7 Day Workout For Odd Meters 7/8 Edition
Simple yet effective exercises to build a strong foundation for your ideas in 7/8
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TAKE YOUR RHYTHMIC SKILLS TO THE NEXT LEVEL
One of the best ways to get comfortable with 7/8 is to learn how to feel it within your 4/4 playing. By training yourself to hear and feel how your 4/4 grooves and patterns fit within 7/8, you will be covering a lot of ground because you will be drawing from vocabulary that you are already using. The diligent practice of the course will help you to get comfortable with the concept of superimposing simple 4/4 rhythmic motifs that you are already familiar with over 7/8, giving yourself enough time to get used to the “On and Off” feeling that 7/8 has in relationship to 4/4, meaning on and off the 4/4 downbeats. These exercises will help you gain the facility to execute these figures in time by feeling and understanding the relationship between what you hear, what you feel and what you play. You will be developing the tools to provide a solid pulse on any instrument. That is the key for developing a relaxed, confident and well grounded 7/8 time feel and groove.
ENHANCE YOUR LISTENING SKILLS
Practicing with metronome forces you to listen carefully and to listen to more than just yourself. These exercises will increase your musical awareness, which will help you become a better performer.
ONLY 5 MINUTES A DAY
5 minutes a day it's all it takes to complete transform your playing! As you progress with the exercises you will start to hear any rhythmic issues or inconsistencies, as a result of your enhanced awareness of 7/8 time and pulse.
SINGING AND PLAYING (VOICE INDEPENDENCE DEVELOPMENT)
The main difficulty when trying to sing and play your instrument at the same time boils down to not being able to HEAR and FEEL the rhythmic relationship between the 2 parts (when you are by yourself) and it gets even more challenging if you are playing with other people or jamming to any type of backing track or metronome, because now there are more things to interpret and get in sync with. These exercises will help you develop the ability to accurately interpret what you hear and synchronise both your playing and your inner time to what you are listening to. The best musicians on the planet are able to play their instruments and at the same time sing or vocalise the music they are performing (melodies of tunes, bass lines, guitar or keyboard riffs, percussion or drum parts etc). Their main concern is not what they play, but the effect that what they play has on the music. Singing is the key element here, because your voice is the physical manifestation of your inner pulse or inner time. If you can ́t sing in time, chances are you won ́t be able to play in time. The more “in time” you ́re able to sing 7/8 rhythms and figures, the firmer the imprint in your brain and body of those rhythms, allowing you to play a relaxed, flowing 7/8 time feel and pulse.
THE PROCESS
Each day you will be working on a set of exercises using one minute tracks. Each track will give you a count off, a metronome, a clapping sound and a voice sound. The idea is that you follow the audio by clapping and singing the correspondent parts, while staying rooted on the basic 7/8 pulse. You will also have a visual image of the 3 different parts (metronome, clapping & voice). Once you have completed the exercises, you will write down the ones that you struggled with, because these will be your assignments on days 6 and 7. The main idea is to synchronize what you are listening (metronome), what you are playing (clapping) and what you feel internally (voice). On days 6 & 7 you will be working on the exercises you wrote down at the end of each session on the previous days, which should be the exercises you found most challenging. The idea is to work on your weaknesses until they become your strengths.
You will be expanding your vocabulary based on rhythmic motifs that you are already using, and you will be also progressing on the ability to make smoother rhythmic transitions, establishing a stronger sense of groove, inner time and pulse and your ideas will have deeper roots and more rhythmic weight to them. You will also be getting familiar with playing over the bar line, making more “open” musical sentences.
As in the original 7 Day Workout For Better Rhythm course, the exercises are designed to synchronise what we are listening to (metronome), what we are feeling internally (voice) and what we are playing (clapping). By going through the workout you will gain the ability to execute the figures accurately while being aware of how all the different parts fit together, and to keep track of the 7/8 downbeats at the same time. The course is designed to guide you in the process of understanding how 4/4 figures relate to 7/8 time, and will help you develop sharper listening skills, so that what you hear, what you feel and what you play are in sync with each other.
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Course Curriculum
Frequently Asked Questions
You will be expanding your vocabulary based on rhythmic motifs that you are already using, and you will be also progressing on the ability to make smoother rhythmic transitions, establishing a stronger sense of groove, inner time and pulse and your ideas will have deeper roots and more rhythmic weight to them. You will be developing freedom to explore how and when to edit your original pattern to make it fit the new meter, making the overall process of creating new versions of your rhythmic statements a more musical and organic experience, because you will be relying on your ears to guide you in the process of shaping your rhythmic concept. You will also be getting familiar with playing over the bar line, thus learning how to make more “open” musical sentences.