Dimensions In Rhythm

Astride the Cartesian Split: Learning, Playing, and Understanding Music

Excerpt from, “The Harmonic Perspective of Rhythm”

Efrain Toro: Background and Theoretical Stance

Though he grew up in Puerto Rico and learned music experientially, by listening and playing, Toro went as a young man to study classical percussion at the New England Conservatory in Boston. As he confides, he is rather fortunate to have had both perspectives. (Toro 2012j, 2014b) At the conservatory, he obviously bettered his reading, and played with an orchestra for the first time, but he also learned about the fine points of classical technique. He said for the first six months, his instructor would not even let him touch the instrument, insisting rather that he perfect his motion. (Toro 2011a) He also learned to analyse music: form, orchestration, harmonic structure and, essential to reading and writing, rhythmic structure. A notion of structural comprehension helps to write or read the correct pitches, but it is not essential. With absolute pitch or a reference instrument, one can easily play or write the notes ‘G’, ‘Bb’, ‘Db’, ‘F’, with no idea that an Eb9 chord is implied. While that knowledge certainly makes things easier, it is not essential. In rhythm, however, comprehension is essential to transcription or performance from the written score. What is an eighth note, after all, without reference to the beat, codified and specified in the time signature? Though moving to a rhythm is as natural as can be, a knowledge of structure is essential to work with written rhythm.

Toro still works continuously on his motion, his rhythmic comprehension, and the flexibility to play in any style, exploring new combinations and approaches to repertoire and improvisation. He is not bound to any one tradition or school of thought but is rather inspired to work by the prospect of his own development, comprehension, and flexibility. He will go so far as to look down at AT/Music (Aurally Trasmitted, see Traditional versus Modern Apprenticeship for more explanation) styles as ‘dogmatic’, noting the limitations of only working with one style, of seeing the musical landscape through one set of lenses, one type of technique. Likewise, he contends that the Indian Classical pedagogical tradition (in many ways an analytical, absorptive, ‘classical’ style but still founded on aural transmission) is slow and limited in the musical scope it offers the student.

But, at the same time he contends, ‘Ethnic music is where it’s at!’ (Toro 2011a) His method books are largely based on rhythmic patterns from Afro-Caribbean and Spanish popular music. He regularly gushes about Flamenco as, ‘the most advanced ethnic music on the planet,’ and arguably his favourite percussionist, Zakir Hussain, is a product of the very same Indian tradition he criticizes as pedagogically inefficient.

A Dichotomy

One of my early challenges in this study centred on how I could resolve this apparent contradiction between the AT/M/repertoire centred and contemporary, analytical and/or universal approaches to the rhythmically oriented musics that have been among my primary inspirations. My early interactions with Toro became for me a period of existential angst, not only for the difficulty in making sense of this mentor in the context of my doctoral work; I also was coming to believe in Toro’s ideas about the universality of technique and rhythmic comprehension. But, I had for years believed in the apprenticeship process, in the power of traditional repertoire to give the novitiate the vocabulary and expressive capacity to become a competent rhythmic specialist like the ones that had moved me from various West African, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian, Indian and other AT/Music genres. Suffice to say that with few exceptions, Western trained, conceptually oriented percussionists had impressed me on occasion, but not moved me in the way exponents of those other genres had. To each his own, of course, but to hear a similar impression from someone with Toro’s background bolstered my position thus increasing a personal dilemma.

A Resolution: Dimensionality

As it turns out, the resolution of this dilemma is fundamental to understanding the vision behind Toro’s methods, and to the resolution of my own existential drama. The answer lies in dimensionality. The reason I had been drawn to African music many years before hearing of Toro, and the reason that Toro says, ‘Ethnic music is where it’s at,’ is that these musics, in varying degrees, manifest an ever-present multi-dimensionality in their rhythmic structures. This phenomenon is most pronounced in music of the African Diaspora, which manifests simultaneous beat structures based on three and two at all times. (Toro 1995; “Polyrhythm” 2014; Kubik 2010; Peñalosa and Greenwood 2009; Novotney 1998) It also appears that this simultaneity manifests not just as permutations of three and two but of higher order prime numbers such as five and seven as well. (Toro 1994, 2012l) The concept of rhythmic multi-dimensionality is most developed in Indian classical music, though here it is conceptually derived and linearly delivered, or one line/beat structure at a time, in succession.

