# Writing Djent - Time Sigs



## SwampAshSpecial (Feb 15, 2011)

so basically, I wanna write some Djent type stuff, but all the riffs I keep coming up with are in 3/4 or 4/4 and just don't sound Djenty... any help? particularly with time sigs and rhythm, actual melodious parts are no problem to me...


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## Empryrean (Feb 15, 2011)

listen to more syncopated rhythms, it'll hit you eventually.

edit:btw syncopation can occur in any time sig, don't assume 7/8 or 11/16 will make you sound djent just because you're constrained to the asymmetrical coupling


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## Stealthdjentstic (Feb 15, 2011)

1. Open guitar pro
2. Change to random time sig
3. Put some zero's in randomly
4. Delete some zero's and put in some tapped fills, or runs.
5. Go into some powerchords (the extended ones) and play them 
6. Write ambient stale clean section under powerchords.
7. Play a solo


That should get you sounding like 74% of the forum 

To do it well takes time and practice dude


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 16, 2011)

Yeah, dude, you can come up with crazy syncopation in any meter. However, it's always a good idea to get familiar with different rhythmic ideas. And just because I like procrastinating on schoolwork, here's a huge lecture on rhythm:

First, some basic concepts.

&#8226; Metrical rhythms - Non-syncopated stuff. Things like 1 2 3 4, 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &, 1 2 & 3
&#8226; Syncopated rhythm - Stuff that doesn't fall on the beat. 1 2 (3) (4) &, (1) & 2 (3) & 4 &, etc. Think of this as an accent in an unusual place. This is a pretty straightforward example, where there's a snare hit on the & of 4 for about half the song. A simple syncopation, but I'm just trying to state a principle:



&#8226; Free rhythm - Has no discernible beat, or there is a suggestion of a beat with liberties taken with durations and such. This is usually restricted to solo performances (early country blues recordings are replete with rhythmic freedom), but there are examples of unmetered music for larger ensembles. One such example is the beginning of the fourth movement of Eric Whitaker's "Five Hebrew Love Songs", where the different sections of the choir are given a set pitch on which to do random rhythms. (At 5:05 here: )



A lot of that kind of stuff in the 20th and 21st centuries is aleatory. There is a sizable portion of unmeasured Baroque fantasias and toccatas, which pretty much operate on this this idea of "do what you feel like with the rhythm, the notation is just a suggestion". A similar concept is rubato, which is simply making music go gradually faster or slower. The terms "accelerando" and "ritardando" communicate that idea.

Now, with those concepts in mind, you can explore the different styles of meter. First, we'll look at "divisive meter" - meter that divides a measure into a number of equally-spaced beats. The two categories in here are simple and compound meter. Simple meters divide the beat into two smaller beats, then two smaller beats, and two smaller beats...

Beat: 1 2 3 4
Division: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
Subdivision: 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a

Compound meter divides the beat into three parts. From there, it's twos again.

Beat: 1 2 3 4
Division: 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a
Subdivision: 1 e a & e a 2 e a & e a 3 e a & e a 4 e a & e a

You can do this with any number of beats. If you say "simple 3", the division will be 1 & 2 & 3 &. If you say "compound 3", the division is 
1 & a 2 & a 3 & a. Compound meters are often referred to by the number of beats in the division, so "compound 3" is the same as 9, and "compound 4" is the same as 12. If you do a compound 5, you can write the time signature as 15. 15, 21, and larger compound signatures aren't ones that you see written down very often. I have a piece that has a few measures of 15, but that's only because I don't want to go through the hassle of putting triplets on everything in Finale, then hiding the brackets. Although, I suppose I could just choose a different time signature to display. Hmm...

Moving on! There's another way of looking at this meter stuff. Technically, simple meters are just groups of two notes stuck together:
1 2, 1 2, 1 2, 1 2 = 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &. And compound meters are just groups of three notes stuck together.
1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 = 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a. In that case, we aren't dividing the measure into beats, but adding beat groups together. Which brings us to...

