Lesson Overview:

In April 2022, Bryan Baker delivered a four-part masterclass series designed to serve as the ultimate primer for serious and passionate musicians. These masterclasses covered four key  principles of music;

• Rhythm
• Melody
• Phrasing
• Harmony

This series of lectures was also made to be somewhat of a companion to the principles of music podcast. The podcast is a deep philosophical look into many different aspects of music and this course will help enlighten the student to be able to get more out of the podcast by better understand these four key principles.

This video is the first installment which will cover Rhythm

Soundbites

2:13 “Historically, Rhythm is the first element of music”

4:30 “Something elemental can become someting engaging by simply using rhythm as your main tool”

6:10 “The thing that drives rhythmic engagement is space”

11:50 “The Metronome will tell you all the stuff you suck at”

12:40 “Think of a solo as a long succesion of riffs, not lines”

15:30 “You’ve gotta get people to buy into the moment”

21:18 “Freedom is about rules”

25:55 “Rhythm also teaches you that you don’t have to have a lot of options”

27:50 “Rhythm is Infinite”

28:30 “Even if you’ve got the worst melodic sense in the world but the best time feel, you;re still getting called for tons of gigs”

29:30 “We must never forget that we’re playing music for human beings, not other musicians”

30:00 “People want to hear new things and we bridge the gap between giving people something new and giving people what they want through rhtyhm”

33:55 “I recognised the way that I felt time best, and then I developed that”

40:00 “Everyone’s got their own origin story and if you don’t acknowledge that, you’re never going to really know what you sound like”

52:35 “I’m not doing anything new, I’m just being me”

54:30 “Rhythm is All Aout Grace Notes”

58:30 “As soon as we try to take music out of its primal world and put it intellectual framework, we kill it. We kill the humanity. It’s about animals”

1:05:30 “If there is anything I’m thinking about, it’s just trying not to get in my own way”

1:32:10 “You will not find a record on Earth, that is worth listening to, that has shitty groove”