Stepping Into Better Rhythm (with Dave Smith)

If you want an easy way to tighten up your rhythm and start to get in touch with the different layers of the pulse, you’re going to love what I have for you. Today. I’m going to be sharing the first part of Dave Smith’s recent masterclass here at Musical U on the topic of “Rhythmic Roots”, where he introduces a simple but powerful way to improve your sense of rhythm and even when you’re not at your instrument.

So I think you’re really going to love this. Let’s roll the intro clip and we’ll dive in!

Yesterday we had our interview with Dave Smith, and we got to hear about his background in music, how he came to be such an amazing drummer, and his particular approach to helping people develop their sense of rhythm and their rhythmic creativity by really getting in touch with that connection to the pulse.

Today I’m going to share with you the first ten minutes of his masterclass at Musical U, where he talks through the basic foundation of this stepping method that he teaches in the masterclass. After this bit, we went on to 8th notes and 16th notes, as well as all kinds of combinations and creative experiments. But what you’re going to see here is just the foundational method, which in itself can be super useful for you.

So if you haven’t been paying attention to your rhythm, this is a really great way to start doing it. Just do this stepping exercise and start dialing in your sense of the pulse.

One thing I want to call out is you’ll hear him recommend speaking the beats, 1234. And just really pay attention. He says speak it for the whole length of the beat. So a lot of us, if we’re used to counting, we’ll go “one. two. three. four.” He’s really saying go “oooone, twooo, threeee, foooour”.

That’s really important to get a sense of the length of the beat. And actually just that in itself can be a really enlightening change to make.

He’s going to talk you through using your feet, your hands, and your voice. And even with just the quarter note beats, like he’s going to run you through, you might find it a bit tricky. So don’t worry if you do! He’s going to say something at the beginning that really is important to pay attention to there.

Just to say, if you’re listening to the audio podcast, you’re not going to be able to see the demonstration of what you do with your feet.

He’s going to explain it, but just in case you need a heads up on what you’re going to be doing, he has you step out with one foot and then bring the other foot to join it. Then step out with that foot and bring the other foot to join it. So it’s this four part step.

You go out with the left, bring the right to join it, out with the right, bring the left to join it. Super simple if you see it. And hopefully that explanation, if you’re only listening, that will help make sense of it for you.

And I do really encourage you to join in as we go here. Obviously, you can listen back again if you don’t get it the first time or you want to practice it more. But I’d really encourage you to step along, clap along, speak along, and I think you’re going to really enjoy this way of getting in touch with the pulse.

Here we go.

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We’re going to go through a simple method of stepping, clapping, and using our voice, saying. So the “step clap say”, and I call this the triangle of inner pulse.

You know, these three elements, what we’re trying to do is get them connected together. And actually, yes, we can practice to a metronome, and that’s going to help our timekeeping. But unless we’re kind of synchronized in within ourselves, we’re going to not really have much of a chance to connect with other pulses and other rhythms.

So the first port of call is getting in touch with what your internal sense of rhythm is. And wherever it is, whatever level you’re at, you’re going to find out by kind of stripping this back. There’s no instrument involved.

We’re doing things that we can, we’ve all done before. And you’re going to find out exactly where, you know, where does it become difficult or where is it, like, okay, if I put the step in or if I put the clap in now, my step has gone funny, okay. So I know I need to take out the step and just actually finding your own practice point with where you’re at. So if at any point I do something that’s too advanced or, like, beyond, you can just go to a simple step. You could take the step out and just follow the clap. You could take everything out and just follow the “say”. There’s something you can do today as we work together to kind of stay inside the moment.

And then when you watch back, or you can make some notes and you’ll have an idea about what, maybe some practice points for yourself after the session. So really fend off your self-critic, if you like. “Oh, I can’t do this”. It’s like, well, you can do it. You just need that next step in the process.

Okay, so that’s a little pep talk about fending off your self critic and your superego and being kind to yourself. And when you’re in that position, then you can actually learn and discover and improve and make progress. Right? So that’s really important.

So, yeah, the triangle of inner pulse. And so we’re going to start with. Actually, we won’t do the step to start because I’ve got a little video to play you with the step.

We’re just going to work on the clap, a little bit of technique. So I’m left handed, so I’m just going to lead with my left. Okay. And if you’re right handed, you lead with your right. And just keep the other hand for now. Like, there’s all sorts of different ways of clapping.

Right. But we’re just going to try and get a nice, relaxed clapping technique together. So we’re looking, if we all just clap, and you’re just looking for an even sound. Okay. So we’re quickly getting a technique together that we can use to try out rhythms.

That’s all we’re doing. And I’m not snapping it or I’m not wasting a lot of energy here. Okay.

Okay. And that’s that. And then the say, we’re going to start by just saying the pulse notes in four.

And what we can do when we’re saying the pulse notes, we can think about the whole length of the note. So if I put the metronome on, this will help us. 1234-1234 do this.

I’m linking them together. Okay. We’re getting a sense of kind of almost like a circular approach to saying the pulse.

1234-123-4234 and if you need to take a breath, you can breathe in like I just did with the sound, like that. Or you can just take a couple of beats off and breathe, but just make sure you don’t run out of breath. So let’s just join the clap and the pulse together.

Okay. After 4123. Here we go.