Additive meters! My favorite! These guys hold a special place in my heart. The previous samples that we looked at, 2+2+2+2 and 3+3+3+3, sound no different from 1&2&3&4& and 1&a2&a3&a4&a, because they're completely symmetrical beats. However, as soon as you start mixing up the groupings, something magical happens. Want a more interesting way to arrange a measure of 4? Try 3+3+2. This happens all the time, from pop music to metal, and beyond:

Coldplay - Clocks


Nile - Utterances Of The Crawling Dead

(^ The opening riff on this one alternates 4 measures of 3+3+2 with 2 measures of regular 4, then does the same thing with 4 measures of regular 4 the second time around.)

Check out the rhythm at the beginning of this:

Death - Spiritual Healing


2+2+2+2+3+3+2

Adds up to 16. Looks a little complicated, but you can break it down to this:

[2+2]+[2+2]+[3+3+2]

Hmm, looks like 4 bars of 4. At 3:04, Chuck regroups those 16 notes as 3+3+3+3+2+2. He's playing around with this additive 16 idea, the tricky bastard.


You can also divide 12 in a number of ways. 3+3+2+2+2, 3+2+3+2+2, 2+3+2+3+2... I cover this a little in a thread on MG.org - http://www.metalguitarist.org/forum...n-5-4-time-jazz-music-irony-3.html#post270943

Also in that thread is another revelation: you don't have to stick inside this time signatures of 2, 3, 4, 6, 12 stuff. What happens if you just stick 2 and 3 together? Bingo! Odd meter! Let's look at a few of these.

Rush - Jacob's Ladder


That song's fucking awesome, and it has a nice section in 13. From 5:03-6:49, it's 3+3+2+2+3 (or 6+7; I think that's how they have it notated in the score).

Rush is good for odd meter. This next one is in 7 [2+2+3] (mostly; there's a measure of 4/8 at the end of each phrase) from 2:22-2:55 -

Rush - Natural Science


There's something cool later in the song that I will be discussing rather soon.

And here's a nice 11 (3+3+3+2), at 3:58:

Van Der Graaf Generator - Over The Hill



So, you have all these meters, and I'm sure you can figure out some things to do with them as they are. I'm going to get into some more complex ideas in just a second...


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 16, 2011)

Now that you are a master of meter and syncopation, here are a few ideas that sort of layer this stuff.

First, let's talk about rhythmic modes. WooOoOooOo, it's like modes with rhythms! This sounds scary, but it really isn't. Know what a swing beat is? (Also known as a shuffle beat.) Then you know what a rhythmic mode is. A simple definition of a rhythmic mode is a set rhythm or a rhythmic motif that usually recurs throughout a piece, maybe something like a drum rudiment. In some cultures, there are specific rhythmic modes that have specific names. Check out the top half of this page from this Balkan music thing I went to:







If you go to Croatia and shout out, "Hey, play that funky pajdushko shit!", then the people who know what the hell it is you're talking about will start playing that rhythm. In Western music, there are entire genres associated with rhythmic modes - "reggae beat", "blast beat", "four to the floor", "samba", "bossa nova", etc.

You can also make up your own rhythmic modes. Got a rhythm that you like and want to make an entire chorus with that one rhythm playing over and over again? Do eet! Want to just slip that rhythm in the song every now and then? Do eet! Strum patterns for acoustic guitar music are a pretty good example of this sort of thing.

Let's move on to our next topic.

