[stubhead]

I've been listening to Blotted Science, Canvas Solaris, Scale the Summit and some of the tracks off of Petrucci's "Suspended Animation" and trying to figure out how you could even remember the sections and changeups. I can read single-voice lines up to a pretty high level, Bach's S&P's for solo violin and all, but conventional music notation seems like it'd be almost a hindrance for this tech stuff - it's not good for communicating overlapping polyrhythms.

Regarding Dream Theater, I am aware of Petrucci's comment that "ask the four of us how we count the more intricately-timed passages, and you'll get four different answers - all of them equally correct." I am wondering, do those of you who actually play this stuff use drum notation or at least some kind of sectional mapping to track the parts? "The Machinations of Dementia" by Blotted Science was apparently recorded with each musician adding his parts entirely separately, in different studios - that's really mind-boggling, if you've heard that music.

[FortePenance]

I don't read any drum notation. When playing the really hard stuff, i write myself my own little notes, like "1 2 3 41" something like that, y'know. If we're talking about stuff like Meshuggah, then I always just remember to count in my head.

Blotted Science? I have no idea but this is how my drummer friend interpretated Amnesia (starting from 1:48)

5-2-2--2--2--2-2-4--4-2--5--4-2--2-1--1-2--4--3-1--5--2-1--1-1--2--2--1-1---1---1

[Desecrated]

I've done some simpler stuff like 6/8 over a 4/4 (6:4)and some 7/8 over 4/4 and so on (7:4). And this is how I do it;
Program the drums in flstudio. Send them to the drummer together with drumnotation. Then we talk it over, rehearse it and then record it.

Conventional music notation is great for communicating overlapping polys, I'll give you a "internetexample"

4:3

123412341234
x--x--x--x--
x---x---x---

Now with that said, I found some old articles on polys that I've saved on my computer so here are some outtakes:

I'm having trouble figuring out how to determine the polyrhythms used in songs. For example, how can you tell that the intro to Rational Gaze is 25/16? How can I figure it out without being told what it is?

Answer:
Dissect the beat, my man.
Count your 4/4 time and write out the empty bars.
Then you will need to decipher the rhythmic phrases.
Slow it down in your head if you can.
Fill out the bars and do the math.
Four bars of 4/4 will give you 64 16th notes. Make sure all your phrase fragments add up to that number.

Another answer:
They don't count in 25/16 and they don't subdivide either.

When I play (or even listen to) Meshuggah beats, it just.. happens. Sometimes I'm thinking purely in 4/4 and the 25 bit just comes out as a really long rhythm in 4/4, in other times, you actually do feel the 25 bit (or whatever the number is) as a rhythm in itself, but that usually happens with the smaller polymeters.

I wasn't good at hearing rhythms when I first got into Meshuggah, but after listening to them for a while my ear for it has improved.. it is no trouble at all to work out the rhythms in Nothing in my head, for example.

Having spent a LONG time in front of a piano roll MIDI sequencer, I actually almost 'see' every rhythm I hear, instinctively.. so it's really no trouble for me to transcribe rhythms (and notes, for that matter). I recently transcribed into MIDI the entire guitar part to Elastic, without listening to a single note of what I was doing, and it came out perfect...

BUT I didn't start out that way (I think). It just came to me after having played around with sequencers and listening to Mesh for a while.

When you listen to a Mesh song (e.g. the intro to Rational Gaze) an easy way to figure out the timing is to listen for the number of cymbal hits before the rhythm repeats (in this case, it's 7) and the number of 16th beats after the last cymbal hit before it repeats (either 1, 2, 3 or 4, in this case 1), subtract 1 from the number of cymbal hits and multiply that by 4 (you get 24) then add the number of extra 16th beats (you get, surprise surprise, 25).

Well, that might sound convoluted, but I can do it in my head just fine...

Grab a metronome. If you don't have a metronome, buy one. If you're serious about understanding complex rhythmic relationships, a metronome is vital.

Probably one of the most useful things you can do to better understand and express polyrhythms is gain a solid sense of odd subdivisions; no easy task, given that western music doesn't really emphasize the use of much more than duples (two note) and triples.

