# How to apply polyrhythms



## DjentDjentlalala (Aug 13, 2012)

Hi guys! I understood how polyrhythms work,reading Steve Vai's website,by i dont know how to use them in my music.Maybe bass and guitar VS. drums? help please!


HELP, SCHECTERWHORE!


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## TheKindred (Aug 13, 2012)

DjentDjentlalala said:


> HELP SCHECTERWHORE!




Why? Is he in trouble?


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## DjentDjentlalala (Aug 13, 2012)

damn commas


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 13, 2012)

I was stuck in a well, but DjentDjentlalala ran off, so I had to climb out by myself. I'm glad to see that he was at least trying to find help.

Polyrhythms are cool and all, but like any technique, I don't think that there is a way to apply them. I mean, it's in the name: multiple rhythms playing at the same time. What you can do is force yourself to write with that technique, so you can get a feel for how it works, and whether it's for you. You are correct in that it usually works out best between two different instruments (Or different registers on the same instrument. You have 6+ strings, after all.). Let's have a look at something that's actually notated. My band is currently covering this tune:

Mahavishnu Orchestra - The Dance of Maya



The score: Page 1, 2, 3

Alright, let's check it out. Everybody is basically playing patterns that fill the same amount of space. The violin, guitar, piano, and bass are doing 10/8, and that's divided as 3+3+1+3 (eighth note value). The drums, however, are doing a rhythm in 20/16, divided 3+3+3+3+3+3+2 (sixteenth note value). At the end of the head (measure 11), the turnaround could otherwise be written as a measure of 5/4 (2+2+2+2+2 if we're going by eighth note value, or 1+1+1+1+1 by quarter note value). I think you can probably see what's going on here: the different rhythmic layers are stratified by what rhythmic value gets the beat.

This is actually a very typical example of what goes on in Indian classical music (I know, it's not Indian classical music, bear with me): tala (meters) are perceived in cycles, so there's one underlying meter, then a musician might play the same pattern twice as fast within that, making a 2:1 ratio, or they might play three of the same pattern within the space of the first, making a 3:1 ratio. Obviously, you can go higher, but it gets more complicated with 5:1, 7:1, 9:1. In the case of the track I posted, it's 20:10 most of the time, or 2:1.

Later on, in the B section, everybody is playing the same thing that the drums were playing all along, revealing an obnoxious blues shuffle in 20 that was hiding in the background.

I recently wrote a riff that has the same sort of thing going on. I normally write guitar all on one staff, but grand staff was a little easier to read. Not that that's important, just know that this is all the same instrument:







Starting from the third measure, I do weird stuff. If you look at what's going on in the bass clef, the rhythms are played in such a way that the downbeat is displaced. The drums are going to be playing with a normal beat pattern that lands on the downbeat every time, but the guitar disregards that, playing as though the meter is changing. What happens, though, is that all of the phrases eventually add up to 7. This is technically polymeter, but by virtue of how it works out, it's also polyrhythmic.

More to come later. Just trying to get the gears turning.


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## Amanita (Aug 13, 2012)

to see how it works in practice you could play along with some straight 4/4 rhythm, first some 3/8 stuff like 0xx0xx0xx0xx00x00x00x, just to see how it works and how this beats against 4/4 groove. then maybe some 5/8 stuff like 00x0x0xx0x00x0x0xx0x...
and build up from there


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## morrowcosom (Aug 13, 2012)

One polyrhythm that Meshuggah used frequently was 4:3. For, example the first verse riff in "Neurotica". There are a bunch of other examples, but I cannot think of them right off the top of my head right now. 

Just play 4 dotted eighth notes for every 3 quarter note high hat hits. 

It has an aggressive sound to it and I it believe works well for metal. 


Whenever you are fooling around with polyrhythms initially, try to use few notes. The rhythms are so different sounding that you need to focus on them in order to absorb their feel so that you can decide where to place them when writing. 

I like to say words with a certain number of syllables over quarter note high hat hits and pick/tap on each on each syllable. I say the words before I ever play so I can get an idea of which syllables (pick/taps), I want to put the accents on. 

For example: I-am-a-Man-I-like-you over 4 hits is a 7:4 polyrhythm. I capitalized the words I put the accents on. 