Polyrhythm. Polyrhythm! People on this board make a big deal about it, but it ain't no thing, chicken wing. Polyrhythm is exactly that: two or more rhythms happening simultaneously. If you have triplets against duplets, that's a polyrhythm. If you have two groups of interlocking sixteenth notes played by two instruments, that's a polyrhythm (although not a very inventive one). This stuff is used all the time in classical counterpoint. Most music with more than one instrument has some degree of polyrhythm in it, barring homophony, heterophony, and monophony. What we think of as truly polyrhythmic music, though, tends to use the aforementioned rhythmic modes, just stacked on top of each other. Imagine you and three other guitarists have a gig doing CSNY covers, but you're all too lazy to get together and rehearse, and learn the songs the night before. When your gig comes up, you start playing, with the chords charts taped to the side of your guitar, but you don't have any idea what the rhythm is. Neither do Stills, Nash, and Young over there. All four of you are playing different strum patterns. OMG POLLYRIVUM!

Check this out:

At 3:16, you hear the drums gradually coming in, playing a simple pattern in 7. At 3:33, some voices quietly fade in with a similar rhythm, but it's not quite the same. There's also a triangle or perhaps some chimes that starts to come in around this time, and it plays a different rhythm. At 4:02, another vocalist comes in with yet a different rhythm. As these rhythms layer themselves, one on top of the other, a polyrhythmic texture similar to the drum music of West Africa is produced. Each of those parts uses its own rhythmic mode.

A relatively simple way of producing a polyrhythm is combining different types of divisions. Duplet against triplet is fairly common. Remember how I said that there was something cool in that Rush song, Natural Science? Well, if you go back and listen at around 7:40, you'll hear that the drums are doing duple patterns (4) while the guitar and bass are doing compound triple patterns (12), and the vocals are doing a simple triple pattern (3, and it takes two cycles of this to complete one measure). I have notation of this, but it excludes the drums:

http://i619.photobucket.com/albums/tt274/Schecterwhore/Music Theory/rush_natscience324.jpg
http://i619.photobucket.com/albums/tt274/Schecterwhore/Music Theory/rush_natscience325.jpg


Well, we've covered polyrhythm, so now it's time for the other one: polymeter. These two are often confused, and it's easy to see why: they both consist of opposing rhythms occupying the same musical space. However, polymeter has some specific requirements: first, it does not always match the downbeat of one or more of the meters. It uses values from an existing meter to create a beat. If you were playing in 4, but every 3 beats your drummer hits the snare, then we have a polymeter. It will take a few cycles of this before the downbeats of each meter match up. I have a simple example from perhaps a not-so-obvious source:

Anthrax - Time


From 0:29 onward, most of the song is in 7. The Thrax does something interesting here, though: at 0:29, you think that the downbeat is the first 2 in that 2+2+3 group. Then, at 0:46, the snare comes in with a steady beat. That 2 becomes the snare, so it's 2+2+2+2+2+2+2.... Turns out that there are seven of those snare hits before the 7 meter and the 2 meter meet up again at the downbeat. This is just barely a polymeter (they do this sort of stuff in Indian music; have a rhythm going, then do the same thing twice as fast or twice as slow so that two fit into one), but it works well at getting the point across.


The last thing I am going to talk about is something that we don't hear a whole lot of, and that is "isorhythm". Isorhythm is when you have a specific rhythm that repeats, as well as a specific melody that repeats, but the number of pitches and the number of rhythmic notes does not match up. I can represent this graphically.


```
Meter is 4/4. The top line is the melody.
Assume each note is a quarter note.
Bottom line is a drum kit.

_ = bass drum
^ = hi hat
x =snare

4:ABCD|EABC|DEAB|CDEA|BCDE|ABCD
4:_^_x|_^_x|_^_x|_^_x|_^_x|_^_x
```
Looking at that, you can see something happening: the melody is five notes, but the drum beat keeps the melody from feeling like it's in 5. It takes a whole five measures before the A is on the downbeat again. If you use a rhythmic mode that particularly outlines the downbeat, this can be pretty neat. My band has a riff right now that uses this concept: the melody is five notes, but the rhythm we're using has three notes. There's some video where Steve Vai is talking about some tapping riff that he uses that is isorhythmic (although he never uses the word). Most isorhythm is found in Medieval European music, though.


