Search Results

Sign in Modify your search

Narrow Your Choices

Format

Type

Life event

Date

Topic

Instrument

Era

Availability

 1-2 of 2 Results  for:

  • Rhythm and Metre x
  • Popular Music x
Clear all

Article

Dr Rhythm  

Anne Beetem Acker

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2014
Published online:
20 January 2016

[Doctor Rhythm]

Electronic percussion instrument released in 1980 and manufactured by the BOSS division of Roland. Very popular, small, inexpensive and easy to use, the Dr Rhythm model DR-55 was one of the first drum machines to use ‘step-write’ programming, where in ‘write’ mode the user can select a sound and use buttons to move incrementally (‘step’) through each beat of the beat pattern and select a choice of sounds. It can store up to six 16-step drum patterns and two 12-step patterns, the latter for triple-metre rhythms. Its four (analogue) voice-circuit sounds are snare, kick drum, rim-shot, and hi-hat. The pattern can be switched during playing, and volume, tempo (45 to 300 beats per minute), tone, and accent can be globally adjusted. The DR-110 Graphic (1983) adds a graphic display showing a step-programming grid for the drum voices, and includes 16 preset patterns plus 16 memory locations for user-programmed 12- or 16-step patterns, plus two ‘song’ memories for up to 128 bars of patterns. Its drum sounds can be programmed or played in from drum pads....

Article

Groove  

Geoffrey Whittall

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
22 September 2015

Groove is the result of a musical process that is often identified as a vital drive or rhythmic propulsion. It involves the creation of rhythmic intensity appropriate to the musical style or genre being performed. Groove is created within a piece of music by shifting timing and dynamic elements away from the expected pulse or dynamic level. A musician’s sense of pulse is subjective, not objective; musicians interpret and perform the passage of time and the presence of the pulse in slightly different ways. As musicians perform, the push and pull of those subjective interpretations adds tension to a performance and produces a sense of groove. Much modern audio recording and production software has a “humanizing” function to replicate that feeling of subjectivity, which helps subdue the otherwise robotic, or mechanical sounds of computer-generated music.

Musicians often deliberately manipulate the specific timing of some musical elements to create a groove, notably in funk and jazz. Discussions of groove often center on the performance of the ...