For Toro, and increasingly in my own perceptions and point of view, AT/Musics have such a draw—the power to move people to dance, among other qualities that make music attractive to the human psyche—because of this simultaneity of multiple ideas and organizing structures. They continue to offer the world a great many models of how to do this, from the sub-beat levels of rhythmic structure responsible for different ‘feels’ (ways to interpret the subdivisions of a beat structure) to the larger levels characterized as metre.

But, for Toro, these AT/Musics are dogmatic, or rather some of their practitioners are, insisting their way is the way, their music is the music. More significantly, relatively unaware of the qualities of their music that engender feelings of centred-ness based on simultaneity of stimuli (more on this later), they focus pedagogically rather on passing on the patterns and compositions as they were passed on to them; the multi-dimensional structures, the universal archetypes and techniques of playing are less discussed in teacher/pupil relationships, or not at all.

The Proof is Within

One might ask, of course, how can we know this? How can we make such broad generalizations? There are exceptions. Toro himself is one of a growing number of musicians from ATM cultures who find themselves later in a conservatory or other (probably jazz) educational environment and manage to embrace both hypothetical perspectives. As a broad generalization in the state of musical knowledge and pedagogy, however, I can say that this dichotomy between aurally transmitted, repertoire-only knowledge and analytical/theoretical knowledge has been prevalent in my experience; it seems to be so as described in the literature. (Chernoff 1981; Berliner 1978; C. Keil and Feld 1994) And, it seems to represent the state of music pedagogy in Toro’s rather lengthier, well considered experience. I would also ask, again, that the reader suspend critical inquiry on this point, just for a while, and consider, in their own experience, the predicted results of the hypothesis in the state of world music. Do there not seem to be mostly opposing approaches to rhythmic and musical comprehension? Is there not one side, represented by the musical intelligentsia, who, despite a great deal of knowledge and skill, cannot find the downbeat in AT/Musics or who are perplexed to understand or notate the feel of African or Brazilian music? (Polak 1998, 2010; Gerischer 2006) Are there not orchestras and orchestral players who play brilliantly from the written, European classical canon but who produce rhythmic music (pop, jazz, or otherwise) that sounds stiff and wooden?^[1] In his book about African rhythm from a Ghanaian perspective, Chernoff also underlines this dichotomy:

In Western music, then, rhythm is most definitely secondary in emphasis and complexity to harmony and melody. It is the progression through a series of chords or tones that we recognize as beautiful. In African music this sensibility is almost reversed…in African music there are always at least two rhythms going on. We consider the rhythms complex because often we simply do not know what “the” rhythm of a piece is. There seems to be no unifying or main beat…Exposed to the music of an African drum ensemble, even the most accomplished Western musicians have expressed bafflement.” (Chernoff 1981, 42)

A rhythmic perspective that relies on one “unifying or main beat,” is perhaps, as Chernoff suggests, at the root of Western trained musicians’ “bafflement.” On the other side of the coin, Chernoff relates this story with a clerk in the airport:

The two of us went to a little desk in one corner, and then the man began typing. I flipped. Using the capitalization shift key with his little fingers to pop in accents between words, he beat out fantastic rhythms. Even when he looked at the rough copies to find his next sentence, he continued his rhythms on the shift key. He finished up each form with a splendid flourish on the date and port of entry. I thanked him for his display, and though I regretted having to leave the customs office, I was eager to go out and begin my work, for I realized that I was in a good country to study drumming. (Chernoff 1981, 94)

Consider as well the widespread use of drums and other instruments to reproduce speech in many West African languages, and the contingent necessity of hearing precision in rhythmic relationships by people ‘untrained’ in music, and it becomes more plausible that perhaps the near universality of rhythmic perception and skill in those cultures is related to their lifelong exposure to multi-dimensional archetypes.

Even more to the point, A.M. Jones says, “We have to grasp the fact that if from childhood you are brought up to regard beating 3 against 2 as being just as normal as beating in synchrony, then you develop a two-dimensional attitude to rhythm which we in the West do not share.” (Jones 1959, 1:102; Chernoff 1981, 94)