*Konnakol*, like SchecterWhore talks about, is more practical because the words are more percussive and it makes it more instinctive to where you place accents when you say them. This is just really good for improvising beats

Saying Ta-ki-ta-Ta-Ta-ki-ta over 4 claps would be the same beat as the one I had above. 3+1+3 rhythmic grouping. 

Just look up Konnakol. That is a fool-proof tool for applying polyrhythms musically. Either you like the beat or you don't. 

Damn, I am long-winded.


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## Solodini (Aug 14, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> Obviously, you can go higher, but it gets more complicated with 5:1, 7:1, 9:1. In the case of the track I posted, it's 20:10 most of the time, or 2:1.



A good way to get your brain and hands to work with odd numbers is to start by tapping the odd number as you count it, then add in the other hand tapping on the 1. If you do it the other way around and try to fit 7 into one then you'll risk being unsteady with the beat as you try to work out whether each beat is in the right place. Start at walking pace and steadily speed it up, as you do with metronome based practise. 

While that is more for familiarisation with odd rhythms themselves, it can work for ratios of quick phrases if you hum or sing the phrase once per tap and bang hard on the one. As you speed it up, you'll eventually reach the correct tempo for it to fit to the song. 

For polyrhythms generally, use a similar approach and find the lowest common denominator i.e. 9 over 4, multiply one by the other (36) and then see if both numbers fit into half or a quarter of that. In this case they don't, so you have 36th note divisions which isn't a million miles away from 32nd notes as normally find use. Then just count the opposite number of divisions for each beat, so there's4 36th notes (just count them as ticks) to each beat in the phrase of 9; there's 9 36th notes in each beat in the phrase of 4. There you have a common pulse between the two. Again, you can familiarise yourself with each rhythm by the tapping method at the top of this post and once you're familiar with each independently, let the metronome handle the 36ths while your hands tap the 4 and 9. After a while you should be able to drop out the metronome, as well.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 14, 2012)

Solodini said:


> For polyrhythms generally, use a similar approach and find the lowest common denominator i.e. 9 over 4, multiply one by the other (36) and then see if both numbers fit into half or a quarter of that. In this case they don't, so you have 36th note divisions which isn't a million miles away from 32nd notes as normally find use. Then just count the opposite number of divisions for each beat, so there's4 36th notes (just count them as ticks) to each beat in the phrase of 9; there's 9 36th notes in each beat in the phrase of 4. There you have a common pulse between the two. Again, you can familiarise yourself with each rhythm by the tapping method at the top of this post and once you're familiar with each independently, let the metronome handle the 36ths while your hands tap the 4 and 9. After a while you should be able to drop out the metronome, as well.



I used to take this approach, but I don't have the discipline to figure all of this stuff out in a measure of 36. Rather, I determine which beat I need to divide into, then place the necessary tuplet. So, if I'm looking at a measure of 4/4, and I need to place an eighth note dectuplet over all of that (making it 10:8), it's easier for me to think of it as ten evenly-spaced notes within a whole note (er, semi-breve for you Brits), or five evenly-spaced notes within a half-note. There's no way that I'm going to count out forty beats, tap my left hand every ten, and tap my right hand every four. I mean, that works, but it requires that one does that for every new cross rhythm. Learning to do tuplets of any order is a more intuitive approach than the mathematical reasoning (although, make no mistake, they both have their place). I practice my tuplets by conducting whatever meter I'm working with, and singing konnakol. Easier to show than write about, but I don't exactly have the means of doing that. Basically what this guy is doing at the beginning of this video, but also accounting for asymmetrical beats (you can skip the first 20 seconds or so):



The rest of the video details the cyclic thing I was talking about earlier.

And always remember to break things down where you can! Solodini brought up the 9:4 cross rhythm, but rather than counting a straight nontuplet, try thinking of it as a quarter note triplet, whose beats are then divided into eighth note triplets. This way, you're only dealing with a 3:4 cross rhythm (comparatively easy) rather than 9:4 (probably a little more difficult).






(I don't know how to do nested tuplets in Finale yet. That will not soon be the case.)


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## ArrowHead (Aug 14, 2012)

Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys are discussing poly-meters, not polyrhythms, right?

