, but I’ll mention more on that in a moment (next para). For swing - like slamdance - there really perhaps ought to be uplift (in yes, breaking from the even/anticipatory nature of positive and negative as well as the breaking of positive with negative for its own sake as in the ¼ not ½ point to emphasise the delayed backbeat-cum-accent-advancing primary beat. Calling jargon holders to help here a bit!

When I hum the previous mentioned latter day slower examples that’s what I want to do : throw that extra spanner in (high-hat maybe) occasionally rather than overkill midway between the more regular ¼-back emphasis and the primary beat it downplays. I wonder if Bernstein really got into this kind of uplift as well to unsettle one’s expectancy of the actual beat, in say the West Side Story musical, but in a cool way that kept things flowing and treading freely – I’ll have to listen again for that, but I imagine so! Apologies, as I can’t really put such into words very well.

[.,.... maybe this quarter-back point before the main beat is conversely precursory to concluding a more notional than expressed backbeat before arriving back at the main beat again....]

Perhaps it was so short-lived a rhythm (a displaced kind of pseudo-backbeat) because of the onus on all the band and vocalist to be strong against each other. There’s maybe even points (listening to ‘Fever’ again) where the accented rhythm disappears or becomes the actual beat because there’s no accenting against anything – becoming more static despite the improved flow of an offbeat not necessarily the backbeat, but likewise every half a bar. There’s little rest for a band that’ll take it to the limit (with the music and the accented emphasis lasting all the way thru). So it’s more likely to be an effect within a song rather than central to it– therefore all credit to the pre-1950s for conveying it so naturally/copiously; and for composers/performers who utilised it contemporaneously or later without having the grounding at least brought from the flow of such swing rhythm guitar that struck at the same ¼ back moment. I had hardly even heard the most famous of Thirties standards when I’d started hitting these same points on guitar to ergo uplift a beat, even stronger than a need to express a backbeat.

The striking point is very natural if you think in halves, but if dividing bars by eight rather than 4 so that your feet can catch every on/off or at least gauge them against their rises/falls – I find myself more often not on the button even at that to gain in slow practice the multitudes of micro-offbeats from exploring so many theoretical stances. I seemed to have arrived at it first as naturalism, before consciously dividing the bar up to incidentally catch it as part of a practice doctrine!

Notice that it was very natural WWII & interwar-wise too whether led by drummers (40s) or in the earlier the more discrete guitar variant. Interesting that notes themselves simply half or double each others’ duration, I argue generally their sound/silence as well.

[An aside and now away off on quite an important tangent if you will (basics perhaps before we even touch on the topic off-beats): it’s halves of values that provide me with my theoretical framework to understand (or read) music: that’s generally 50:50 on/offs (not concerning more micro-level breaking offs), unless 25:75 or 75:25 again for simply general staccato or tenuto respectively; & 100:0 or rarely 125:-25 for simple/rolling legato or any rarely more lengthened tenuto discretionally and respectively). How better to read other fractions such as polyrhythmic two-as-threes etc - in their 50/50 etc. ratios too – against the conventionally halving relationship of notes-to-notes proper and their halves of on and offs – it really does all tie up well graphically because of their much easier mathematical relationships to grasp , but which of course all falls to pieces arithmetically, the latter being my impetus to advance onto the graphical side of numeracy because it’s all far from arithmatic - I’m sure other beginners will find in trying to truly unlock how notes relate to each other.

My dictionary won’t mention the 50:50 on/off thing as a critical gauge of understanding notes – it’s very vague and leaves it discretionary and notional as it does staccato tenuto and legato. What’s schooled I wonder? If it’s less doctrinal than my approach then that would seem tremendously ironic!

All this said. If I were to read what I’m writing before undertaking musical training/thinking I’d have ran for the hills. In choosing music I guess we’re getting into a form of maths we’d dearly love to deny. I think I’ve probably got here to this level because I’ve not underwent any minutes let alone years of schooled training, but simply focussed on the published score notation (their writers/etchers can’t come from any higher a standard in the history/hey-day of song standards, I’m assuming) – and so skipping a lot of knowledge in getting to these other necessaries/essentials that schooling might reciprocally skip so as not to dare dictate any particular maths to students. Who knows, I wouldn’t?

