Groups of 3 and 2

You have already played hits between the beats and counted 1 & 2 &. Patterns with several of those hits are hard to remember that way. This lesson teaches the trick musicians use: stop counting one long count to eight, count in short groups of 3 and 2 instead, and play a hit on the first count of each group.

From theory: time signatures · Eastern theory: tāla

The problem

Take the pattern in the next section. Counted the way you learned, its three hits fall on beat 1, the & of 2, and beat 4. Those are three awkward places to memorise, and a longer pattern would have many more.

The trick: count in groups

Chop the eight eighth notes into a group of 3, a group of 3 and a group of 2. Then count each group from 1: 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2. The hits are simply on every 1. Same three hits, but now it is a chant you can remember.

How to read it: the numbers along the top are still the beats, 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &, with a faint line before each beat. The Count row under them is the chant, one number to a column. Each bold 1 starts a group, and that is where the hits are. The blocks under the grid show the same thing: each block is one group, and the number in it is how many counts it lasts.

In notation: the 3-3-2 shows up as the note lengths. Two dotted quarters (three eighths each) and then a plain quarter (two eighths). The gaps under the grid and the lengths written here are the same numbers.

1. Press play and listen to the three hits. The gaps between them are long, long, short.
2. Tap the count 1 2 3 4 with your foot, and say the chant out loud: 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2. The chant runs at the speed of the eighth notes from lesson 2, so it fits two numbers to every foot tap.
3. Clap only on each 1.
4. Stop saying the chant and keep clapping. You are playing the tresillo.

Same chant, one more hit

Keep exactly the same chant and add one more hit, on the 2 of the second group. That is the habanera. Nothing else changed, which is why it sounds like a close relative of the tresillo.

A busier cousin

Not every pattern is built from 3s and 2s. The cinquillo plays five hits in the same eight eighths, with gaps of 2, 1, 2, 1 and 2. Say long, short, long, short, long and clap each one. It keeps the tresillo's limp and fills it in.

Longer groupings

The same trick works on longer patterns. Chop sixteen eighths as 3-3-3-3-2-2 and the bar sounds like 6/8 until the two twos pull it back. Chop ten as 3-3-2-2 and you have a bar of 5/4. Chop nine as 2-2-2-3 and you have a Turkish limp: aksak. Nine has four groupings with one three and three twos, depending on where the three sits. Here they are with the three first, second, third and, finally, last.