From still another perspective, is it not the primary raison d’etre of the discipline of Ethnomusicology to analyse music from an institutionalized, primarily Western point of view? In the African context, the primary source of multi-dimensional rhythmic music, and thus a pillar of this study, this includes the work of early pioneers (some of whom went on to update their theories with the times) such as von Hornbostel, Waterman, Jones, Blacking, Merriam, Brandel, Koetting, and Hood, to modern theorists who helped to develop the current, generally accepted platform of understanding—Nketia, Locke, Agawu and Kubik. (von Hornbostel 1928; Waterman 1948; Jones 1959; Blacking 1955; Merriam 1981; Brandel 1984; Koetting 1970; Hood 1963; Nketia 1974; Locke 1998; Agawu 1995; Kubik 2010) The sincere analysis of less-than-analytical traditions leads again to the dicey dichotomy of perceptual stances centred on implicit and explicit knowledge bases. And, on the performance side of the coin: Brilliant cultural standard bearers who cannot read a note of music; students who cannot pass their theory classes but who are first call in working, professional bands, even over their own professors.

One of the central tenets of Toro’s pedagogical stance is the attempt to bridge this gap between a mostly un-theoretical coterie charged with preserving and passing on the rhythmically multi-dimensional, AT/Musics of the world on the one hand, and theoretically minded ‘modernists’ on the other; in this case the designation ‘modernist’ includes anyone who creates primarily from an intellectual or technical perspective, or who draws inspiration from those musical forms that have been thus created, with little or diminishing reference to the AT/Music sources. Such a ‘modernist’ (I keep the term in inverted commas to note its intended meaning here, as well as its use as a generalization) might come from such diverse perspectives as the Western classical, that of the university-trained jazz musician, or the rock drummer, all of which might be found to derive their rhythmic concept from a primarily linear, relatively simplistic (less dimensional) approach.

Multi-dimensionality 1

An example from my discussions with Toro is appropriate here to better illustrate the situation. He was talking about five in one of our lessons, when, while playing in two, he produced the following figure:

Figure 3. Offbeat Five.

Below is the transcript from our interaction:

ET: Most used melody in Latin music!

JD: Hm.

ET: They’re fives! On the offbeat! They’re fives on the upbeat. Who in a conservatory can play fives on the upbeat? Or anywhere? We do it all the time!

JD: So if ‘normal’ people transcribe that in music, do you think they would write that? Do you think they would write…

ET: No!

JD: What would they write?

ET: They would write…

JD: …a sextuplet or something?

ET: No, they would write this (he writes the second two triplet partials of one beat and a full triplet after, as below).

Figure 4. A Conservative Estimate.

JD: Oh. And triplet…Da da DA da da.

ET: You see? And so, this is the problem. This is the problem, it’s like that.

JD: They want to make everything triplets and…

ET: Well, we learn a separate way. And that (sitting back at kit, points toward paper on desk)…that is not five. That is something else. Right? But then when they play, it sounds like five, but they don’t know what they’re playing because what they’re playing doesn’t match the music…You see?

JD: Mm. And the guys that learn from notation, they don’t understand why they can’t get it…why they don’t sound like…

ET: That’s correct. And so, do you see this is a problem? There’s a problem in education, in music. (Toro 2012j)

The reader will note that both figures articulate the second beat (or the upbeat in the bar, or metric scheme. This is one of the central tenets of Toro’s approach and will be discussed later), but that the offbeat five figure, being evenly spaced, produces a pronouncedly different feeling, as if referring to two perspectives other than that of the predominant metric scheme; namely, the feeling of the offbeat, and the feeling of five. This very minor difference in rhythmic placement is thus highly significant, at least to the rhythmically refined ear, as it refers to at least three dimensions—they might be called ‘dimensional referents’—at once, including the predominant scheme. Thus, with the smallest of changes we go from relatively basic to profoundly multi-dimensional.

Audio Example 8. Offbeat Five and Triplet Figure (CD Track 8).

Ways of Knowing

Toro’s commentary is insightful as well; He didn’t stick to my rather narrow first impression that the hypothetical conservatory musician would understand, ‘everything as triplets,’ but rather that they (we), ‘learn a separate way.’ This begs the epistemological discussion referred to in the section on experiential knowledge (not yet on this website). What we think we know can take precedence over what is. But if we only perform, we are either right, wrong, or somewhere in between. Toro himself was quite clear on many occasions that he sees no conflict whatsoever between intellectual (explicit) and experiential (implicit) or corporal knowledge. A portion of one such conversation is transcribed below. I would usually maintain that this was the ideal to which we should aspire, but that in practice, the intellectual/explicit knowledge could indeed interfere with the pure experience of what is, or, what is being done. This is one case that seems to illustrate the potential conflict.

ET: They’re (‘natural musicians’) connected because it’s in nature.