We breath equally in and out and in either short or long puffs, etc., and I suppose notes’ sound/silence are akin to this, or an on and off variant : where at the root is an equal (not necessarily always) positive and negative. Solid and void, horizontal and vertical, etc. we’re taught in architecture schooling too!

So when composition is heavily enriched away from simplicity (as you do – more often post-baroque perhaps;-) the root 50:50 on/offs therefore become most critical; and ironically this is when we most dispense with bothering about such – our discretion takes over again (as it’d done to venture into music without being frightened off) to ignore it and play the way we want – I presume again. Best wouldn’t it be: to maintain this core root or near root (the inherent ‘on & offs’) of the notes especially when and where they are so expressively harmonised, so that at the very least we can comprehend logical complexity in music. Accurately pressing but not lifting will surely muddy a comprehension on logic. Knowing where to begin notes not end them is presumably half the battle towards finding/exploring logic in composition, not a gateway to instrumental virtuosity; a greater antithesis perhaps being contrapuntal Jazz and new age classical that might deliberate or seek more to pinpoint/explore clashing/mis-flowing/etc. by comparison. Again, a presumption not assertion!

Okay, I’d best stop there. Anyone else could explain it better anyway.]

Back to that ‘Forget Me Nots’ offbeat point/accent or that as strummed in ‘Hiawatha’s Lullaby’ moments before strumming the beat: this is for arguments sake exactly where I lift a foot before dropping it onto the beat OR indeed vice versa (all especially for practice); before lifting again to drop onto the next one ½ a bar along.

[back to me again: - I’m stationary between these double strums rather than reciprocate with the heel (or vice versa toes if lifting/upping the other way) not because the guitarist in oneself pauses there per se, but because as a concertinist conveying piano notation one is having to bear in mind that the instrument is on one’s laps to bear rather than with the privilege of thin air, so I can’t vouch for that extra level of foot kept metronome. The moment the feet are still is also helpful anyway in gauging where a veritable metronome is swinging or a conductor’s stick moving/poised... It’s because of this that I explore switching up & down beat (to catch the uncaught as well familiarising on how all notes start/finsh in each way and also for instance observing their different midpoints: great also for familiarising on how the Scottish-Snap might be gauged whatever way round in whatever way the round the snap is – for jazz etc. normally snapping with its semiquaver latterly in lieu of formerly. I’m ranting agin, or have already said this on my own thread about it, sorry!]

Others were mentioning on another thread, also recently and more relevantly, on how perpetual rolling bass had no, little or a reduced feeling of swing, which is probably related to here on this thread where ‘swing’ was said to need that accent away from the main beat to experience, in this case the backbeat off the beat, which is of course halfway between. So maybe not having halves (or concluding sides) to things or whatever spacing discussed above stunts swing, because there’s no clear start/finish.... pfft I’m surmising on my surmising so I may come back to this if the thread ever goes further in that direction.

I’ve also started what I can’t easily conclude, too much surmising, but at least there are the observational references posited that can make this simple thread question a much more potentially complex topic debating other questions and assertions generated from it, e.g. about swing. I mentioned logic as well, but is that even relevant – maybe a little bit since it’s all about a dialect of halves (on-beat/back-beat), even that argued ¼ to one side of an in-between halving (those further or inner halves between the ½-and-1 & the -2½-and-3), which provides the surely as agreeably historic or important ¼-back - as much as a fully back – offbeat. I’ve ran out of more I was considering writing to conclude, but I think I’ve managed to posit the gist in respect of expanding from the simpler question, ‘what is a backbeat’ to maybe ‘where might a different offbeat be as significant or similar’.

Just to clarify: a 'back-beat' being called a 'massage' in the UK was a joke.

I was inferring that beating someone's back was a relaxing therapeutic activity.

Oh well.

