Jump to content

13/8 (and other time signatures from the oblivion)

LegendofSymphony7
 Share

Recommended Posts

DarkeSword Community Regular

DarkeSword

Posted
Posted

13/8 is pretty obscure to begin with. You'd be better off devoting this topic to helping people with irregular meters in general, and not just by providing a sample to listen to, but also explaining your approach to writing in an irregular meter. For example, thinking of a piece in terms of additive rhythms as opposed to divisive rhytms.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
PriZm Newbie

PriZm

Posted
Posted

Writing odd time signatures is actually easier (at least for me, and, I've heard, for John Petrucci, not that I compare with him :)) if you have terrible rhythm and imagine weird melodies without even realizing it. The only real suggestion I could make is to listen to a lot of music in odd times (Dream Theater and Symphony X spring to mind) and try to emulate them before venturing into that area yourself.

Since I'm a sucker for odd times, there are a couple of methods I've developed to handle them:

1) if you're writing in a time signatures that otherwise disrupts the flow of the song, you can have a pulse on the drums accentuating the beats of an even time signature. Say you're playing in 13/16 and it feels really odd compared to the rest of the song, you can have the high hat play on every 8th note (that way it will play the upbeats on every 2 measures) to prevent listener's fatigue.

2) if you're writing only a part of your song in odd times to make it sound progressive, don't hesitate to alternate time signatures. Dream Theater's Hell Kitchen and Dance of Eternity are good examples of this.

3) A good way to have an odd time feel and keep a groove on is to play different time signatures on different instruments. For example, have your drum play in 4/4 and your guitar/bass play the same thing in 7/8. At each fourth bar of your groove, you'll be at 32/8 for the drum and 28/8 for the guitar/bass, so just do a four 8th notes fill to keep the instruments together.

4) Another good way to handle odd times is to think geometrically with your guitar. Say you are playing in 9/8, you want to find a cool lick, think of a 9 notes pattern. For example, in 9/8 in Em, you could do: E-F#-G-A-F#-G-A-B-C and repeat one octave higher after. The lick I've done in my solo on my Xenosaga mix was originally thought out in 9/8, but was adapted to /4 because the song would have sucked in 9/8. It's a really cool lick I often do, and I could transcribe it if you want to.

anyways, good songs to listen to/analyze if you wanna get a gasp of odd times:

Dream Theater: Hell's Kitchen

Dream Theater: A Change of Seasons

Dream Theater: Octavarium

Dream Theater: Metropolis part I

Dream Theater: Dance of Eternity (technical massacre)

Symphony X: Communion of the Oracle (see tip #3)

Symphony X: Fallen (see tip #3)

Andromeda: Parasite

Andromeda: Reaching Deep within (see tip #3)

Andromeda: One in My Head (best odd time shit I've heard in all my life at the end, no the tempo doesn't slow down 8O )

Steve Vai: silkiest smooth odd times I've heard (11/8)

Joe Satriani: Echo (also, silk smooth 5/4)

Yuji Kajiura, Xenosaga Ep2 soundtrack, Communication breakdown: parts in 4/4, others in 5/4 and, if I remember well, other in 6/4 yet extremely smooth.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
LegendofSymphony7 Newbie

LegendofSymphony7

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Writing odd time signatures is actually easier (at least for me, and, I've heard, for John Petrucci, not that I compare with him :)) if you have terrible rhythm and imagine weird melodies without even realizing it. The only real suggestion I could make is to listen to a lot of music in odd times (Dream Theater and Symphony X spring to mind) and try to emulate them before venturing into that area yourself.

Since I'm a sucker for odd times, there are a couple of methods I've developed to handle them:

1) if you're writing in a time signatures that otherwise disrupts the flow of the song, you can have a pulse on the drums accentuating the beats of an even time signature. Say you're playing in 13/16 and it feels really odd compared to the rest of the song, you can have the high hat play on every 8th note (that way it will play the upbeats on every 2 measures) to prevent listener's fatigue. [Good idea, can I borrow/steal it?]

2) if you're writing only a part of your song in odd times to make it sound progressive, don't hesitate to alternate time signatures. Dream Theater's Hell Kitchen and Dance of Eternity are good examples of this. [schism by Tool is another.]

3) A good way to have an odd time feel and keep a groove on is to play different time signatures on different instruments. For example, have your drum play in 4/4 and your guitar/bass play the same thing in 7/8. At each fourth bar of your groove, you'll be at 32/8 for the drum and 28/8 for the guitar/bass, so just do a four 8th notes fill to keep the instruments together. [Tool is actually notorious for this in the opposite effect. Drummer Danny Carey plays drumbeats that in 1 measure map out a drumbeat to cover up to three bass and guitar measures.]

