Hi fellow musicians. :)

Up here in Ottawa, we just had a great workshop with David Kaynor and George Wilson.... .... it was all about non-melody for melody players.

One of the ideas we talked about was playing rhythm - something very familiar to me as a contra piano player.

The challenge we've had with our community band (10 people) is how to get everyone on the same 1-2 rhythms/grooves.  When we do non-melody, it's everyone doing something different which sounds like a wall of sound.

Do any of you have tricks for sharing rhythms?

In particular, I liked the idea proposed by David in terms of having sentences that remind you of certain rhythms. But what I'd love is a chart showing names for different rhythms and related, where to emphasize beats or drop beats.

Thoughts?? ??? ????

So much of what we do is intuitive but with a large group, there's only 2-3 of us working as a team right now.

With thanks,

Emily in Ottawa