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## Kairos (Feb 16, 2011)

SwampAshSpecial said:


> so basically, I wanna write some Djent type stuff






But seriously, it's all about syncopation. Looks like you've got some pretty in depth answers already though. Just going to reinforce the syncopation bit.


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## SwampAshSpecial (Feb 16, 2011)

SchecterWhore - HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AMAZING! cheers, I haven't had the time to read it through in full but its definitely good stuff 

@ Stealthtastic: yeah I know, thats exactly what I'm trying to avoid... good djent, not boring djent. Original too... I see the whole djent movement as an opportunity to shine - other genres have been beaten to death, but this is fresh and new, so I might as well try and put my own spin on it, before someone else does


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## darbdavys (Feb 17, 2011)

SwampAshSpecial said:


> good djent, not boring djent. Original too...



does not compute 

if you want to be original, then don't limit yourself to some genre (not even a genre, actually, a supposedly name of a sound). Write what you think sounds good and be yourself, don't copy others


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## Stealthdjentstic (Feb 17, 2011)

Whore wins the thread as usual.


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## ShadyDavey (Feb 17, 2011)

darbdavys said:


> does not compute
> 
> if you want to be original, then don't limit yourself to some genre (not even a genre, actually, a supposedly name of a sound). Write what you think sounds good and be yourself, don't copy others



I'm all for educating oneself in time signatures, syncopation, metric modulation and all those other tricky rhythmic devices......but "setting out to write Djent" has an odour redolent of bandwagon hoping. 

Write music you enjoy - if other's laud it as Djent then accept the label, but don't adopt a label and attempt to write according to a genre......note....Tosin and a lot of the other artists seem to find the genre-labelling quite laughable..

/rant off

Mike as usual makes me wish to kidnap him and hold him in the basement for private study


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## darbdavys (Feb 17, 2011)

ShadyDavey said:


> I'm all for educating oneself in time signatures, syncopation, metric modulation and all those other tricky rhythmic devices......but "setting out to write Djent" has an odour redolent of bandwagon hoping.
> 
> Write music you enjoy - if other's laud it as Djent then accept the label, but don't adopt a label and attempt to write according to a genre......note....Tosin and a lot of the other artists seem to find the genre-labelling quite laughable..



That's what I'm saying. One shouldn't try to emulate some genre and should write whatever sounds good for them. But extensive knowledge in various aspects of musical expression is very important, imo, rhythm being one of them. Genres are for labeling existing bands and not pre-existing, I think


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## LamaSabachthani (Feb 17, 2011)

@Schecterwhore

...I feel like an idiot for having to ask this, but because your lesson is quite in-depth, I'm trying to figure out what you mean you write (3+3+2) - I think what your saying is just an unusual way of playing 8 notes (is that right? 8 quarter notes? or playing two bars of 3/4 followed by one bar of 2/4 to give it all a four/four feel?) with a different feel than plain 1&2&3&4&... but when you say '3+3+2', how would that be counted? '1&2&3&2&2&3&3&2&' et c?

Sorry for failing to grasp what you're trying to put across... trying to understand/want to quite badly haha


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 18, 2011)

LamaSabachthani said:


> @Schecterwhore
> 
> ...I feel like an idiot for having to ask this, but because your lesson is quite in-depth, I'm trying to figure out what you mean you write (3+3+2) - I think what your saying is just an unusual way of playing 8 notes (is that right? 8 quarter notes? or playing two bars of 3/4 followed by one bar of 2/4 to give it all a four/four feel?) with a different feel than plain 1&2&3&4&... but when you say '3+3+2', how would that be counted? '1&2&3&2&2&3&3&2&' et c?
> 
> Sorry for failing to grasp what you're trying to put across... trying to understand/want to quite badly haha



No prob, Bob. I actually thought about this when I was writing that post. It's just a different way to divide a bar of 4.






