7/23/25 The Yin Yang of Rhythm

Downbeat energy vs upbeat energy.

In it’s simplest form, the 1 and 3 are the down beats and the 2 and 4 are upbeats or back beats. The more you lean on the back beat, the heavier it makes the downbeat.

Listen to the way the bass and guitar or mandolin function in bluegrass. The bass plays the root of the chord on the 1st beat and 5th of the chord on the 3rd beat. The guitar balances that by playing the chord, more or less, on the 2 and the 4.

Similarly in jazz, where the bass is walking on the quarter note pulses but the drums and comping is often accenting syncopations.

They automatically balance each other. When you emphasize one, it tends to make the other stronger as well.

Subdivisions of the beat increase the energy, partly because there are more of them, and also because subdividing emphasize the off beats. In general, the more you emphasize the off-beats, the lighter and more energized it sounds. And the more you emphasize downbeats, the heavier it tends to sound.

Syncopations, which are accented off-beats, raise the energy level and also make us feel the upcoming downbeats stronger. They have a need to resolve to a downbeat the way a dominant chord needs to resolve to the one or tonic chord.

Drum fills are combinations of subdivisions which will tend to emphasize off beats in order to lead weight to the following down beat.

​So the next time you’re listening to a great groove, listen for that balance of upbeat and downbeat energy. That's the Yin Yang of Rhythm!