JD: Yeah, because that’s all they have. Knowing something in your head takes you away from nature.

ET: No, it doesn’t.

JD: But it can…

ET: No. It’s wrong. That point of view is wrong. And unless you change that in your nyee (hands to head), it’s going to be very difficult for you to learn anything. There’s no conflict between intellect and the natural world…at all! There’s no conflict! And intellect adds to the natural ability. Intellect it just doubles…it just doubles your understanding of what is natural, and it adds, it embellishes, it enhances…the natural. And so, in the western world, we have a problem, that comes from a religious point of view. Things we don’t understand are mysteries. Mysteries are good. Ok? Because mysteries are things that are unexplainable. And in the religious belief, it works great! We’re so indoctrinated, by that popular belief, that we think that by knowing something, we’ll take away from the essence of what it is, and it’s not true…it’s just not true. (Toro 2012m)

On this point, I maintain that in my experience, too many strains of thought competing for conscious attention can dissipate the pool of cognitive energy available for any one strain, whether that is an analytical concept being developed and/or maintained, or whether it is un-differentiated awareness of experience. As musicians, we must learn to direct our awareness to analysis, harmonic progression, experience of musical stimuli, experience of our own body, sound or musical line being developed, the interaction we create with other music makers, spectators, dancers, and so on. More experience or capacity can allow us to handle more of these factors with aplomb, as we eventually learn to simultaneously walk, talk, chew gum, plan our route, and adjust for the changing weather or unexpected pangs of hunger—each of these tasks being a challenge on their own for a toddler. (Elliot’s thinking-in-action concept might lead from there to artistic mastery.) As far as choosing to maintain a sense of mystery by refusing to adopt an analytical perspective, I feel Toro misunderstood the angle of my interjection. Perhaps it is true that some (apparently a great many in Toro’s experience) prefer this perspective. Whether it is a common belief that a mystery-endorsing stance increases one’s artistic prowess or rather, that it represents a certain disinclination to engage in analytical process is a hypothetical question I will leave outside the central concerns of this study. Still it remains in my experience here at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere in the Durban musical scene that some of the most ‘connected’ musicians do not in fact seem able or inclined to discuss the workings of their music on a structural level, and a good many apparently struggle with their theory classes. I find the reverse is also quite common.

Another perspective on this division of mental tasks comes from cognitive science. Hearing specialist and saxophonist Charles J. Limb, along with neurologist Allen R. Braun have been studying the brains of improvisers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). By having musicians play memorized pieces as well as improvising on a midi keyboard while inside the imaging tube, these scientists are looking for keys to the functional brain activity present during a creative act. When asked what happens neurologically to the brain during creativity, Limb responded:

As far as my studies have revealed, creativity is a whole-brain activity. When you’re doing something that’s creative, you’re engaging all aspects of your brain. During improvisation, the prefrontal cortex of the brain undergoes an interesting shift in activity, in which a broad area called the lateral prefrontal region shuts down, essentially so you have a significant inhibition of your prefrontal cortex. These areas are involved in conscious self-monitoring, self-inhibition, and evaluation of the rightness and wrongness of actions you’re about to implement. In the meantime, we saw another area of the prefrontal cortex—the medial prefrontal cortex—turn on. This is the focal area of the brain that’s involved in self-expression and autobiographical narrative. It’s part of what is known as a default network. It has to do with sense of self…If we can understand what actually changes in the brain to perhaps reduce conscious self-monitoring—what a lot of expert musicians are doing and what amateur musicians are unable to do—that’s a pretty interesting target for someone to consider when trying to learn to become an improvisor. I think that has implications for describing what gives rise to excellent improvisation and what experts do naturally. (Anstead 2014; Limb and Braun 2008)

It seems then, that an engrossing, multi-dimensional musical activity such as improvisation requires us to curtail certain brain functions. To restrain self-monitoring and self-inhibition makes sense. I see, however, a connection to the relationship between explicit and implicit knowledge in Limb’s idea that we also turn down the brain areas responsible for “evaluation of the rightness and wrongness of actions you’re about to implement.” This can be interpreted as similar to self-monitoring, but could imply an evaluation of theoretical correctness (of explicit knowledge) as well. The point I wish to make, alluded to above and from my own experience, is that maybe too much thinking can get in the way. I believe most performers and coaches would agree.