Ah Ha ! No problem. Here's that 30s style guitar strum again, for toady's upload, https://archive.org/details/78_i-cover-the-waterfront_arthur-williams-and-his-melody-boys I can't believe I was doing this naturally as generation ago, but maybe I'd unconciously picked up on it from hearing what was commonly available back then in the 2000s (noughties); so much has been missed!

[There doesn't appear to be any view or analytics on this site (?) It makes me feel a bit Robinson Crusoe (that there's 0 views since I started uploading here prior to My 78s on You Tube, which does show views, albeit somewhat fewer than I'd have expected) - not to worry!]

It seems that quarter-back point of emphasis was also strummed in a slightly different way in 20s style to, which can be heard here BELOW , which is not mines, mines is a piano duo with the same singer (A Certain Trio) from around the same year, 1930.

Although the dance Band version is 1930, I think it really is recent throwback or shackles from a yet roaring 20s style. Note that it abruptly strikes/stops at the 1/4-back point by comparison to the typically more flowing 30s equivalent (see above links by My 78s on archive.org; e.g. today's being 'I Cover the Waterfront' by Arthur Young & His Melody Boys, which is an alias for Maurice Winnick and his Band, vocal by Brian Lawrence; or Hiawatha's Lullayby' from a couple of days ago - they'll both be on my weekend YouTube round-up by tomorrow), which sustains through to a strummed closure on the main beat. Those 2 cited smoother examples are incidentally 1933 - so the change of expressing the 1/4-back offbeat from abrupt to smooth occurred probably between 1930-33 interesting - I'll keep my ears open now RE the dates!

An observation I'm thinking while writing this: note how Patrick, the singer seems less stressed to be on the actual beat after those commanding strums a 1/4 beat back - these pieces are extremely fast to sing so in a way expressing the rhythm by that 1/4 notch back possibly gave the vocalist that little bit more time to be on time. So if it delays or concludes a kind of backbeat it maybe is also for helping to be ready for the next bar, hence being a quarter back usually - and it never ever seems to be a half-back between the backbeat and mainbeat, let alone all the way to the actual backbeat - I think because as I mentioned earlier on my repertoire the backbeats to these age of standards are already heavily enriching . Hah! so maybe that's why we're more compelled to use backbeat now more: because songwriting has digressed and needs backup - excuse the pun. [ps Doesn't Blink 182 also intro songs with hitting the rim of the snare on the 1/4 back point - I'll need to rewind back a generation to hear that again, I'm guessing from the near recent past 30yrs ago there (possibly backbeat proper though, I can't quite recall yet) - if so, it sounds still fresh as it might always have been 100 years later and counting?]

All very interesting how prevalent that point is in interwar, and how expressing it changes from one decade to a following decade.

Can you please analyze for us the specific differences between the groove of these two most swinging orchestras in jazz history?

drum orientated example follows , but explores it with different percussive feels (you don't have to search far for examples - I dragged this from the preview column randomly. I guess It throws up a lot of the decades you're most interested in, cool! Hearing all the decadal takes of it. That 20s flash hit hat sound probably hits the mark too, but not as a backbeat style offbeat because they're so one off... ps I hadn't realised actually how widely important the point is to whatever decade and song type!

[oops sorry there Nahum: I hadn't seen your post/s, let me have a look/listen!]

Okay, I've had a listen; once that is, and should return because of their lengths (especially Mood Indigo the latter, which was already in my repertoire for later, thanks)! Both these performances are postwar and not on my radar at the moment, but I'm glad you've raised them because they're indeed keenly highly literate on the said 1/4 point (in ways...) whille practically ignoring this in the main!

Track 1: I was almost going to write that the 1/4 beat back point is extremely subdued here until the most frighteningly expressive points, Oh and woh when the brass comes in a 1/4 back from the actual backbeat (which I first missed as I wasn't expectin such there and was really looking for it in the conventional spot back from the 1-and-3), which is at approx 1:10; and then POW! there it is again where I'm waiting for the cows to come home - precisely at between 4:01 .to 4:02 right on the spot. Otherwise this piece is laid back and skipping/ghosting these said points - so the 2 that are there over the 4+ minutes are alarmingly over expressive vis-a-vis such a laid back opposite for the rest of the piece, although it starts with intrigue before settling into such a long norm of sedation.

