A forró primer, part 2 - Baião

Let’s start the meat of this series with the rhythm of forró that many drummers are familiar with on one form or another, baião.  For most drumset players, baião simply means this groove:

And I wouldn’t even say that that’s wrong per se.  It’s just missing a lot of nuance that makes a baião what it is.  And without that nuance one could also be playing a forró or a xaxado as all three of these styles have this cell in them:

But it’s the way that that cell is articulated, as well as the other percussion and melody parts surrounding it that differentiate the three styles.

In this post I'll be referring to the instruments of forró.  If you're not sure what I'm talking about, be sure to check out part 1 of this series.

The zabumba is played with both dead strokes (which mute the head and give a short, staccato sound) and open strokes (which allow the head to ring out).  The placement of the closed and open strokes is part of what differentiates baião, forró and xaxado.  In a baião, the first stroke is muted, while the second is open.

Baião also tends to be driven more by an 8th note subdivision, rather than a 16th note subdivision.  That’s not to say one wouldn’t play 16th notes at all.  But in baião the bacalhau plays mostly 8th notes with less 16th note syncopation.  The most common bacalhau parts are:

Put together, some standard baião interpretations would look like this:

This 8th note subdivision mirrors the melodies which, in baião, are also 8th note heavy and are more relaxed and lyrical.  Baiãos also tend to be played and medium tempos.  Check out Luiz Gonzaga singing “Baião”.  It’s quite legato, and sung almost entirely in 8th notes on the beat at a very reasonable and groovy tempo.

The open sound of the zabumba on the “a” of 1, and the relative lack of variations filling out beat 2 provide the more fluid melodies of baião the space they need to breathe.

I believe it's because of that space that variations and fills in baião are used more sparingly than in other forró styles, but here are some ideas you might come across:

Most of these variations show the bacalhau on the upbeat, but you could easily play the other bacalhau parts above.

To apply this to the drumset we don’t even need to re-write the part.  Simply play the bacalhau part on your snare drum (a cross stick is probably most appropriate), and the low zabumba part on your bass drum.  Given that the closed and open strokes really characterize the different rhythms you may even want to try to imitate this yourself on the bass drum by burying the beater and playing off the head, but it certainly isn’t easy to coordinate at first. 

If you’re able, I would play all four subdivisions on the hi-hat as this most closely mimics the triangle part which is integral to forró grooves:

Most drummers tend to play

with the right hand, presumably out of habit from playing jazz and other styles that rely heavily on that rhythm.  But if the tempo or your current ability won’t allow you to play all four 16th notes, I feel that

captures the essence of the triangle more, especially if you play a small lift on the &, or the e&.

You could also try something I’ve been experimenting with lately, which is playing 1e& on the hi-hat with your right hand, lifting on the &, and snapping the hi-hat shut with your left foot on the “a”, giving you all four subdivisions of the triangle.

Below are all the variations we looked at today, orchestrated for triangle and zabumba.  Drop me and e-mail for a PDF.

In the next part of the series we'll look at the forró rhythm and how it differs to baião.

A forró primer, part 1 - Background, artists, and instruments

I’ve touched on forró and baião on the blog before, but after some questions from friends and students, I figured it was time for a more detailed dive into the defining characteristics of the various rhythms of forró, how to differentiate between them, and how we can apply them to the drumset.

First off, the terms themselves can be a little confusing.  “Forró” is a genre of music originating in the state of northeastern Brazil called Pernambuco.  It is a family of multiple rhythms and dances.  Where the confusion often comes in is that one of the rhythms in said family is called “forró”.  Here’s a little chart to clarify.

THE RHYTHMS OF FORRÓ

-Baião

-Forró

-Xaxado

-Xote

-Arrasta-pé

We’ll talk about each of these rhythms in the coming parts of this series, but let’s first look at a little bit of background.  The roots of the music go back further, but the rise of forró in popular Brazilian culture is typically attributed to the accordion player Luiz Gonzaga.

He is also credited with creating baião as we know it in the 1940s and 50s.  Other well known forró musicians are Dominguinhos, Jackson do Pandeiro, Trio Norestino, Humberto Teixeira, and nowadays, Mestrinho.

While forró can be played on a number of different instruments, and ensembles can range in size and variety, the most traditional forró ensemble is a trio, consisting of an accordion, a triangle, and a zabumba.  A zabumba is essentially a bass drum worn on a sling.  This is where most of our drumset adaptations come from.  The top head is played with a mallet, and is usually muffled in the center, and the bottom head is played with a very thin stick called a bacalhau, creating a very high-pitched snap.

Next time we’ll start looking at the actual rhythms and what we can do with them, but in the meantime, you can check out this live concert of Luiz Gonzaga with his trio.  This will give you an idea of what a traditional forró group looks and sounds like.  If you listen to the whole thing you’ll each each of the rhythms of forró at some point, and you can get an idea of how the zambumba is played.  If you don’t plan to watch the whole thing, you can jump to 19:26 where Gonzaga plays arguably his most famous tune, named after the genre he created, “Baião”.

Brazil

Apologies for the light posting lately.  Since Covid "ended" this year has been delightfully busy, culminating in a 17 day trip to Brazil these last couple week for gigs, lessons, and general hanging out.

In those 17 days I managed to study with three of my favorite drummers....

Kiko Freitas

Edu Ribeiro

Celso de Almeida

....and meet quite a few more at the 21 gigs we went to.  I heard and was able to chat to a number of other musicians whose work I've listened to for many years but have never had the chance to meet or see live, and discovered some serious young musicians who should definitely be known outside of Brazil.  I also had a chance to sit in on some choro, samba, jazz, and even at Vila Isabel escola de samba with Andre Siqueira whose playing I've transcribed for the blog before.

