the most technically impressive song?

Easy Money wrote: OK drum patterns looked at as a whole phrase are different, but I garuntee everone playing with this guy is counting the 1/8ths as a 4 plus 3 pattern.

So he's counting


>     >    
1 2 3 4 1 2 3

With the accent on 4? I don't know how that makes sense rhythmically when the accents don't coincide with the "1" of the groupings. I mean, the whole point of the grouping is supposed to be capturing the essence of the rhythmical flow.

I will say that is a tough pattern and hard to feel.

All I'm saying is that if I had a gig with that drummer and he was playing that pattern and I wanted to play my parts correctly so I get paid and asked to the next gig I would count in the above prescribed manner because if I did it any other way I would get lost and end up "sucking clams" (Buddy Rich).

Edited by Easy Money - October 17 2007 at 18:25

Well maybe I count the way that works for me and you count the way that works for you.
I would never tell someone how to play their instrument.

That wasn't me that called you a moron, I really don't care for that kind of talk on the internet or elsewhere. I enjoyed tossing around these ideas and hopefully you did too.

Aiaiai! Music is an art! Art doesn't have rules the way sciences do! Who cares if someone uses 1s in their notation as long as it sounds right? Granted, it does make things easier to be uniform, but we're talking about progressive music here! We're supposed to not only accept things outside of the norm but laud them for being so!

Sometimes I think that many of these bands we talk about, those who have no "feeling" in their music, are victims of this trend; to focus so deeply on complex structure and in doing so lose sight of the artistic side.

Now, I'm a very right-brained person and as such I would much rather learn a song's tempo by ear than by it's time signature. To me "4/4, 7/8, 3/4, 13/16, 15/16, 17/16, 14/16, 5/4, 6/8, 2/4, 5/8, 11/4, 9/4, 7/16, 6/16, 5/16, 10/16, 9/8, 15/8, 12/16, 16/16 (3+3+3+3+2+2), 3/8" means very little. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these songwriters are the same way, ripping out technical riffs by ear and jotting them down as an afterthought. Considering this I've been wondering how much time signature really matters to such people and if it makes much of a difference in their difficulty playing.




Edited by Zaenos - October 17 2007 at 22:07

Zaenos wrote: Aiaiai! Music is an art! Art doesn't have rules the way sciences do! Who cares if someone uses 1s in their notation as long as it sounds right? - Evidently Prog fans do.. besides, it's fun to discuss Sometimes I think that many of these bands we talk about, those who have no "feeling" in their music, are victims of this trend; to focus so deeply on complex structure and in doing so lose sight of the artistic side. - But a technical aspect has been important in the progressive experience, setting it apart from other rock and pop Now, I'm a very right-brained person and as such I would much rather learn a song's tempo by ear than by it's time signature. To me "4/4, 7/8, 3/4, 13/16, 15/16, 17/16, 14/16, 5/4, 6/8, 2/4, 5/8, 11/4, 9/4, 7/16, 6/16, 5/16, 10/16, 9/8, 15/8, 12/16, 16/16 (3+3+3+3+2+2), 3/8" means very little. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these songwriters are the same way, ripping out technical riffs by ear and jotting them down as an afterthought. Considering this I've been wondering how much time signature really matters to such people and if it makes much of a difference in their difficulty playing. - That wouldn't surprise me either, but it's still challenging (and often more interseting) to play in 'unusual' times

crimhead wrote: chamberry wrote: This is the craziest guitarist I've ever seen. I don't know what you consider technical, but this looks pretty technical to me:Mick Barr & Zach Hillhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-plG6mmyI_I that video looks like one long continuous guitar/drum solo.

Yeah, that's what it is. A well-thought out solo, though.

Zaenos wrote: Aiaiai! Music is an art! Art doesn't have rules the way sciences do! Who cares if someone uses 1s in their notation as long as it sounds right? Granted, it does make things easier to be uniform...

Certif1ed wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote:    Certif1ed wrote: But traditionally, 9/8 is 3 dotted crotchets to the bar, giving a feeling of 3/4 with a triplet swing.   In 20th Century music, of course, anything is possible... "Traditionally" ... maybe you're right, especially if you're looking specifically at Classical music or traditional Jazz. But not in Prog! Maybe I'll post some examples later ... but I'm pretty sure that (3+3+3)/8 is very, very rare in Prog. You're of course welcome to post some examples to prove the contrary ...   Traditionally, of course I'm right - that's exactly what Trademark is getting at.   But you picked up on the right word ;   In Rock music, especially Prog, nothing is traditional, and anything goes - which is the point I was making (and you also seem to be making) about writing it down - ie, you can't write it down very easily, unless you adapt existing time signatures and rules, because the "rules" of rock are still being written.   This doesn't stop 9/8 from being compound time, as traditionally taught - there are very good reasons why it represents dotted crotchet time, and even great composers "broke the rules" and divided it up a bit to get the music to sound the way they wanted.   For example, Stravinsky couldn't have written Le Sacre Printemps without taking extreme liberties with time signatures.   However, 9/8 does carry connotations which may lead to people unfamiliar with the music misinterpreting it rhythmically, if the original intention was 4.5/4. Why not 9/4?

9/4 is totally different from 9/8 ... in rock music you usually simply need to examine the drum pattern to determine which signature it is. in rock music you usually have the basic pattern in 4/4 where the bass drum is on 1 and 3 and the snare drum on 2 and 4. Most rhythms are more or less derivatives of that pattern ... but even with heavy syncopation and deviation from that norm you usually have two snare drum accents in each bar. Now if I want to determine whether something should be noted as x/4, x/8 or even x/16 I simply examine the drum pattern and try to identify bars of music. Then within a bar I try to find out whether it's 8th feel, 16th feel or triple 8ths, shuffle etc.. It's difficult for me to put into English words ... I guess I'm simply determining the "rhythmical resolution" of the pattern.

In a nutshell I will only describe something as 7/4 or 9/4 if I hear two repeating/alternating bars of music (e.g. 4/4+3/4, 4/4+5/4) or if the bass/snare pattern indicates that it's really longer bars than usual. Steve Vai - Die To Live is a good example of a rhythm which I would note as a "true" 7/4. Pink Floyd - Money is a good example of something which I would rather note down as an alternating sequence of 4/4 and 3/4 - but I also think it's valid to note it as 7/4.

7/8 and 9/8 are signatures which I would use for rhythms which are in 8ths feel with bass/snare indicating ordinary 4/4 bars which are either truncated (7/8) or extended (9/8). 9/8 used this way can be described as "stuttering" (repeating the last 1/8th note of the bar), 7/8 often feels like "stumbling". Of course 9/8 can also be seen as (3+3+3)/8 ... but this can also be noted as 3/4 with triplet 8ths ... similarly blues tracks can be noted either as 4/4 with triplet 8ths or as 12/8 with "straight" 8ths.


Phew ... this is all *much* harder to describe than to play!


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - October 18 2007 at 16:55