Perceptually, duples and triples are the easiest to recognize, since they are the building blocks of all the larger groupings (a five is just a two and a three joined together). Given perceptual contraints (meter entrainment thresholds; it's easier for us to count two groups of two than one group of four) and cultural priming (rarely will you hear a song on the radio that explicitly uses subdivisions greater than 4), it is much easier for us to conceive a triplet than an quintuplet - this vocabulary just isn't commonly learned.

Thus... welcome to odd subdivisions. There are a couple of other threads on how subdivisions are used to create polyrhythmic relationships, so I won't go into too much detail here. Basically, though, any polyrhythmic relationship can be forged from an understanding of subdivisions. To determine the "feeling" of, say, 5/2, one can practice counting and walking ( http://www.tandjent.com/meshforum/viewtopic.php?t=10470 ), but how does one initiate the counting without prior knowledge of the feeling of five counts per beat in the first place?

When first getting started with these, it's often difficult to even determine how to physically evenly space a certain number of notes within a given interval. One thing that helped me (and still does) is, rather than counting in numbers, using multi-syllabic words or phrases (I'd imagine words would work better than phrases). Try, with both your hands, tapping out the evenly-spaced syllables in "Geophysical" (speak it... SHOUT IT if you want to get it faster) over and over, adding an accent to the "Ge" syllable:
Code:

hands: R l r l r L r l r l ...
word: "Ge o phys i cal Ge o phys i cal ..."
count: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 ...


It's probably best to come up with words that appeal to you. The process of picking a word that works forces you to think critically about meter and subdivisions. For our purposes, you're going to want to choice words that put stress on the first syllable (you'd favor "elavator" over "sarcophagus"). Also, these are words that are going to be said repeatedly, either in your head or aloud, so make sure they roll off the tongue easily (If you're having trouble understanding what I mean, try saying the following: "wiggidy-wiggidy-wiggidy-wack", "shiggity-shiggity-shiggity-sha"; most people find the first phrase easier to say, but use whatever works for you)

(Sidebar: the importance of accent / stress on syllables is worth empiracally studying; also - I imagine using words that stress other parts of the word would help out in learning displacement theory)

The next step is to become familiar with each metric cycle, in terms of its full meter potential and (perhaps, more importantly) its potential as a subdivision grouping.

Gavin Harrison ( Gavin Harrison ) has written an awesome book called "Rhythmic Illusions" geared towards drummers, in which he writes about what he calls "rhythmic scales". Tapping on just about any surface. keep a steady click of 40-48 bpm = a quarter note, and drum out about twelve measures of increasing complexity, each measure adding an evenly-spaced sub-divisional note; also, keep in mind, you're always playing in 1/4. The first four measures of this would look like:
Code:

|o-----------|o-----o-----|o---o---o---|o--o--o--o--|
|o-----------|o-----------|o-----------|o-----------|

...and so forth, up to a measure of 12 subdivisions (or more, if you're feeling fiesty) and back down.

Harrison suggests:
Quote:
"Try playing each bar several times until you feel completely comfortable with it. If, when you move onto the next bar it's a bit shaky, try going back and forth between the two bars until you can 'pitch' both subdivisions with confidence."


The next step in polyrhythmic scaling is to span the timing of the beat iterations over two quarter-notes per measure. The first three bars of this scale would look like...
Code:

(triplet)(triplet)
|o-----------------|o--------o--------|o--_--o--_--o--_--|
|1--------2--------|1--------2--------|1--------2--------|


... and then expand to 3/4, then 4/4, and so forth.

Take a look at the third measure. This is how you feel 3-against-2. You count the triplet subdivision, and make salient every second note. So, 5-against-2 would be counted:
"ONE two THREE four FIVE one TWO three FOUR five".
(where the counted numbers mark the 5-cycle, with "one" bolded for emphasis, and the capitalized words mark the 2-cycle)


(More advanced note: Notice, by the way, how neatly the "2" of the 2-cycle fits exactly in the middle of the space between the "3" and the "4" of the 5-cycle? Here's a little trick for x-against-2 relationships that you can use without having to count out the unaccented subdivisions, where x is an odd number: if you divide x/2, the remainder falls right before the second note of the 2-cycle. You have to "feel" this space. Play with a click, and you can think of 7-against-2 as "(one+click) two three four (click) one two three" (or "five six sev", whatever works for you). There are more advanced tricks for relationships with greater denominators that help you guide how to space explicit cycles over implicit cycles as well.)