The first measure shows the groupings of the eighth notes, how the beat is divided. The second measure represents the length of the main beats. If it helps at all, Balkan music theory conceives of beat durations as short (2) and long (3). So, the "normal" way of doing 4 would be short-short-short-short, and the funky 3+3+2 way would be long-long-short.


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## Empryrean (Feb 18, 2011)

Listen to Mike, he's the man 


helped me when I was getting into theory too


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## SwampAshSpecial (Feb 18, 2011)

darbdavys said:


> does not compute
> 
> if you want to be original, then don't limit yourself to some genre (not even a genre, actually, a supposedly name of a sound). Write what you think sounds good and be yourself, don't copy others



ok, you have a point. In that case, I will correct my original wording to something along the lines of

"Im trying to write my own music, and I really like the groove/rhythms of some bands that are commonly classified as Djent. Does anybody have any advice on how to achieve said groove in order to make my m00sic badass? "

better?


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## LamaSabachthani (Feb 18, 2011)

Okay, think I get what you mean now... just saying how you count/accent the odd meter yeah? so 2+2+3 would be one bar of 7/8, right?


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 19, 2011)

LamaSabachthani said:


> Okay, think I get what you mean now... just saying how you count/accent the odd meter yeah? so 2+2+3 would be one bar of 7/8, right?



Precisely. Or 7/4, or 7/2, or 7/1, or 7/16. The number on the bottom doesn't matter, unless you're comparing it to something. For instance, this is the rhythm of that opening riff in the Death song that I brought up a few posts ago:






Or it could just as easily be this:






Or this:






It all depends on what you call a quarter note, eighth note, half note, etc., as rhythm notation is relativistic. There is no such thing as a "quarter note", when it all comes down to it. There are groups of two, there are groups of three, there are durations that last half as long and twice as long as another duration, and there are durations that live in smaller fractions, as well as larger ones. The notations we invent are just abstractions of these ideas.


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## -42- (Feb 19, 2011)

Another thing to consider is that you would want to attack the slightest bit behind the beat, as that is the way you get a good 'groove' going. The opposite would apply if you were playing thrash.

Time signature is not the biggest factor in djent, as you can write anything in any time signature (though it may be difficult if you want to use measures alone to dictate phrasing). Technically, all of Meshuggah's songs are in 4/4 (iirc), but the way they phrase their songs makes it difficult to comprehend. Another nifty way to insta-djent is to alternate the feel between duples and triplets.


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## TimothyLeary (Feb 20, 2011)

schecter, you toasted my brain with that Death song rhythm. damn. 

ps: you need to make a theory/rhythm pdf asap. I'll buy.


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## Kurkkuviipale (Feb 20, 2011)

But those three examples aren't the same! Especially the last one differs so, that the accent comes to both, fourth note of third bar AND to the beginning of the fourth bar. They are maybe theoratically played the same way on one instrument, but in a concept of a song or a band with multiple instruments, those three examples would differ in the way I describe...

Am I right?


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 20, 2011)

Kurkkuviipale said:


> But those three examples aren't the same! Especially the last one differs so, that the accent comes to both, fourth note of third bar AND to the beginning of the fourth bar. They are maybe theoratically played the same way on one instrument, but in a concept of a song or a band with multiple instruments, those three examples would differ in the way I describe...
> 
> Am I right?



Honestly, there is no "right" way to notate, just the ways that are sensible. And you're right: in context, one way will make more sense than another. To me, all of those make sense. I might choose 1 or 3 over 2, because I feel that those groups of 4 are accented in a way that makes them sound like one measure, and that syncopation at the end of the third bar/ beginning of the fourth bar is just fine.

