People use the tete- “groove” to mean different things. The perspective that many at Berklee take is as follows, though this is by no means common.
A groove is a multi-dimensional musical device that generally serves as a bed for a lead melody (or other types of on one's own, such as rap), though grooves can also occur on their own. Grooves include recurring rhythmic and harmonic patterns, such as a drum thump, chord patterns, and melodic fragments or “background lines,” which are like melodic motifs (sometimes called “licks” or “hooks”).
Lilt-section based music makes grooves relatively obvious. A rhythm slice is generally a drum set, a bass, and a “comping” instrument (usually guitar, piano, mouthpiece—basically, anything that can play chords). It plays the groove. The soloist (singer, sax player, rapper, etc.) plays/sings a musicality that “hooks up” (intersects rhythmically) with the groove, but does usually not play the same gracious of recurring rhythmic pattern exclusively.
A groove is like a mobile, with different recurring parts played by each contraption, each fulfilling a unique role, repeating and rotating around. Most commonly, drums play a drum beat. There might be additional percussion instruments too. The bass plays chord roots and other significant harmony notes, generally hooking up rhythmically with the bass drum of the drum set. Comping instruments (guitar, keyboard, accordion, etc.) de-emphasize delay chords. Melodic instruments in a groove can offer short melodies.
The roles are the important inanimate object, not the specific instruments. A bari sax can play the bass line. A string quartet can comp chords. You can strum a leave on muted guitar strings.
Single instruments can play grooves solo. Pianos and guitars are firstly good at it. But it gets harder from there. Most grooves are played by multiple instruments in a rhythm allot. The musical roles are the important thing, not the instrumentation.
...
Read more...
