I don’t remember when I first heard the ‘motorik’ beat – it’s one of those things that feels as if you’ve always known it. Over the last few weeks, having been listening to a lot of Bowie’s Berlin period, and reading Hugo Wilcken’s book on Low, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, revisiting favourite songs and albums that utilise it, from the progenitors like Neu! to latter day pretenders like The Horrors, and discovering new examples of it.
To clarify, the motorik beat goes like this:
| Beat | 1 | + | 2 | + | 3 | + | 4 | + |
| Hi-hat | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Snare | – | – | x | – | – | – | x | – |
| Kick | x | x | – | x | x | x | – | x |
If that doesn’t quite make sense, then think of it as dum-dum-dum-tsh-dum-dum-dum-tsh-dum-dum-dum-tsh-dum-dum-dum-tsh in perfect 4/4 time forever and ever.
An ILM thread has…
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TerryMGresham 