(Math tip: The first cycle multiplied by the second cycle is the number of beats until resolution, by the way)


If you found any of this helpful, you ought to mosey on over to Gavin Harrison's site and have a look at those books. They're completely wroth the investment.

Zyklonaeon was kind enough to post a slightly different "scale" approach here: http://www.tandjent.com/meshforum/viewtopic.php?t=6128

And also:
Vai.com > Little Black Dots > Tempomental

[guitarplayerone]

For odd times it really helps me to count 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-4 for something such as 10/8 (excuse the incorrect division sign). For polyrythms I often find it easier to think in one rythm with accents than both at once... however if I must think in both, I try to tap the downbeats to one with my feet, while counting or playing the other..

[ShawnFjellstad]

i used to sit and count to determine the time signature, but i don't really do that anymore.
i don't have to count anymore, i can just kind of feel the beat.

[newamerikangospel]

.......in my pants




I find the groove, then count the click. That way I have no preconceived notion of time signatures to mess me up (rational gaze's main riff "feels" natural to me, but the initial idea of 25/16ths doesn't).

[stubhead]

Thanks, that stuff Desecrated linked to is very helpful, especially the Vai article's section about the multiplicative way to analyze time divisions. It's one thing to say "feel the beat", but if you read interviews with the members of bands like Dream Theater & the Mahavishnu Orchestra, they count the stuff.... I basically just have to work out a practice program for myself and then do the work - my oldest drum machine is actually a totally-programmable Yamaha RX-7 from the late 80's, it can do anything you make it (NO presets). I've been doing beat displacement exercises for years but just to generate melodies. I'm O.K. on 5's, 7's, 10's & 14's - but I was just looking at some old Mahavishnu stuff, 15/16 and 19/8? Rowf. It's mostly the overlapping things that the new math metal guys are doing that freak me out, but I've got to spend some time re-familiarizing myself with the basics first. Shucks - I was hoping for the magic secret shortcut....

[newamerikangospel]

Yeah, as with anything, the only real shortcut is practicing instead of just fumbling around with it until you get it.

And the interview petrucci did with guitar (one player?) that had the gigantatour cover, he said that he worries less about counting and more about feeling. Its one thing to be able to count in the forementioned 25/16, but to make a riff/solo/melody line that moves people is another. Hell, some guitar players aren't able to do that in 4/4.

[Desecrated]

Originally Posted by stubhead

Thanks, that stuff Desecrated linked to is very helpful, especially the Vai article's section about the multiplicative way to analyze time divisions. It's one thing to say "feel the beat", but if you read interviews with the members of bands like Dream Theater & the Mahavishnu Orchestra, they count the stuff.... I basically just have to work out a practice program for myself and then do the work - my oldest drum machine is actually a totally-programmable Yamaha RX-7 from the late 80's, it can do anything you make it (NO presets). I've been doing beat displacement exercises for years but just to generate melodies. I'm O.K. on 5's, 7's, 10's & 14's - but I was just looking at some old Mahavishnu stuff, 15/16 and 19/8? Rowf. It's mostly the overlapping things that the new math metal guys are doing that freak me out, but I've got to spend some time re-familiarizing myself with the basics first. Shucks - I was hoping for the magic secret shortcut....

I would just subdivide them. count 15 as 5+5+5 and 19 as, 4+4+4+4+3

[Stitch]

I tend to write and play this stuff a lot, and its damn good fun. Its hard to explain, but eventually you just get a feel for it. I write and play in 7/8 or 9/8 so often now I hardly notice I'm doing it.

For the more complex stuff (one of our songs has a section in 29/16 against 4/4) I remember the rhythms on its own and where its repetitions lie against the 4/4 beat - i.e the displacements.

In other cases I just remember the rhythmic pattern and keep playing that (Like in New Millenium Cyanide Christ or I)

Some of the crazier, less structured stuff I have problems with (like From A Second Story Window) - but I think thats more to do with the fact that they don't really write in signatures, they just deliberatly right oddly.