1234-1234-1231-2341-2341-2 you can be a bit sing, like, about it. 2341-2312-3412-3341 okay, now with the step, I’ll just talk you through the step. So you all need to be standing for this.

And we’re not going to be, like, stepping. You don’t need a lot of space. We’re going to try and stay pretty much on the spot.

And the step is not just side to side, it’s actually right, left comes in, left goes out, right comes in. So it’s kind of four movements.

Right, left, left, right, right, left, left, right. And I’m just going to play you a little video. Okay.

We’re going to get the feet going first. Can you hear that? Three, four. Yeah.

Thank you. So out with the right on the one, out with the left on the 31234. You can make the vocals.

You can make that a long note. Three, four. 1234-123-4123 bring the clap in one, three, four.

Okay, so if you’re sitting, if you can’t stand, you can do this sat down and you can just tap both feet together.

Where just the idea of the step is really to secure the pulse. And this is like, if you see a samba band, you’ll see them stepping like this. It’s kind of an African marching dance step.

And what’s cool about it in four is that our right foot, if we start with the right, is on beat one. And so we can start clocking the bar. Obviously, we’re saying out loud, 1234.

But we’re also. We’ve got this feeling of a bar as we step through these four steps. And we’ve also, on the out step, we’ve got beats one and three.

And part of building your internal sense of rhythm is to start to feel different layers of pulse. So beats one and three, where you’ve got beat one. So one in a bar, you’ve got two in a bar.

And then we’re saying all the pulse notes, and in a minute, we’re going to say the 8th notes and the 16th notes. So we’ve got these kind of different ways of simultaneously feeling the bar. And actually, the step is helping us kind of get into that feeling.

So we can put our mind to our step and get into the feeling of those beats as opposed to theorizing what they might be, you know, in our head, we actually get to experience it. So part of this method is to actually, like, feel, feel stuff and. And be like, oh, yeah, I’m feeling it here. Oh, this is throwing me. I need to just, like, relax a bit or whatever you need to do. But it’s like there’s an experience going on, and it’s very immediate.

Right, we can all. We can all do this straight away, so let’s just do a bit more of that before we move on. So after 41234, out with the right, left, left, right, right, left, left, right.

1234-1234-1234 bring the clap in. 1234-1234-1234-1234-1234 and try and stay on the spot. Not, like, side to side too much.

Okay. Just try and stay on the. On the.

On the spot. And you saw on that video, I kind of turned my foot in a little bit on the instep, so you can try that. 1234-1234-1234-1234 okay, take the voice out back in 12341.

1234-1234-1234-1234-1234

So clap out. Actually just on beat one.

1234-1234-1234-1234-1234 Step with the clap so you can start putting your mind to your feet.

1234-1234-1234-1234-1234 and just the feet. Left, right, left, right. Okay, we’re going to look at 8th notes next.

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Awesome, okay, we’ll leave it there. I hope you joined in with that, and I hope you had fun with it, even just that basic exercise.

Don’t feel sheepish or embarrassed if you got a bit muddled. We had a really great discussion, actually, during the masterclass about that, of how your thinking mind can get in the way, or if you start paying attention to your feet, then your hands stop doing what they meant to you, and so on.

So don’t worry if even just that quarter note version was a challenge for you. That means it’s a really good exercise to work with and to practice.

And I love what Dave said about fending off that inner critic and how vital that is. You know, you can’t be in that space of judgment and reprehension and regret and shame and learn.

You need to turn off that inner critic. You need to get into enjoying it and experimenting, and that’s what allows the learning to happen.

So just at the end there, you got a little taste of where the masterclass went. We started, you know, adding bits, removing bits, focusing just on particular beats, and trying different combinations to get into those layers of the pulse, and then working with 8th notes and 16th notes and all different combinations and creativity.

So it was a lot of fun, and I really love it as a way to, you know, even without your instrument in hand, start tuning into the pulse, start exploring rhythm, and start getting the brain and the body connections needed to have good rhythm so that then when you do go to an instrument, you’re able to apply it there, too.

If you’re a member of Musical U, you can watch that whole masterclass now, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to check it out.

We had a lot of fun. Seeing all of our members stepping and clapping together was awesome.

Dave has a really exciting live workshop coming up next week that I want to make sure I remember to mention.

So on Tuesday the 14 May, he’s going to do a whole workshop featuring this method, going deep with it and also talking a lot about how to bake this into your practice routine and how to kind of continually develop your rhythmic chops. I’m going to have a link in the shownotes alongside this episode so you can check that out.

And Dave very kindly set up a special coupon code just for you guys. If you type it in MUSICAL-U, all capitals. Musical dash U, when you buy your ticket, you’ll get a big discount on the regular pricing, which is awesome.

It was already a really good price and you get lifetime access to the recording, so this should be a no-brainer for anyone who enjoys this idea of stepping and clapping and really tuning into your sense of the pulse and abilities in rhythm in this kind of way. So definitely worth checking out that workshop coming up next week.

Awesome. I’m going to be back tomorrow with I think…. I think I’m going to do an episode all about my zombie cowbell.

And yes, you heard me right! Zombie cowbell.

I think that’s going to be the topic of tomorrow’s episode, so don’t miss that. I’ll be back with you tomorrow. Cheers!

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