4) Another good way to handle odd times is to think geometrically with your guitar. Say you are playing in 9/8, you want to find a cool lick, think of a 9 notes pattern. For example, in 9/8 in Em, you could do: E-F#-G-A-F#-G-A-B-C and repeat one octave higher after. The lick I've done in my solo on my Xenosaga mix was originally thought out in 9/8, but was adapted to /4 because the song would have sucked in 9/8. It's a really cool lick I often do, and I could transcribe it if you want to.

anyways, good songs to listen to/analyze if you wanna get a gasp of odd times:

Dream Theater: Hell's Kitchen

Dream Theater: A Change of Seasons

Dream Theater: Octavarium

Dream Theater: Metropolis part I

Dream Theater: Dance of Eternity (technical massacre)

Symphony X: Communion of the Oracle (see tip #3)

Symphony X: Fallen (see tip #3)

Andromeda: Parasite

Andromeda: Reaching Deep within (see tip #3)

Andromeda: One in My Head (best odd time shit I've heard in all my life at the end, no the tempo doesn't slow down 8O )

Steve Vai: silkiest smooth odd times I've heard (11/8)

Joe Satriani: Echo (also, silk smooth 5/4)

Yuji Kajiura, Xenosaga Ep2 soundtrack, Communication breakdown: parts in 4/4, others in 5/4 and, if I remember well, other in 6/4 yet extremely smooth.

You're forgetting another real band (they're good, I don't care what anyone says) that plays a lot in odd time signatures (and since I'm saying this, no one can guess what the drumbeat at the top is from anymore): Tool. The link at the top? It's the chorus from Schism, a single from their 2001 album, Lateralus. The song dips into 12/8, 14/8, 13/8, and at times 11/8 and flows smoothly. Another example is the album-title song Lateralus. The bridge from the intro to the first verse goes from 9/8 to 8/8 to 7/8 (for all you math junkies: 987 is number 16 in the Fibonacci [sp?] sequence and the vocal pattern also loosely follows the sequence) twice before going into a more permanent drumbeat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DarkeSword Community Regular

DarkeSword

Posted
Posted
Not that I am particularly knowledgable about crazy time signatures, I have been told that Dave Brubeck's Time Out album, and its successor, time further out, explores all manner of whack times.

All I know is Take Five, which of course is in 5/4.

Blue Rondo a la Turk is the other famous one; heavily syncopated 9/8 rhythm (2-2-2-3) that switches to 4/4 swing.

What even better about it is that 2 measures of 9/8 happen to exactly equal 1 1/2 measures of the 4/4 swing.

OMG!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
LegendofSymphony7 Newbie

LegendofSymphony7

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Quite impressive, DS. Sort-of like how 4 measures of 7/8 (2-2-2-1) equal 7 measures of straight-eighth 4/4, eh?

As for the 13/8 at the topic starter, the song the thing I played comes from is mainly in 12/8 for the verses and moves into the chorus in 13/8, which lasts four measures (as long as I played it) and goes right back into 12/8.

Verse 1 lasts 12 measures.

Verses 2 and 3 last only 8.

Between Chorus 2 and Verse 3 is either a breakdown or a bridge (I can't really decide) in 14/8.

Chorus 3 has an extra beat on measure four of it (making it 14/4) for the sake of a fill.

So, taking the total beat-counts from Verse 2 and the next chorus (12 measures [8 in verse, 4 in chorus]), that makes 148 eighth notes. If you translate to 4/4, that's 37 measures, and in 6/4 it's 24 and 2/3 measures. Freaky math, no? :lol:

And if someone wants to know the drummer of the band in question the song derives from, look up Tool, go to any Tool fanpage, and check for a bio on Danny Carey.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Kanthos Newbie

Kanthos

Posted
Posted

If you want a great example of a piece in a compound time that works, check out The First Circle by the Pat Metheny Group. It's in 22/8, split into a group of 12 (3, 2, 3, 2, 2) and a group of 10 (3, 3, 2, 2), and most of the piece is in that time signature, with a bit of 4/4 and 6/8 thrown in to make it work. The neat part is right at the beginning, when the percussionist and others in the band are clapping a counter-rhythm to the opening theme. As a whole, the piece is really listenable too, and it's the group's most popular tune.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DarkeSword Community Regular

DarkeSword

Posted
Posted
Quite impressive, DS. Sort-of like how 4 measures of 7/8 (2-2-2-1) equal 7 measures of straight-eighth 4/4, eh?

Not exactly. What you're saying there doesn't take tempo or style into account.

The 4/4 time in Blue Rondo a la Turk is played with a heavy swing. You could go as far to say that it's got a triplet feel. While the 9/8 time in the song is subdivided as 2-2-2-3, you can also generally use it as a compound meter: 9/8 in 3, or three beats of triplets, similar to 6/8 in 2. 3 8th notes in the 9/8 time are exactly equal to 1 quarter note in the 4/4 time; they adjust the tempo of the song to make both the same length of time.

That's why the switching section at 5:33 does two measures of 4/4 and two measures of 9/8. 2 x 9/8 becomes 2 measures of 3/4.

Here's the section:

http://shariqansari.com/bluerondo-time.mp3

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...