How does one place a beat 'on' a given note/rest value?

Question

I am reading a book about music for digital artists, and am reading through an intro to drumming. This is the part I am confused with:

''The ride element can be placed on the quarters, eighths, or sixteenths. Placed on the quarters, the ride can add emphasis to the primary hits, a common technique used in dance music. Eighths give a nice flowing sense to the drums. Sixteenths are more intricate and give a greater sense of pace, motion, and energy''.

Credit goes to Michael Hewitt - Composition for computer musicians

Now I know what values notes can have and what they look like and all that, but what I don't get is how you can place somthing... on them? See, I thought the note values represented the beats, not the other way round.

The only thing I can think of is that he is talking about quantization. So, if the grid is quantised to represent a resolution of 16, with 4 beats representing 1 quarter (4 of which represents a bar), then the beats can be snapped, or placed, on any of the sixteenth rests (because really that's what they are before the beat is used to fill that rest), where a quantisation of 32 means beats can be placed upto a 32'nd rest.

So here, I would have a beat on every quarter, or every 4 sixteenths:

And hear I guess I have a ride on a 32'nd, coloured blue.

If this is the case, I would further presume that you can't place a beat on say, both a sixteenth and a 32nd, but that you could place it on the 32'nd that comes before or after the 16'th. Though, placing it on the 2nd 32nd would be said to be placing it on the 16th, I think. As you can tell, am obviously an expert :D

Answer 1

Now I know what values notes can have and what they look like and all that, but what I don't get is how you can place somthing... on them?

The author is saying "place a sound every X": as in every quarter, or every eight, or every sixteenth. Here are some examples of one measure in 4/4. The grid is divided in sixteenths.

Every quarter:

Placed on the quarters, the ride can add emphasis to the primary hits, a common technique used in dance music.

Every eighth:

Eighths give a nice flowing sense to the drums.

Every sixteenth:

Sixteenths are more intricate and give a greater sense of pace, motion, and energy''.

All these are common ride, cymbals, and hi hat rhythms. This is what the lesson is introducing you to. Perhaps you are over-thinking it?

Basically, the author is saying "do what they are doing on this video, but paint it on the piano roll instead of performing it".

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As a side note, as Greg Jackson pointed out in the comments, in music theory beat normally refers to the basic unit of time. From your question and context we can deduce that you are using beat to refer to a sound rather than a time unit, but being aware of that distinction is important to avoid confusion from you and/or the people you are chatting with.

Answer 2

The beat exists without any notes being played. Imagine the bandleader saying "and ah one, and ah two and ah one two three four" - the next "one" is the downbeat marking (nominally) the beginning of the piece. Time passes, the pulse continues, but there need not be any notes "placed" or "put" on any of those "beats." I think you need an understanding of time signatures before this question can have a meaningful answer. In Common Time, aka 4/4 There are 4 beats per measure, and the quarter-note is the primary beat. In Cut-Time (2/4) there are still four beats to the measure, if you count each beat is an eigth-note. This happens as time passes, regardless of any sound being produced by any instrument or voice. The tempo and time signature determine the "beats" regardless of anything else. See John Cage's infamous 4′33″.