How to learn to quickly recognize the meter(s) in prog metal ?

[KoolFartWind]

Hi,

to be concise, just one question to the experts :

Can you immediately catch the everchanging meters in songs like :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb0fx7_KhWs

?

If yes, can you provide hints for workshops, that concentrate on metric perception ?

Thanks a lot !

[elnn]

1. Count the length of a musical sentence. Does it end on the beat or in between the beats? That's checking for subdivisions (e.g. 4/4 vs 9/8)
2a. Well, you've counted its length, if it ends on the beat (x/4) then continue counting to see if a sentence has an even number of beats. Here, the syncopated part after the first solo is in 11/4 (counted as 6/4+5/4 or 5/4+6/4, it changes) – really long bars hah.
2b. If it ends in between the beats, just see between which beats it does so. If it's between 4 and 5, then the meter is 9/8.
3. No workarounds, just beating the table or doing rhythmic exercises on your instrument or the table.

Sometimes it's polymetric. The part after the intro here is 9/8 over 9/4+11/4.
Sometimes it's polyrhythmic with triplets over duplets or similar. Which is the dominating rhythm? No one knows. Tosin does just that at the stark change at 2:51 (after the 5/8 part).
et cetera
You won't get it the first time as there are often various twists and turns that you can't anticipate or polymeters. Just listen to it several times. And don't ever feel sorry for the table.

Lots of pausing and relistening. Unless you've heard it for more than 500 times (I did with this tune), then it's gets easier.

[xoxos]

maybe for first learn to slowly recognise the meter(s), and go from there


remember seeing some tal/counting guru at a festival in india, like sticking his head out a booth and just basically counting really fast while someone danced. he was really good at it. actually doing it helps. i have an app 'blewm' that generates simple music in various counts and temperaments et c. pretty boring but heck son just do it count and after a while it will be easier like.

concatenating stuf like 13 can be like 3+3+3+2+2 or whatever. tals, simple idea called other stuff.

[KoolFartWind]

Thanks a lot for the answers !

@elnn

An awesome human-readable algorithm you aggregated there. One question : Differentiation between polyrhythmic vs. polymetric is done via the fact that rhythm is about timing ratios and meter is about (periodic) accents ? Otherwise I won't understand how to be 100% sure, whether the meter or the rhythm changed. Perhaps it is as you said, noone knows, artistic freedom (?). The easiest step of your algorithm for me is the part "listen at least 500 times". I wanna know, why this conglomerate of mostly uneven measures can be so addictive. Never would have thought before I found out some of my most liked songs have compounded meters.

@xoxos

Thanks for the tipps to check out foreign cultures as reference. I'd moreover think, that drumming along african tribal music would be beneficial as a practical exercise. And counting out loud to metal ? I'll try with 0.25 timestretching ratio. Otherwise it would be a jawbreaker .

[xoxos]

building a few algo processes like this, i pretty much go with 2 and 3 and maybe 4 length segments. easy to hear a rhythm in these, so once you get that, if you hear 3 + 2 and think 5.

[KoolFartWind]

Yeah, but I doubt that I ever will be able to differentiate between for example :

- a 6/8 - meter with just doublets rhythm
- a 2/4 - meter

or

- a 4/4 - meter with triplets every second beat
- a 10/8 - meter

I wouldn't be able to do that spontanously, because metal is played fast and with often blurry frequency allocation.

[elnn]

6/8 has a triplet feel. TIC-tic-tic-TIC-tic-tic
You can write in 2/4 and add a 3 above each triplet. Or 6/8 and drop the 3s.
It's about what's predominant - duplets or triplets.

Practice playing your favourite riffs in different meters and feels, you'll get it.


Polymeters are polyrhythmic. Polyrhythms aren't necessarily polymetric.
If there are two elemets with two distinct meters, then it's a polymeter.
You CAN write most polyrhythms as polymeters, I suppose. So they're not *so much* differents, just two concepts that make playing easier - when you play an element in polymetric music you count in the meter your element's in. In polyrhythmic, the entire band is in the same meter. Just convenience, I think

[KoolFartWind]

Hmmkay, your advices are on point, but I'm interested, how easy it is to distinguish between polymeter and polyrhythm. I suppose it's my turn to provide some cheap examples for my understanding of polyrhythms and polymeters and you can decide, whether the meter or just the rhythm changed.

[elnn]

Polyrhythm and polymeter aren't about rhythm/meter change - it's about several rhythms/meters playing at the same time and interconnecting.
The instrumental intro of Tempting Time is polymetric - you can hear the crash and I forget what else keeping a steady x/4 (for me it sounds mostly 6+4/4) with the main riff adding up to 19/8 (10+9/8?).
Then when the solo comes in the overall pulse is a steady 4/4 - but seriously polyrhythmic, listen to the snare.

But AaL is one hell of a rhythmic metric ride, it's not the easiest thing to analyse.

I find approaching it all as polyrhythms more groovy and pleasant, personally. As in having an x/4 pulse rolling in the body and approaching all the deviances from it as still belonging to the same meter - as syncopations, basically.

[KoolFartWind]

Here is one quick example that I just made, where I would not be able to recognize the first meter because of the masking of the actual meter by syncopation/cross-beat.

Can you recognize the meters ?

https://soundcloud.com/sickniffykant/polywhat

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkFNdi8gIMY

[KoolFartWind]

Polyrhythm and polymeter aren't about rhythm/meter change - it's about several rhythms/meters playing at the same time and interconnecting.

Yeah thanks for pointing that out precisely. I think I ought to know that but honestly forgot and thought Polymeter would mean to change the meter arbitrarily.

The instrumental intro of Tempting Time is polymetric - you can hear the crash and I forget what else keeping a steady x/4 (for me it sounds mostly 6+4/4) with the main riff adding up to 19/8 (10+9/8?).
Then when the solo comes in the overall pulse is a steady 4/4 - but seriously polyrhythmic, listen to the snare.

But AaL is one hell of a rhythmic metric ride, it's not the easiest thing to analyse.

Okay, I'll check it out, it is worth studying thoroughly even though it hurts.

Anyway I'm only listening to their mainstream song atm, CAFO (plus "mind-spun" and especially "Nephele" of "Joy of motion"). I like guitar solo climaxi (in instrumental music). And right after the solo in CAFO my favorite part sets in, which screams "odd meter" even for the unambitioned listeners. But I guess I'm wrong again and this part has a standard meter

I find approaching it all as polyrhythms more groovy and pleasant, personally. As in having an x/4 pulse rolling in the body and approaching all the deviances from it as still belonging to the same meter - as syncopations, basically.

I guess that is part of the art. But my restless mind won't stop until there is an unequivocal distinction between polymeter and polyrhythm and a specification to analyze them correctly respectively.

[arkmabat]

NIN's March of the Pigs is in 29/8 time. I'd need to practice to drum along to that...

[arkmabat]

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/ent ... songs.html

[KoolFartWind]

I like the King Crimson song. The tool - stuff sucks big time in comparison (no groove at all).