Wouldn't a polyrhythm be like playing quintuplets on piano with the right hand while simultaneously playing sextuplets with the left? Not playing 5/4 over 4/4.


[edit] - nevermind, I read a little further and see we're on the same page. You ARE talking polyrhythms.


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## Solodini (Aug 14, 2012)

I personally find it more arduous to think in tuplets but I guess it's just personal taste and what works best for you.


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## ArrowHead (Aug 14, 2012)

Solodini said:


> I personally find it more arduous to think in tuplets but I guess it's just personal taste and what works best for you.



For me, when I hear "polyrhythm" the first example that comes to mind is piano, where it's usually a case of tuplets.

When I hear "polymetrics", I think meshuggah.


What confused me was Schecter's example of 10/8 vs. 20/16. At first look, I thought he was discussing polymeters, but he was actually just using a very basic 2:1 polyrhythm. Probably so as not to confuse me. 


A polymeter would be 5/4 over 4/4, where your beats match up, but the barlines only match up every 20th beat. A polyrhythm is where two different amounts of beats are divided in the same amount of time. IE - playing a quintuplet and a sextuplet in the space of a quarter note.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 14, 2012)

ArrowHead said:


> Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys are discussing poly-meters, not polyrhythms, right?
> 
> Wouldn't a polyrhythm be like playing quintuplets on piano with the right hand while simultaneously playing sextuplets with the left? Not playing 5/4 over 4/4.
> 
> ...



There is a point at which polyrhythm and polymeter meet. This is polymetric, but not polyrhythmic, because you're looking at non-conflicting rhythms:






If you look at the score for the Mahavishnu Orchestra piece I posted, the situation I point out there is both polymetric and polyrhythmic, because the beats (not necessarily the notes themselves) do not line up.


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## ArrowHead (Aug 14, 2012)

Gotcha. It's like recording 10/8 to a click set up in 5/4. You end up on the wrong side of the metronome for half your riff.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 14, 2012)

The other thing is that for the majority of the head, there's a 3:2 cross rhythm between the drums and the rest of the instruments. It's just compensated on the last eighth note of every measure.

Note: my definition of polyrhythm is a little broader than most people's. I include the simultaneous occurrence of two or more rhythmic modes in my description, so that it's not limited to cross rhythms. However, then one has to know how to differentiate between a variation on a single rhythmic mode, and an entirely new one.


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## Given To Fly (Aug 17, 2012)

My best suggestion is to post this same question on a percussion/drummer board! Rhythm is their job!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 17, 2012)

You wouldn't know it sometimes. 

Q: How do you know when a drummer is at your door?
A: The knock slows down.


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## Grimbold (Aug 24, 2012)

so i would just like to share how I figured out how polyrhythms worked...
one day i was running and didn't have my ipod
i noticed that my feet where hitting the ground at roughly even intervals
using that as my basis of 16th notes (1 footfall=1 16th) was able to tap out polyrhythms on my chest using my hands

i found this to be a good way to really get into THINKING in polyrhythms

also
am i the only one who think that schecterwhore might secretly be guthrie govan? or at least god?


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 24, 2012)

I am in no way Guthrie Govan.


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## Grimbold (Aug 25, 2012)

i guess that makes you god...


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Aug 25, 2012)

I think it just makes me a guy who didn't screw around in his music classes.


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## Grimbold (Aug 26, 2012)

fair enough...


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## stuglue (Aug 28, 2012)

If we are talking polyrhythm then I'd say start with the most basic, the crotchet triplet. Its quite common and I've heard it used in metal a lit.
In order to be able to play it you need to be able to understand it and then tap it.
think of two quarter notes, this is the length that one crotchet triplet covers.
as the name implies its a triplet. 
I count triplets like this 1,e,a 2,e,a 
Try tapping your foot to the quarter note pulse, and then with your hand tap triplets to each quarter note.
Now in order to a crotchet triplet you need to not play the e from the first set of triplets on quarter note one, so you have 1 a.
On quarter note you must not tap the 2 and a, you only tap the e.
So, over the two quarter notes you only tap 1 a e.
Now if you want a real challenge simply do all the above and count out aloud 8th notes, 1 & 2 &, this seems simple but its hard to independently count and tap there crotchet triplet in sync.


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