# Developing Math Rock/ Mathcore chops.



## dorfmeister (Jun 6, 2011)

Recommend some good resources.


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## Stealthdjentstic (Jun 6, 2011)

I'd start with tool.

Simple riffs. Mindfuck time siggies.


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## right_to_rage (Jun 7, 2011)

Venetian Snares writes in 7/4 primarily and changes time sigs a lot.


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## troyguitar (Jun 7, 2011)

If you're a high school kid like a lot of people on this forum, get on your marching band and play some snare drum. I seriously regret not taking any kind of music while I was in school.

Take drum lessons for a jazz specialist. Ditto for piano/bass/guitar.

Drums will best develop your (poly!?)rhythm skills though, which is 90% of the way toward being good at that kind of music. I think that's the best path to take no matter what instrument you use as a "primary" instrument. If you're playing guitar, you need to get all that rhythm stuff down then start jamming away at every chord, scale, and arpeggio you can think of in every position of the neck over every other chord and in all of those different rhythms and against all of those different rhythms. Have fun.

...this is why I play power metal, I can write a whole album using one key and one time signature and it will sound pretty good.

The alternative of course is to learn other people's songs as suggested, but I would recommend not doing that until you have a good foundation in theory so that you can analyze those songs in a useful manner.


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## Solodini (Jun 8, 2011)

Analysis is certainly useful. Also, take a rhythmic pattern and displace it. With a metronome, play it until you're grooving with it fine and then some. Then displace the whole rhythm by a crotchet, quaver or semiquaver. Play it until you're well locked in with it like that. Displace again. Rinse repeat. Notate it at each step so you can visualise the difference each displacement makes. This will really help you to appreciate where the beat falls.

Once you've done that all the way around to where you started, displace one note of the rhythm and do all of the above with this new rhythm. It's these subtle changes which make math rock what it is, in a lot of cases. 

Let me know if you want me to elaborate on any of this.


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## penguin_316 (Jun 8, 2011)

If you have a DAW and S2.0 or somthing similar (hell, even fruity loops will work), you can write all kinds of basic exercizes in drums to practice to. Like previously stated, maybe displace the kick hits or the snare....make some complicated time sig that doesnt repeat for 16 bars or something. Sky's the limit really...


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## death of k (Jun 20, 2011)

i've been using FL for a bit now, and i can say that it's plenty enough for any kind of complicated pattern you might be looking for, and like penguin said, it's pretty damn useful for laying out experimental patterns. I've been dabbling with some 5/4 & 7/8 ostinati within 4/4 that's come out sounding pretty boss, as well as things like quintuplets in 5/4, if that's what you were maybe leaning towards.

true math-metal seems like a bit of a myth to me though...


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## Overtone (Jun 20, 2011)

Solodini said:


> Analysis is certainly useful. Also, take a rhythmic pattern and displace it. With a metronome, play it until you're grooving with it fine and then some. Then displace the whole rhythm by a crotchet, quaver or semiquaver. Play it until you're well locked in with it like that. Displace again. Rinse repeat. Notate it at each step so you can visualise the difference each displacement makes. This will really help you to appreciate where the beat falls.
> 
> Once you've done that all the way around to where you started, displace one note of the rhythm and do all of the above with this new rhythm. It's these subtle changes which make math rock what it is, in a lot of cases.
> 
> Let me know if you want me to elaborate on any of this.



After seeing your post when you made it the idea stuck with me and i tried it out yesterday... so much fun! I just did a four note 8th note pattern ascending and did two measures with the first note on the 1, then two measures starting on the second note, etc.. Not only does it get you thinking but it sounds freaking cool.


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## troyguitar (Jun 20, 2011)

death of k said:


> true math-metal seems like a bit of a myth to me though...



Indeed, as far as I can tell most people are just playing random shit that they think sounds cool - there is nothing mathematical about it at all. But I've a degree in mathematics so perhaps I'm just guarding the term "math" too closely.


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## Solodini (Jun 21, 2011)

Overtone said:


> After seeing your post when you made it the idea stuck with me and i tried it out yesterday... so much fun! I just did a four note 8th note pattern ascending and did two measures with the first note on the 1, then two measures starting on the second note, etc.. Not only does it get you thinking but it sounds freaking cool.



Yep, it can make the simplest idea have lots of depth. Simple ideas are often the best thing to built complications around. They serve to contrast and make the complications more apparent. If there's a 4 note pattern repeating I'm different places then the listener will become familiar with the pattern and lock into it but be aware of the oddities without just becoming lost. 

As I've said before, I think it was John McLaughlin who said that you can go as 'out' as you like as long as you have some reference or relation to normality and listeners will still dig it.


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## FarBeyondMetal (Jun 29, 2011)

One word...Meshuggah


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