Yet another angle, or distilled version of this discussion, is one that comes up for me most every day in the evolution and consideration of my practice routine. That is, how much, if any, of our time should we spend on structural, stylistic analyses of the music we are attempting to learn? Is it rather more effective to surround ourselves with well performed examples of the style(s) and imbibe them with all our senses, as we did learning our first languages, practicing and absorbing in continuous succession? Note I have not indicated a learning modality; I think the discussion applies to learning from notation as well as from recordings, videos, memory of live performances and so on. The Western Classical teacher will say that some degree of analyses is helpful if not vital to memorization, and even interpretation, but it is not that sort of repertoire specific analyses I am primarily talking about here. I am referring rather to analysis or consideration of the building blocks of the style, how it compares to other styles, and, what are the universal attributes, if any, that I can learn from or apply to learning a particular music? This leads to the common practice dilemma of current times: How much time, if any, should one spend working on exercises rather than music per se? With the plethora of pedagogical resources available for most instruments and styles now available, and the associated marketing claims used to pedal them, a person could easily be duped into spending all their practice time on exercises designed to take them to the level of super-musician, all the while not actually playing any music. This state of affairs is probably more difficult to navigate for those interested primarily in improvisatory, as opposed to pre-composed, music^[2].

Toro has his opinions on this issue as well; that there are far too many useless books, and that all of rhythm comes down to just a few, archetypal and empowering combinations. He also recommends lots of listening and exposure to whatever style one is interested in playing.

ET: All those books…they should all be burned. I had that vision a long time ago. I realized these books… (pulls some more anguished faces). The first time I met with Terry Bozzio (famous drummer with Frank Zappa and others, and friend and student of Toro’s) he says there’s only six, eight combinations, that’s it. That’s all of drumming…we’re in the same boat. That’s all there is. All the other stuff is…

JD: But you wrote some books…so your premise is that they’re different, huh?

ET: I had to write those books…and it’s just dumb. Its dumb. The only thing you need to practice is very simple. It’s these very simple combinations and downbeats, upbeats and dotted notes. So how difficult can that be? That’s all! (Toro 2012l)

Nevertheless, his exercises can be quite difficult theoretically and technically, especially if taken to the fluency and tempos that would make them directly applicable in music; the question of whether to approach musical training through analytically derived exercises versus simple listening and playing presents itself here as well. The answer, for me, as alluded to above, is that it is indeed difficult to play well and to comprehend on a structural, explicit level, but that this combination of modalities is what allows musical pioneers to potentially take their music in new but informed directions. As with biological evolution, musical evolution has always depended on cross-pollination. Unlike biological cross-pollination, however, artistic cross-pollination can be influenced by the knowledge of the musical ‘parents’, the artists themselves. The reproductive structures of two varieties of a species, barring genetic modification by humans, are either able to combine or they are not. With art, however, while it is often true that new combinations ‘simply happen’, it is also possible for the knowledgeable artist(s) to carefully forge new directions in their art, based on their understanding of several styles, and/or the application of universal archetypes that they understand to be such from careful, creative, informed investigation.

From yet another perspective, if we consider music reading as the locus of the structurally informed musician, and playing ‘by ear,’ or ‘by heart,’ as the realm of the non-structurally concerned ‘un-schooled’ musician, we can pose the language analogy again. Few would doubt the value of literacy as one of the principal capacitators of human kind; consider, however, the idea of being able to read and write but unable express oneself verbally. Surely, as important as the former is, it is based on the latter. It is our expressive capacity that is our communicational foundation. (Winberg 2007) Thus, once again, we see through analogy and through countless examples in the jazz, commercial and classical world—the ‘modern’ world of working, flexible musicians—that the ideal is to have both: To be informed and expressive, to be able to absorb new material theoretically but also with the expressive nuance that can be described and reached for in words and lessons but which always exists at some deeper level in the individual’s ability to hear, and to produce, through their own body and instrument, that ever-nearer-to-direct conduit between hearing and expression, between felt and expressed emotional potency.

1. There are many notable counter-examples, of particular recent interest is the Venezuelan El Sistema program. (“El Sistema” 2014) ↑
   
2. Internet educator Chris Cooke gives a more thorough discussion of this ‘exercises versus music’ point of view (while attempting to sell his own system). (Cooke 2017) ↑
   

Bibliography

As you’ve seen in the text, I have included links to most of these works. If you are interested in purchasing any of them, please consider clicking through and helping to support this labor of love. Thank you! YIR (Yours In Rhythm), John