J Dilla: A New Theory of Rhythm

    J Dilla is one of the most influential hip-hop producers of all time, and he's been a huge inspiration and influence in my own music over the years.  In the 90s Dilla co-founded The Soulquarians, an alternative hip-hop collective, along with Questlove, D'Angelo, and James Poyser.  The collective was later joined by Q-Tip, Common, Erykah Badu, Bilal, Mos Def, Talib Kwali, and Raphael Saadiq.  It was this collaboration that resulted in the production of albums such as Things Fall Apart (The Roots), Like Water for Chocolate (Common), Mama's Gun (Erykah Badu), and Voodoo (D'Angelo), which were some of the albums that shaped neo-soul.

    When Dilla decided to turn off the quantize function of his MPC and instead create beats with his own sense of timing, he inadvertently ushered in a whole new era of groove in modern music.  Known colloquially as "drunk groove" or "drag beat", this is the type of groove I will break down in this article. 

    In order to break down these types of grooves, there are a few things we need to understand.  First, we need to understand what "swing" is.  Swing refers to a rhythm where alternating subdivisions are played unevenly, giving the rhythm a "lopsided" feel.  It can be thought of as taking a subdivision such as eighth notes, which are typically played evenly, and hanging on every other eighth note for longer while the eighth notes between those would be given a shorter duration.  Let's look at a typical swing rhythm:

 

 Triplet Swing

    This is telling us to hold the first eighth note for the duration of two eighth notes in a triplet, while the second eighth note is is held for the duration of one eighth note in a triplet.  This is referred to as a "triplet swing"  Check it out:

    A cleaner way to write the 2nd measure from above is:

 

    On an MPC swing is quantified in percentages, and I think this provides a useful way to talk about different levels of swing.  Specifically, these percentages are referred to as "swing ratios".  For example, setting the swing ratio at 50% means each eighth note is played with an equal duration, as in the first measure of the example above.

    When the term swing is used without any other information, it is automatically assumed to be triplet swing, where the first note lasts for a duration that is twice as long as the second note, corresponding to a ratio of 2:1, or 66.6%.

Quintuplet Swing

    You can probably guess that quintuplet swing divides the beat into five equal parts.  The first note lasts for the duration of three notes of a quintuplet, while the second note lasts for the duration of two notes of a quintuplet.  This gives us a ratio of 3:2, or 60%.  Take a look:

     Cleaner way to write it:

 

Septuplet Swing

    The septuplet swing pattern divides the beat into seven equal parts where the first note lasts for the duration of four notes in a septuplet, while the second note lasts for the duration of three notes in a septuplet.  This gives us a ratio of 4:3, or about 57% (technically it's 57.142858%, but I'm trying to keep it simple here).  Let's see what that looks like:

 

    Cleaner notation:

    Check out this excerpt from an interview with Questlove about learning to feel these patterns on the drums:

Examples

    A quick note about my process for transcribing these parts: I loaded these songs into Reaper and lined them up with a beat grid.  I tried as best as I could to make sure the peaks of the waveform on the downbeats of each measure lined up to the grid as close as possible.  Then I zoomed in and measured the distance of each hit from the nearest division of the beat.

    For the record, I highly doubt that these guys were thinking about their grooves in this way and breaking them down to such a technical level.  It's far more likely they were just "feeling it" and this just happened to be the result.  In the real world, grooves don't typically fit so neatly into just one of these swing feels.  There is usually some combination of different feels happening, especially in modern hip-hop.  Listen to the drums in Nag Champa (Afrodesiac For The World) by Common:

    The hi-hat is playing a quintuplet swing feel, while the kick is playing subdivisions based on a triplet swing feel:

        Now check out Greatdayndamornin'/Booty by D'Angelo:

Greatdayndamornin'/Booty

(for some reason google won't let me embed certain videos in my posts, and this is one of them.  This is a direct youtube link)

    Here the hi-hat is playing with a fairly consistent septuplet swing feel, while the kick is playing subdivisions of all three swing feels:

    Here's a more modern example from Snarky Puppy.  Check out the outro in Binky, starting at 7:13 in the video:

    The hi-hat is playing off divisions of a quintuplet swing feel, while the kick is playing off of divisions based on both quintuplet and septuplet swing feels:

    One of the issues I have with music theory is that there is so much information and focus on harmony, but extremely little information about rhythm.  In this age of electronically produced music, there are whole new ways to create music that are wildly different from the way it has been done in the past.  With computers comes the world of quantization, which has many modern musicians thinking more about rhythm and the way it lines up to a grid.  The entry level to making music is so much lower than ever before now that anyone with a computer can load some samples into a DAW and go to town, and I think that is awesome.  Anyway, I hope this article was worth your time.

Cheers!