Notation is an art in itself, and a lot of it depends on who you intend to read the music. Sometimes, it's very straightforward if you're dealing with diatonic stuff with simple rhythms, but it's easy to enter more ambiguous territory. Compare these two examples:












The first one is the version I prefer, but I know people who will whine and bitch to no end because of that F&#9837;. Their reasoning is that F&#9837; is enharmonic to E&#9838;, and F&#9837; rarely comes up in the literature. Bull-fucking-pucky. We're going between two notes that are a minor second apart, and I'd rather deal with one accidental than that mess that is the second example. For me, the F&#9837; implies a motion, and for non-F&#9837;'ers, it implies some note that they hate out of their own personal prejudice. And, honestly, you'll find people in both modes of thought. Which way is correct? Neither and both. I personally think that dealing with an accidental that you don't encounter very often is more intellectually beneficial and ink-saving than relying on this E&#9838; bullshit, but that's just my take.


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## freepower (Feb 22, 2011)

I'd like to add that in addition to SW's fantastic post (and finally someone else pointing out the difference between polymeter/rhythm! <3 ) -

"Djent" and most syncopated metal/hard rock, be it Meshuggah, Periphery, Freak Kitchen or Led Zeppelin (check out Kashmir for the worlds first polymetal groove!) demands an absolutely ROCK SOLID sense of the quarter note pulse.

You need to be able to feel a quarter note pulse deep in your bones through this stuff or you will flounder and sound weak and imprecise.

Now, a lot of the stuff SW was talking about goes into actually playing in odd meters but the vast majority of the stuff you're stylistically interested in is based off a quarter note pulse. Feel it deep in your bones and then the syncopations start coming much easier.


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## UltimateDooM (Apr 26, 2011)

*mmwahhh*


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## Overtone (Apr 26, 2011)

7 8th notes. 7/8. Usually when people say "7" or "5" they mean a time signatures that's 7/8 or 7/4 or 5/4 5/8.


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## darren (Apr 26, 2011)

Try playing odd counts over a 4/4 beat. In the latest Guitar World, Frederik Thorendal says that almost all Meshuggah stuff is actually 4/4, though it's oddly polymetric.

Probably one of the coolest examples:



6/4 guitar riff played over a 4/4 beat.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Apr 26, 2011)




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## McCap (Apr 27, 2011)

All has been said by SW...Great post!

You can count everything in groups of 2 and 3, that's the most important part, to me. 

Schecterwhore: So you're saying that Isorythm is basically a polymeter only that one meter is implied by a "melody rythm"?
And you're right I never differentiate between polyrythm and polymeter.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Apr 27, 2011)

McCap said:


> You can count everything in groups of 2 and 3, that's the most important part, to me.



Massive approval right here. This isn't the be-all, end-all of meter, but if you just understand this, everything else is easy.



> Schecterwhore: So you're saying that Isorythm is basically a polymeter only that one meter is implied by a "melody rythm"?


Yeee... No. It needs two things: a fixed melody and a fixed rhythm. These things repeat ad infinitum, but there are either more or less notes in the melody than you have rhythmic values for. If you had the rhythm by itself, it would look completely normal. It's as soon as you throw the melody on it that the phrasing is changed and you are left with something that doesn't match the downbeat.

I realize this is sort of what you're saying, but the difference is that the melody does not have a rhythm: it's the rhythm that has the melody. Here's a simple example - a three-note melody against a two-note rhythm. See how long it takes before the G is on a downbeat again? This is also going to make the melody sound like it's all over the place, since that simple cell doesn't appear the same way until after three measures, and any cadences that are built into the melody will not consistently fall on the downbeat.


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## Devotion (Apr 27, 2011)

I reconsidered my post and thought that this post was hijacking this thread, so I made a new topic for my question. 
Ignore this post please.


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## Blind Theory (Apr 27, 2011)

Schecterwhore...awesome stuff in this thread, man! 


And write what you want OP. That's what I do! My lack of knowledge on theory and the fact that I write what I want regardless of anything adds up to some songs that are just out there.


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