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Backbeat: How to Find the Rhythmic Centre of Every Song
The crack of the snare, the closing of the hi-hat, the clap of the audience—they share a common beat known as the backbeat.
In most popular western music—from rock to country, to hip-hop, disco, EDM and beyond—the backbeat is used throughout. It’s truly the center of rhythm for almost all modern music.
Whether playing or producing, it’s essential to know how the backbeat works, where to find it and why it’s important for understanding modern rhythm patterns.
In this article, we’ll explain what a backbeat is and how you can use it in your own playing and music productions.
Let’s get into the pocket and find the backbeat!
What is a backbeat in music?
A backbeat in music is a steady beat that emphasizes the second and fourth beats in 4/4 time. In almost all cases the drummer plays the backbeat on the snare drum or with a clap—or with a closing hi-hat pedal to simulate a clap.
A classic, 4/4 beat creates a powerful, snapping pulse that aligns the band on where exactly the two and four—and by consequence, the one and three—are felt in a song.
A quick history of the backbeat
If you’ve ever checked out classical music, there’s not much out there that features a snare drum slamming on the two and four.
That’s because backbeat rhythms are rooted in the early days of blues and jazz that came out of the southern United States—genres that broke all the rules of classical music.
It’s mind-blowing really, that possibly the only common musical feature between all pop, rock, EDM, hip-hop, country, blues and jazz all is that they all consistently feature a backbeat.
Why is the backbeat important?
The backbeat is the foundation of the song and essential to playing “in the pocket”, which means everyone is playing at the same tempo and the song has a “groove” to it. For that to happen, the backbeat has to line up with what the bass is playing along with the rest of the arrangement.
The drummer has to pay close attention to the band’s rhythm patterns, and the rest of the musicians must pay attention to the drummer, in order to play in the pocket. It’s well understood in drumming circles that when the backbeat falls out of time or gets “flipped” to the one and three, the music will be at risk of falling apart.
You’ll need to practice playing and hearing the backbeat—and making sure it stays in time with the song’s rhythm.
The instrument that plays the backbeat in almost all music is either the snare drum or the hi-hat.
How to find the rhythm of a song
The rhythm of a song is simply the pattern in which beats are accented. A backbeat is a consistent, accented rhythm, so in terms of notation and sound, it’s relatively simple to read and understand. Here’s how to get started.
Learn what it looks like
Learning how to recognize a backbeat is easier if you know a little about reading music. This is what a basic rhythm with a backbeat looks like in music notation.
And, here’s an example of a beat that heavily emphasizes the backbeat.
Train your ear
Training your ear means you can listen to a piece of music and break it down into its basic elements. Some elements, like intervals and song keys, can be difficult to learn. The backbeat is a good place for beginners to start learning how to find the rhythm of a song. And the best way to answer the question “What is a backbeat?” is simply to listen.
Check out this track from Vulfpeck where they contracted the help of Michael Bland—a heavy LA-based drummer who’s played with everyone, including Michael Jackson.
Listen to how hard he’s coming down on the snare drum and how he keeps his fills simple, always making sure to either hit or embellish the two and four counts during his fills.
Ringo Starr from the Beatles is another great drummer to check out—listen closely to how he never loses the backbeat during his fills, almost always coming down on the two and four.
Level up your skills
Now you’re ready to learn more complicated backbeats. For example, where is the backbeat in music written in different time signatures like 6/8?
The short answer is that in 6/8 the backbeat falls on the fourth count—this is where you’ll hear the snare.
Here’s how that looks in music notation.
If you want a deeper explanation of why, you’ll need to brush up on your rhythm theory—but in short, a bar of music will contain strong and weak beats that alternate.
In classical music theory, strong and weak beats are used to explain duple and triple time.
Duples are groups of two notes (strong-weak), whereas triples are groups of three notes (strong-weak-weak). For example, a 4/4 beat is a duple meter backbeat with two groups of duples resulting in a strong-weak-strong-weak pattern.
In 6/8, which is a duple compound time signature, you’ll hear a strong-weak-weak strong-weak-weak pattern within each triple group.
But you’ll also hear a duple strong-weak pattern between the two groups of triples.
That’s why rhythms with a backbeat reduce the 6/8 time signature to a duple meter, in that the two groups of three are felt as a single duple group.
In 6/8, the two groups of three are felt as a single duple group.
If that doesn’t make sense don’t worry. It’s mainly the reason behind why music is written in 3/4 and odd time doesn’t really have a backbeat—since these time signatures can’t be reduced to a duple group.
How to play the backbeat
Answering the question “What is a backbeat in music?” is easy. Learning to play it is another story. Playing the backbeat can feel awkward for even the most seasoned drummers—and the answer is to listen and practice.
Practice playing the tempo first, then use a metronome to practice your backbeat feel. Explore beyond the videos above to study your favorite players, or find drum samples that emphasize the backbeat.
Like most things in music, practice makes perfect.
Experimenting with the backbeat
Once you’ve mastered the basic 4/4 beat, you can zoom out and look at why the backbeat is so special and how you can play around with different rhythm patterns.
You may be wondering why would the backbeat, which is so important, fall on what classical music theory calls the weak beat?
Well, I’d argue that that’s what makes the backbeat so interesting.
It breaks the rules of western music theory by adding this off-kilter support to the rhythm and by putting a ton of emphasis on the drums in the kinds of music that use the backbeat.
If you’ve ever checked out classical music, there’s not much out there that features a snare drum slamming on the two and four.
That’s because backbeat-based rhythms are rooted in the early days of blues and jazz that came out of the southern United States—genres that broke all the rules of classical music.
It’s groovy, we instantly recognize it and it makes people nod their heads.
A backbeat is groovy, we instantly recognize it, it makes people nod their heads and you can play around with it to get different kinds of feel.
It’s mind-blowing really, that possibly the only common musical feature between all pop, rock, EDM, hip-hop, country, blues and jazz all is that they all consistently feature a backbeat.
The backbeat doesn’t have to be rigid. It creates tons of room for experimentation.
For example, drummers and producers constantly get creative with the backbeat by dropping it for a bar, doubling it, playing around it, or moving its timing like the legendary producer J Dilla did with his MPC
So learn to recognize and respect the backbeat in your playing and in your beats.
Never never stop listening to the great artists from years past that worked hard to hone their feel and pioneer their own sound.
And if you’re still stuck, join the LANDR community for free. You’ll get free access to tips, tutorials and drum samples that can help you master the backbeat once and for all.
Alex Lavoie works as a staff writer at LANDR by day and writes indie post-punk tunes in his band UTILS while moonlighting as drummer for folk-rock outfit The Painters.
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