Track 2: DITTO ghosting every quarter-back I was thinking until DUKE does some runs on the piano running from the 1/4-back points to the beat (I can't remember at what period he does this but it's at least midway though and verifies that at last he knows his 1/4s intimately, phew. As for the rest of the piece there's a lot going on there in shifts, but it's doing a very similar thing to the Count Basie piece in showing how (in both) it doesn't need to be ruled an aired 1/4-back to flow. It's simply there as a ghost; and we are reminded of its importance at key points in the piece.

I will need to get back to you on Mood Indigo later because I haven't even started on that one really; and clearly there's much going on with it (by it's composer/performer rolled into one, and through the ages too). I look forward to studying it more, but I'm afraid later for me on that one.

Again, thanks for positing exemplary post-war sensibilities, which shouldn't be discounted as I can hear - however, if not listening/studying studiously through these benchmarks, then the course of music is likely to miss what seems lost, the past mechanics (I'm meaning the 1/4 back thing mostly here - i'm going to refrain from going too beyond that for the moment)), but which weren't per se in these particular benchmark/exemplars, they are simply still important, though discretely so (and in those 2 examples to the point of genius I suppose).

ps Quite refreshing in a way not to hear the 1/4 beat back point being expressed anyway. It isn't an expressed point according to the compositional notation, so it'd became through history more a performance orchestrated entity, generally speaking. Sometimes there is incidental expression there whether accents or actual notes' on/offs. Off swing and RE classical, my upload of yesterday, the Hungarian Dance (Brahms) is orchestrated with such 1/4 beat back strums/bellowed chords too for some sections, and sometimes actual compositional shoert notes to lead into the 1-2 beat I presume. So in this instance it might be compositional to express this particaular point before the primary beat. I don't know yet! Again, like earlier suggestions, it's probably an aide to preparing afresh for rapid bars in succession! What do you think? https://t.co/TMpSKyeodt?amp=1

I'm reposting this because I ran out of editing time, sorry!

Is it all a form of punctuation, even at orchestrated/clapped backbeat level as well as this extra level of minutiae I've been ranting on about (because I don't know)? Like a full stop closes before a new sentence starts (I think I'd already mentioned closure earlier, but now can imagine that it's more like a kind of crutch or stabiliser rather than something you keep more discrete - like those examples posited by Nahum....). I supposed there's multiple interpretations, not any one explanation. So, to wind up (because I'm not repeating anymore inexhaustively), is that it can transmute into a backbeat slid along to more closely neighbour the primary beat it's dualing with.

ps That Count Basie example by Nahum above '2nd time around' gave cognisance to the 1/4 beat back accent - first back from the backbeat - not necessarily off-beat per se as it's stand alone, big time at that; and followed it up with the same eventually (2 minutes on), but back from the primary beat instead (with a touch of genius, revealing at least sensibility more than discretion per se)..... Particularly with Mood Indigo above afterward, it's more the composition that's central than any need to express punctualities if that's what backbeat and the related might be. I've ran out of brainwaves, sorry I'm stopping there!

Oh, and not forgetting of course another kind of quarterback, Flash, in action during a football fight sequence, which seems to have been also noticed/registered by the Cinema Wurlitzer Player (or is that drummer in this case) where and when that form is particularly delivered in the film! The band were of course known to have taken a wurlitzer play's approach for the entire soundtrack. Enjoy below!

It’s the same year that band explore it more in the complex way as well as finding it simply as standard in the more conventionally upbeat maybe proto-pop/punk style songs in the ‘The Game’ album ; albeit all genres seem to have it too I suppose. Maybe there’s no word for this kind of uplift, musical aide, punctuality, critical practice measure, or whatever it is.

I believe it's a Oberheim OB-X