The Rhythm Book-Rhythmic Development and Performance in 4/4 by Rory Stuart Review

The Rhythm Book Series by Rory Stuart

Although this book is advertised as a follow up to “The Rhythm Book-Intermediate Notation and Sight-Reading, I would say it is a much more conceptual book than the prior books.  Rhythmic Development and Performance in 4/4 takes a step back as Rory writes in depth on how to apply many of the rhythmic ideas learned in book 1 & 2 to different styles of music such as Swing and Brazillian grooves such as Sambas and Bossa Novas.  The book also provides rhythmic examples over a host of other styles of music that I am unschooled in. Baiao, Frevo,  Maracatu, Partido Alto, Capoeira, Calypso,  as well as many others.

The book comes with 67 audio samples of the exercises in the book that are invaluable and essential to a student studying this material in my opinion. There are many more written examples in the book that don’t have audio files and many of them look difficult rhythmically.  I will say that I think it would be amazing to hear audio files of these examples as well.  All of these audio samples and worksheets are available on the roryrhythmbooks.com website for download after you purchase the book.

The Rhythm Book-Rhythmic Development and Performance in 4/4 starts out with discussing a jazz “swing” feel.  The importance of 2 & 4 is stressed as well as the art of accenting and ghost notes are discussed.  Rory provides audio samples of jazz lines with accents on the downbeats, off beats and a mix of both that I found revealing to listen to as well.

After the Swing section Rory delves into some Brazilian style rhythms.  I love this quote from the beginning of this section of the book:

“I seldom run across a jazz musician who, when a commonly played Antonio Carlos Jobim tune is called, replies “No, let’s not play that, I can’t play Brazilian music.”  Yet, what many jazz musicians play, when they try to play a Brazilian piece, sounds like a sort of anemic wedding band-ish thing that has only the most superficial resemblance to real Brazilian music.”

Haha!  That quote above about sums it up!  I used to play many of those Jobim standards after college and I honestly just played them as if I was playing jazz.  Never really listened to authentic Brazilian music before that!  I apologize to the Brazilian culture!

After the section of the book on different styles, there is a section on Funk that is pretty cool. Rory gives many examples such as the bass line to James Brown’s Cold Sweat, Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life”, and tunes such as “Oakland Stroke” and “Squib Cakes” as well as many others as he talks about the rhythmic elements of funk music.

THE RHYTHM BOOK – Rhythmic Development and Performance in 4/4

After the Funk section, Rory writes on the topic of ballads.  He touches a little bit on the ballad playing styles of Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Wes Montgomery, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Jim Hall, Miles Davis, etc……  These are largely conceptual descriptions of their style and playing but Rory does include some written out music and phrases throughout.

Much of the book after these sections is focused on practice suggestion and tips.  Rory has included sections on:

• Feeling Time and Form
• Defining the Time in your Playing
• Fast and Slow Tempos
• Tips on Performing and Syncing Your Time with Others
• Rhythmic Interaction in a Band Setting
• Developing Rhythmic Ideas

All of these sections come with lots of tips, advice and practice suggestions.  I found the “Defining Your Time” section interesting in that Rory writes about working with his combo groups on taking unaccompanied solos for the first chorus of a solo as a way to test a students time and feel.  He also has an interesting exercise called  “Hide the Metronome” which I have never done with a student but sounds interesting in developing an internal sense of the time for the student.

THE RHYTHM BOOK – Rhythmic Development and Performance in 4/4

Great job by Rory Stuart and Rhythm & Dues in creating “The Rhythm Book-Rhythmic Development and Performance in 4/4”.  It does cover many rhythmic and stylistic principles so that the student has a firm foundation on which to build further rhythmic studies.  The addition of the exercise clips on the website are a huge bonus that makes this book so much more useful although it would be great if Rory could provide audio clips of all the examples in the book as well.

On a personal note, I wish I had a book like this to work out of back in my college days.  I remember the topics of “swing” and “accented notes” being a mystery to me back then that I had to basically figure out on my own.  A book like this would have helped me decipher some of what I was hearing and help me figure out how to perform it so much faster.

If you end up getting the The Rhythm Book-Rhythmic Development and Performance in 4/4 by Rory Stuart  please feel free to come back and share your thoughts and comments with all of us below.  Thanks to Rory Stuart for writing such an in-depth and complete study on rhythm.  Looking forward to the next book in the series to be released……….