I was standing in the sixth form studying centre the other day, brow beating my students into doing some other work, when I became distracted by the beat from the background music. This being a student study room, it was full of students not studying. Some of them were playing some modern Indian Pop, a mixture of Indian timbres and very Western drum beats. The kick drum was following a very familiar pattern:
1 2 3 … 1 2 !
That rhythm is known as the Son Clave rhythm. Here’s a durumming instruction video on the subject:
There’s real debate over the origins of the son clave, but it seems to have originated in Africa and made its way over to the Americas and into various genres of music.
It’s a very simple rhythm that has given rise to all sorts of well known songs and rhythms, such as the famous Bo Diddley rhythm, and even the basic rhythm in the guitar part to George Michael’s ‘Faith’.
Even the opening bar of Paranoid by Sabbath uses the first bar of the rhythm. In fact you can hear it in all sorts of heavy metal, and ideas from it abound, particularly in the associated grouping of quavers into groups of three, three and two (1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2).
So, it’s got a good pedigree and no-one can accuse you of stealing becuase it’s definitely public domain by now. So why not make use of it yourself?
Which doesn’t excuse the students from not working, but at least it gave my something interesting to blog about. I love the idea that such a simple little rhythm can go on a journey, inspiring so many different genres of music.
[...] A few off beat notes can go a long way to making your riff engaging, whether it’s part of a well known clave rhythm or simply having half your notes off the beat, as in the ‘la-la-la’ hook from this [...]