There is, of course, always more to learn, but the trip also confirmed and reinforced much of my understanding of certain Brazil styles, especially samba and forró.  I've had a few pieces in the works the last couple months that I'll soon be publishing with renewed confidence.

I don't want to gush too much here on the blog as this is meant to be an educational resource, so if you'd like to see more pictures and videos from the trip head over to my Instagram page and see "Brazil trip '22" in my stories.

Marcio Bahia RLL sticking

One of my favorite Brazilian drummers, Marcio Bahia, recently posted a few videos to YouTube in which he plays a three-note sticking of RLL as a way to come up with some creative orchestrations over common Brazilian grooves.

It's pretty much the same principal as my 3-5-7 exercise, in which you play odd groupings over duple meter.  But as I said back then, resist the urge to think of this as 3/16 or 3/8 over 4/4 or 2/4.  Just think in whatever meter the groove is in and play 16th notes with a RLL sticking in your hands.

Marcio takes this concept a step further by incorporating accents. Once you're comfortable with placing accents on each part of the sticking you can play some common rhythms that accompany the foot parts.  The RLL sticking will give you some interesting orchestrations of those rhythms if you leave your right hand on the hi-hat or ride, and your left hand on the snare and/or toms.  From there you can/should improvise with both the accent placements and the voicings around the kit.

Edu Ribeiro Baião Language

For those of you wanting to dig a little bit deeper into Forró rhythms, here is a sheet I've put together of some Baião language.  I transcribed these particular phrases from some Edu Ribeiro recordings, so they were all played on the drum set, but they very closely, if not identically, emulate rhythms that you will hear played on zabumba in a traditional Forró ensemble.

If you aren't familiar with some of the basics of Baião you may want to check out the post I wrote about it awhile back, but a stock interpretation would look something like this:

The sheet below contains variations, and fills.  None of these are really intended to be looped over and over like a groove.  Rather, they should be peppered in with a basic Baião as the music dictates.  This sheet makes a great supplement to the Baião Builder.  To create a nice little exercise out of this work out a pattern using the Baião Builder that feels good to you.  Then, create a four-bar phrase by playing the pattern for three bars, and adding in each of the new ideas below in the fourth bar.  Then work out another Baião pattern and do the whole thing again.  Or, add the new phrases to measure three to create an AABA sort of feel.  Do bear in mind though that these new ideas are not only limited to fills, or phrase endings.  You should play them anywhere in the music that you feel is appropriate.

Only the bass and rim/snare parts are shown here as they will work with any of the cymbal variations on the Baião Builder.

Baião

I've been playing a lot of northeastern Brazilian music lately.  When people say "northeastern music" in terms of Brazil, they're generally referring to music from the state of Pernambuco, in easternmost South America.

The music up there has a completely different vibe to that of samba heard in the south around Rio, and dare I say (as much as I love samba), it's much funkier.  There's far too much music in Pernambuco alone for one blog post, so let's start with the most recognizable rhythm that some of you have most likely already heard of or played: Baião.

Baião comes from a family of rhythms and dance steps called Forró.  You can almost think of Forró like ballroom dance.  Foxtrot, Quickstep, Waltz, etc. all refer to both rhythms/tempos and corresponding dance steps.  When a particular rhythm is played, the dancers know what steps to do.  Forró is very much the same.

We already talked about the basics of baião in an earlier post in which I transcribed Edu Ribeiro playing one.  So today I've got a page today help you develop your baião vocabulary.  A lot of you really seemed to enjoy the Jazz Samba Builder, so I figured I'd put together a similar sheet for baião.

E-mail me for a PDF

Baião is very much characterized by upbeats.  There's an accent on the upbeats in the triangle part, and often on wood blocks.  So, when practicing this I'd recommend putting your metronome on the &'s.  Or, better yet, play along to some music...

Luiz Gonzaga is considered the "King of Baião", and is credited with creating it.  Here's a recording of one of his most famous tunes, conveniently titled Baião.  This recording sits a very manageable tempo, perfect for working through the sheet above.

Transcription - Edu Ribeiro, "Baião Doce"

Today I've got for you a groove that comes from the northeast of Brazil called a Baião.  You may have heard of it before, as it often gets a passing mention in method books after the one page on samba.  Baião comes from a family of rhythms called Forró.  I've got a larger piece about forró in the works, so for now we'll leave the history lesson at that.

The underlying rhythmic feel of a baião looks like this:

It's likely that you've seen an arrangement where the & of 2 is also on the bass drum, but I don't think that's very accurate.

In a drumset orchestration, the bass drum is imitating a drum called a zabumba, which is worn on a sling at an angle, much like an old snare drum, but higher.  The zabumba plays both the high sound and the low sound as the top head is played with a beater or mallet, and the bottom head is played with a long, thin stick held in the left hand.  The stick creates a sharp snap sound which we can imitate with a rim click.  It's quite common for the only other percussion instrument to be a large triangle.  So a stock baião orchestration would look something like this:

When a comping instrument is present, it's common for it to chase the low sounds of the zabumba.  This is also often supported by the high sound of the drum like so:

Where I feel the vibe of this rhythm is often lost when applied to the drum set is in the absence of improvisation.  While the part you see above is the foundation of the groove, many drum set players stay there and never move.  It's very common for a forró group to be only a trio: triangle, zabumba and accordion.  As the triangle is the motor and rarely fluctuates, most of the interaction with the accordion must come from the zabumba.

Edu Ribeiro nails this improvisatory element on "Baião Doce", a tune written by bassist Paulo Paulelli for Trio Corrente's debut album.  Check out how the basic baião feel is always present, but is very much embellished with the rim click, and improvisation with the bass drum.

E-mail me for a PDF

"Baião Doce" starts at 25:12