by Guto Andrade

The seek for the full domain – Part IX

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Characteristic Rhythmic Phrases (Brazilian Genres) – part 1 

What’s up, guitar players? How are you? I hope our journey around the world of the improvising is being interesting to you!

         In the next columns, we are going to know some characteristic phrases of Brazilian Genres (some of them). These phrases are played in percussion instruments and, if played at other instruments (like in the guitar, for example), they will relate well with the genre we are playing, not only using it as phrases in improvisation, but also developing rhythms.

         This month we are going to know some characteristic rhythmic phrases of Samba.
           

<< example 1: >>

   Pronuciation

It is important to understand that playing each of these sentences exactly as they are written isn’t enough. Why? First: you shouldn’t see each sentence only as a ”groove”, but as an extensions one of the other. It’s possible to do combinations with these phrases aiming to get more interesting improvising or conduction. Second: play all the sixteenth notes that aren’t written in a lower volume, it means you should play more clearly and loudly the notes of the phrase, as it’s written down here:

     << example 2:>>

            One of the secret of Brazilian music is almost always play the sixteenth notes that are not written.

            Another thing that can help you to play samba is to feel in 2 undoubled.

            Take a look at the same phrase written in 2/2 doubled and in 2/4:
         <example 3>>

            If you feel the undoubled pace, you can play samba better. It seems it sounds softer… It sounds like brazilian musician playing brazilian music!
         You can play samba in 2/4 or in 4/4, since it is undoubled.

            The phrases above are normally executes in high instruments as a tambourine or a snare drum, for example.
           

Voices of Samba

Notice how the voices are distributed in a samba percussion table:
<< exemplo 4: grade de samba >>

Take a look at some of these voices played in a drum:
<< exemplo 5: samba na bateria >>

Below, you can see an example of a melody using characteristic phrases of Samba
<< exemplo 6 >> 

Some grooves

First, train the suggested phrases using the fingers i, m and a:
<< exemplo 7 >>

Coordinate the phrase with finger p doing the bass drum voice.
<< exemplo 8 >>

These are some characteristic phrases… There are other ways, other phrases, other everything!

The record is “Live in Hamburg”, the guitar player is Baden Powell, the year is 1983.

A huge hug for you all, good studies and much music!

Guto Andrade.