Customer Reviews

Rhythm Primer Volume 2

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book will challenge your musicality, but the time you spend with it is well worth it. Rhythm is so simple, yet very difficult for some kinds of musical artists to incorporate into their music-making (of course, I'm talking about vocalists). I like the approach presented here, and Bruce Arnold is a responsive author. He even sent me a replacement disc for a damaged CD that came with the book.

This book has 61 rhythm exercises with all sorts of "scary" and not-so-scary rhythms to practice (can you tell I'm a vocalist?) There are triplets, lots of triplets, regular triplets, quarter note triplets and half note triplets. I never knew there was such things as quarter and half note triplets. The book explains the "theory" of all these triplets, but what is really helpful is hearing the triplets played (MIDI download from the Muse-eek website), and following along in the book. I still do not understand triplets, but I am learning how they "feel" and sound, which is actually more important to me.

Using this book and the MIDI files, I have discovered that I "hurry up" on whole notes. I have found that I get to the next measure too soon after a whole note. With this book, MIDI files, and lots of practice I am fairly confident I can fix this problem.

There is also plenty of practice with dotted eighth and sixteenth note rhythms, which I find especially challenging. There are even thirty second notes! So, those are the "scary" rhythms, but there is also plenty of practice with basic quarters, halves, wholes, dotted notes, and such. This is a good resource for learning and internalizing rhythms.