Post your non-4/4 tunes here, plz!

[Gothi]

btw i dont think the 4/4 dominance is just culturally imposed,

Well, I can say that for native african drummers it is all about the number 12, which can be divided with both 3, 4, 2, and 6. My own teacher was rather crazy about it and told me it was the secret number of the universe + a lot of other spiritualistic stuff. But that comes with the package. You do not go native african without the woodoo, and it was worth it. I admire his patience for trying to get my spoiled little white butt in line with his cultural roots and religion.

[challism]

I was merely trying to express my frustration with my inability to make anything musical in anything other than 4/4, even after repeated attempts.

there are some methods to do this. i'll name 2:

1st: split up your bar into several easier signatures, then put them back together. so your 7/4 bar is actually composed as/of a 4/4 and a 3/4 bar
2nd: split a 7/4 bar into 16th notes. then group them to 4 packs of 7/16th. that way you keep a general 4/4 structure, but each "1/4" is split up into 7/16 instead of 4/16.

Thanks for the tips!

[Gothi]

Greetings. Hope this little consideration can be helpful to those who like to enter this field, but may find it difficult.

A Simple guide into odd or compound meters

1. Think of a steady hi hat in, say, 120 bpm. The same sample just ticking ahead tik tik tik tik tik tik tik tik: This is called a count.

2. Now, decide which meter you want to play in. 5/4? 6/4? Let´s say we choose 7/4. Make an accent on the hihat on 1 in every measure. TIK-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-tik. Now you have turned your count into a meter.

3. Now it is time to add a clave. In native african-cuban music a clave is the ground figure of a rhythm. It is called a clave because it is often marked by the high pitch of that instrument, but it need not to be, it could be any drum that is in charge of the clave. Here we can do it by accents alone. Keep the accent on 1 and add another on 5 and 7. Now we have a ground figure TIK-tik-tik-tik-TIK-tik-TIK.

4. Now you can add more drumbeats. A bd could take 1 and 5, a tom 7 and 1 together with the bd. As long as the clave rules the rhythm, you can play with syncopes around it or place things directly on top of it as you like.

An example of the clave in question you can hear in this tune in 7/4. To the right the clave 1-5-7 is introduced by a native drum. Everything else is build around it or on top of it. You will hear the clave be supplied with a guitar that follows it precisely and eventually supporting strings.




5. To expand complexity and work with polyrhythms there are some simple basics to get one started. Let´s say we want to play a meter of 3 against a meter of 4. The numbers of beats needed for this is easily calculated, we simply need the nearest number that is divisible with both, and that is 12. They share an accent on 1, but one makes accent in in periods of 3, the other in 4. The same with more fancy stuff, e.g. 5 against 4 = 20 beats needed. 2 against 3 against 5 = 30 beats and so forth.

Hope this makes sense and may be useful.

Kindly
Gothi

[selig]

Over my many years I've explored odd time sigs lots of time. One of my first 'written' tunes was in 15/16 (7/8 + 4/4) and I'm always going back and revisiting these ideas.
Here's a work in progress based on an Absynth patch which I felt had a bit of "swing" to it. So I approached the drums with a more "groovy" feel to see what happened.
Happy to be able to contribute something to the conversation, musically speaking:

[bossa]

On my last album, which is called Mambial (https://tr.ee/cqlcT1MUKl), I published the piece "the flight from the clouds" with the time signature 5/8. The special thing about it is that the tempo is slowed down every 4 bars and then resumes the original tempo.
I got this idea from the Icelandic composer Johann Johanson, who provided the reference composition with his piece "the flight from the city". In a way, my piece "the flight from the clouds" is a soundalike.

[Gothi]

Greetings. Thanks for the contributions, fellows. ^^^ Exciting stuff.

Kindly
Gothi

[mcatalao]

I actually write a lot of stuff in 6/8 and 12/8, it's not such an odd signature but I'm very driven to it.

This is a song i did when my first daugter was on her way, called "Valsa para Sara" (Sarah's Waltz) though it's a 6/8 song:

https://open.spotify.com/intl-pt/track/ ... ff93854f35

And this is a 3/4 Lullaby'ish song i did more recently:



So, not the oddest signatures but a bit of a departure from 4/4.
I have a couple of things in 5/4 and 7/4 too, but its stuff i didn't develop.

[Gothi]

Very very nice. ^ Good work. when you are dealing with any meter that can be divided with three e.g. 3/4 , 6/8, it is called compound meter, while measures in numbers like 5/4 , 7/4, 11/4 are odd meters. Thus, you are in a compound meter in the example.

Kindly
Gothi

[mcatalao]

Very very nice. ^ Good work. when you are dealing with any meter that can be divided with three e.g. 3/4 , 6/8, it is called compound meter, while measures in numbers like 5/4 , 7/4, 11/4 are odd meters. Thus, you are in a compound meter in the example.

Kindly
Gothi

Yeah, i know. I by oddest i meant in the coloquial meaning and not necessarily the theorethical.
(oh and I'm portuguese, we don't call odd signatures we call them "Complex" or "Irregular", so sorry for that)

Nonetheless, thank's, glad you liked it!

[bossa]

I actually write a lot of stuff in 6/8 and 12/8, it's not such an odd signature but I'm very driven to it.

This is a song i did when my first daugter was on her way, called "Valsa para Sara" (Sarah's Waltz) though it's a 6/8 song:

https://open.spotify.com/intl-pt/track/ ... ff93854f35

And this is a 3/4 Lullaby'ish song i did more recently:



So, not the oddest signatures but a bit of a departure from 4/4.
I have a couple of things in 5/4 and 7/4 too, but its stuff i didn't develop.

Hi MC, very nice! Good vibe!