Hey all – I wrote up a set of marching percussion cadences for all ability levels, sold through “Music on Paper”, a Japanese music site. Check ‘em out on the video below, and if you want to buy them for your ensemble I’d be happy to assist in helping folks navigate through the Japanese site. Just shoot me a message here in the comments section. Thanks, and enjoy!
Posted in Drums & Drumming, Upbeat Rhythms
Too Much Information, the debut technothriller by David Haskell – coming soon
All New Technothriller – Coming Soon
Posted in Upbeat Rhythms
Happy New Year!I wanted to take a few minutes to compose this note to wish everyone a happy, fun-filled and productive new year. I realize things have been slow recently here on Upbeat Rhythms, owing to the fact that I’ve spent the better part of the past several months writing my debut fiction novel, Too Much Information. However, that project is in the can now, and will be published soon, so I’m hoping to devote more time to my blog here very soon, including picking up where I left off with the instructional series as soon as I catch my breath. Until then, I hope you will enjoy the contents we have available here, including the practice pad section of the site which has several useful videos for you to check out.
So thanks for stopping by, and I will have more content up for you soon here at UpbeatRhythms.com – once again may you all have a safe, fun, and productive year in 2013!
Posted in Upbeat Rhythms
Just a quick holiday aside, along with my apologies for the recent lack of posts as I’ve been busy working on finishing up the manuscript up my very first novel (details coming soon). Much more content will be coming to … Continue reading
Hello, and welcome back to Upbeat Rhythms! This is part II of the written supplement to our time signatures video over on the Practice Pad, which is the space for all our video tutorials and lessons here on the Upbeat Rhythms site.
First of all, in both 2/4 and 3/4 time the number at the bottom is the same, four. What that tells us is that it’s still a quarter note that we’re looking for to make up one complete beat in our measure. In 2/4, the top note is now a two. So, unlike in common time where we need four beats to fill up our measure, in 2/4 time we just need just two beats to fill up a measure. Again, two quarter notes, as the bottom number has indicated to us.
Just like a whole note is the largest note value that can ‘fit’ in a 4/4 bar, the half note is the largest note value that can fit in a 2/4 bar. In a 3/4 situation you’d need to add a quarter note to the half note to fill up the whole bar (or some combination of notes and/or rests, of course), but again you wouldn’t see any whole notes in this case because there isn’t enough space within the measure according to what the time signature demands. Jumping ahead, the largest note value that would fit in a 3/4 bar would be a dotted half-note, but we’ll get to all that stuff as we continue along in this series. Don’t worry about that yet if you’re not familiar with dots, they’ll be addressed soon.
As you might have guessed by now, when the top number changes if you still have the four at the bottom you’re still looking at a quarter note equalling one beat, so the top number’s just going to tell you how many of those beats belong in one measure. Continuing on in this manner, a 5/4 measure means you need five quarter notes to equal one measure. 6/4 is the same idea, the quarter note is still indicated as one entire beat in your measure in the bottom of the signature, but now we need six of them. Because in a 6/4 bar you’ve got six quarter note beats in a measure. 7/4, 9/4, same deal. A quarter note is still called for to represent one complete beat, but now we need seven of them (or nine, etc) to fill up one measure. And as for half notes, whole notes, and other notes such as sixteenths and eighths (again, don’t worry if you haven’t heard of them, you will soon!), you just have to start doing the math. Basically if it takes seven quarter notes to fill up a measure, you would need fourteen eighth notes. In a 6/4 bar if it takes six quarter notes to fill up a measure, you’d need three half notes, and so on.
One more slightly unusual type of time signature that was pointed out in the video is a 1/4 time signature. Though rare, it too does occur in music from time to time. The quarter note still represents one entire beat, but there’s only one beat per bar.
Hi all. Just a quick update to let you know the first tutorial video is up on the Practice Pad, please check it out and share it around. This one covers some basics, whole, half, and quarter notes and rests, along with an explanation of 4/4/ time signatures. Many more tutorials to come for all ability levels, keep checking back often!
Have fun with it, I will be composing a companion blog post to go along with it soon but the video tutorial is also a stand-alone lesson so you don’t need to wait around. 
Posted in Upbeat Rhythms
Good morning and happy Monday to everyone in America, I wanted to offer up a quick post to talk about upcoming content here on Upbeat Rhythms, and let you all know a little more about the agenda for the blog going forward as well.
