Taylor Sappe

BMI affiliated published songwriter since 1979
Private Music Instructor at DeMelfi School of Music and "in-your-home" instruction

Photo by Ken Gallagher

Playing with "Feel"

Not to be confused with "playing with feeling", playing with "feel" is playing with an awareness of the strong and weak beats that naturally occur in a piece of music and having the skill to execute them with equal intensities (all strong beats being of the same intensity and all weak beats being of the same intensity).  For instance, if the meter of the song is in 4/4, there are 4 beats to each measure and the quarter note gets the beat. If there were all quarter notes in a measure, beats 1 and 3 would be the strong beats and 2 and 4 would be the weak beats in that measure:

When there are 8th notes present, beats 2 & 4 become secondary strong beats, and the 8th notes in between become the weak beats. Strong is represented by a capital S and secondary strong by a small s:

As smaller note groups are added, it breaks down further into various levels of strong and weak beats. All of your primary strong beats should be played at the same intensity, all of the secondary strong at the same intensity, etc.

Notes played in anticipation of strong beats are played as strong beats, even though the attack of the note may occur in a weak beat position:

These principles, when applied to both instruments and vocals, will be the first step in making your recordings and live performances shine.

For complete private instruction, email me.