Chaabi. That Moroccan groove that made you go WHHAAATTTTTT

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to another time consuming episode the group i'll discuss today is still one of the most confusing grooves i've ever learned and we'll explore it using music by the one and only karim ziad let's get straight into it shall we this north african groove has many variations depends on where you come from and i'll focus on the one that i've learned which is the moroccan shabby this groove is a two bar phrase in six eight so here are two six beat bars and this is the skeleton of this groove we have high notes on beat three of the first bar and b2 of the second bar and we have a low note on beat 5 of both bars the last element we need to add are these four magnificent pieces of metal called krakeb and please mind my excellent accent this instrument tops our groove with the real sauce of this music which is its signature wobbly subdivision so what do these play they play a driving groovy pattern that we can't really express in western rotation and we shouldn't anyway [Music] traditionally this groove is played by percussion so when i adapt it to the drums the snare will take the high note and the kick will take the low note and i'll play a version of what the kraken is playing on the hi-hat check it out where do you hear beat one it's pretty common to approach new music that you encounter with a bunch of presuppositions you kind of just picked up over the years so if you're a western musician like i am you probably have the same bias that i have we tend to assume that the heaviest beat on the bar necessarily correlates with beat one and for a good reason we're surrounded by music that supports this claim so rock and pop and funk and all that in those genres of music the heaviest bit in the bar just happens to also be beat one [Music] but that's simply not true for all music genres ever especially this one right here so our task is kind of hard we need to unlearn this fact and we need to accept that in this genre beat one is not that important well of course it's important but in a different way when this groove is played to a western ear it can very easily flip in our head and sound like this so because of our tendency to hear beat one as the heaviest beat we try to force that frame of mind on any other groove we hear and that's the thing we need to fight to get rid of and man that's difficult okay um so shall we play some music music all these kalimsiad songs are taken from the album efrikia which is an amazing album the first one will be the joker i'll start by playing the song without indicating what the pulse is i'll do that in a second and i'll do that through clapping those claps would be on beats 1 and 4. try to see if you can apply this groove to what you hear and try to locate bit 1. this is not easy [Music] so [Music] did you get it notice how the bass also emphasizes beat 5 of this groove listen to the comping of this short piano segment the bass is playing this exact pattern with the highs and the lows [Music] by the way if the intro of the song confuses you here it is with claps [Music] okay amazing one song done two more to go the next song is called gwarir and it's a bit faster and the faster we go the harder it will be to follow so buckle up another cool thing to notice is this remember that i said that in pop and rock beat 1 is also the heaviest beat so what is that heavy beat what does it mean what does it represent so that beat would be the center of gravity of that groove which means that melodies and fills would gravitate towards that beat which in rock and pop would be beat one in this shabby groove it isn't so we have two gravity points we can use which means we can either play a fail and finish it on beat one which is not the heaviest point in the groove but it is where the pattern starts or we can end the fill on the heaviest beat in this groove which happens to be beat 5. check this out [Music] what foreign [Music] this only emphasizes the heaviness of beat 5 and makes it even more confusing for us westerners damn this song does exactly that i'll play it first so try and find the pulse and i'll add the count in a second [Music] so bye [Music] no no are you following me did you catch it i hope you did because this last song is gonna kick your butt this song is so fast it took me days to get comfortable with the count also because this groove is 2 bars of 6 so 12 beats we can hear it in many ways we can hear it the wrong way we can hear it in three or we can hear it in four this is amalia this is such a trippy groove huh i was introduced to this groove by bertram lemon one of my professors at berkeley and i won't lie as someone who has moroccan roots and has a german teacher teaching him moroccan grooves that was uh that was kind of a blow to my ego but i mean then i remembered that i'm not 15 anymore and learning something new is actually pretty cool and lo and behold this is one of my favorite grooves ever so thank you berta and if you got this far and you enjoy my work consider subscribing giving a thumbs up or commenting also you can join my mailing list and get these videos fresh once they're out straight to your email thank you very much for watching and i'll see you next week you

Channel: Yogev Gabay

Views: 269,544

Keywords: polyrhythm, how to polyrhythm, yogev gabay, time consuming, subdivision, meter, time signature, polyrhythms, rhythms, music education, music theory, karim ziad, chaabi groove, moroccan groove, moroccan chaabi, moroccan chaabi explained, karim ziad the joker, the joker, karim ziad amaliya, amaliya, karim ziad gwarir, gwarir

Id: xM83XVw83yk

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021