First of all, this week will see the premiere of the Practice Pad video series, the first of a series of rhythm related tutorials that is sure to be informative and helpful no matter what your ability level. The idea is to create three levels of video in parallel, beginner, intermediate, and advanced, so that whatever level you’re at you can find some content to make use of right away, as well as a chance to check out some more basic or more advanced content as well if you’re looking for a refresher on the fundimentals or a forward looking challenge. There will also be some drummer-centric rudimental videos coming up, but that’s a little further on down the road.
In addition to the Practice Pad material, there will be some new blog content coming out focused on even more resources and links you can check out around the ‘net, as well as a series we’re starting to highlight some percussionists you might not be aware of, but you definitely should because they are all outstanding in their field and excellent musicians. That will be coming out probably a little later in the week.
Hope you’ll stop by throughout the week to enjoy the new content, and as always thanks for checking out Upbeat Rhythms!
Hey everyone. Welcome to UpbeatRhythms.com 2.0, or at least 1.4 or something like that lol.
I gave up on the Drupal thing for now, still something I might keep in mind for the future. For now, I redesigned the WordPress theme a little bit and came up with a logo and banner that I dig, and set up the site for future expansion as much as I could for the moment.
Thanks for checking out the page, check back in a few days for more content, the tutorials will be covering the basics of rhythm reading and playing, and working their way up to the advanced stuff as I make more and more videos. If there’s something you’d like to see from a rhythm site that you’re not seeing yet, please let us know via comment or you can hit ‘contact us’ and shoot us an email.
See ya around the site!
Posted in Upbeat Rhythms
Tagged downbeat, fresh content, groove, makeover, new look, rhythm, rhythms, site, upbeat
Hey everyone. Just a quick note to let you all know that I’m working hard behind the scenes on this site along with my other ones. Finding sharing chiclets and wordpress plugins (never heard of either til a few weeks ago!), finding backlinks and getting listed in directories and all that happy junk. Can’t find enough hours in the day, really lol.
As to the future of this new UpbeatRhythms site, at the moment I’m painfully aware of the fact that it’s pretty static and I’m working on a new design using Drupal (if I can figure it out lol) to make the site more maxed out, but more importantly an inviting space and completely user friendly So I won’t roll that out til it’s right, I don’t want people trying to figure out a complicated site, I’d rather take the time to set it up the way it should be so it’ll probably take me a little while – unless any Drupal or other programming masters out there would like to donate their services to the cause over here.
Anyway, when I get that set, I’ll probably move this whole WordPress section on over into one section of the space, probably “Blog” but I dunno yet. None of the content here will be going away, anyway, some stuff might be relocated and a ton of more new stuff will be added as well. And I will probably attempt to keep this space updated more frequently since WordPress (this current platform I’m using) works great as a blogging platform but it ain’t so great as a site platform as I’m learning more and more despite claims to the contrary.
So that’s what’s up with UpbeatRhythms at the moment, I want to invite everyone to keep checking back because my site really will become a one-stop shop for all musicians interested in rhythm no matter what instrument you jam on.
As for the other sites, I’ve been updating those too so please check them out. My “regular” blog, Mindbla.com, is getting updates pretty much daily, and the picture blog lulzJapan.com is even more frequently refreshed with new hilarious pics, and it’s doing pretty well for a brand new site if I do say so myself (over a thousand visitors yesterday…woot!). Please check em out, share em around, and I hope you enjoy them!
Back to what I’m really all about though, the music end of things, this is definitely going to be my main base and I plan to really max it out for everyone to enjoy. So stop by often, have a look around, bookmark the URL (http://upbeatrhythms.com if you want to copy/paste it right now), and feel free to comment or ask any questions. I hope this site will be a lot of fun for everyone.
Posted in Upbeat Rhythms
Tagged drums, groove, percussion, rhythm, rhythms, site, this site, upbeat, update
Welcome to Upbeat Rhythms, a rhythm space for all musicians. We hope you enjoy your visit, and will be adding tons of new content shortly, including live performance videos, instructional videos, tutorials and learning modules on rhythm and percussion for drummers and musicians of all kinds, and from anywhere around the world. We’re also looking into setting up a little community of some kind, more on that as the idea develops.
If you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear them. Drop up a line at info@upbeatrhythms.com or just go ahead and leave a comment below this post.
Posted in Upbeat Rhythms
Tagged drums, groove, learning, musicians, percussion, rhythm, rhythms, tutorials, upbeat
