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time sig help in concordance with progressive

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Topic: time sig help in concordance with progressive
Posted By: cjgone
Subject: time sig help in concordance with progressive
Date Posted: October 11 2009 at 13:35
So, i'm learning guitaring and i'm interested in time sigs associated with prog.
 
I know some stuff about time sigs like 3/4 with 8th notes is grouped like
 
1 2 | 1 2 | 1 2
 
and 6/8  is like
 
1 2 3 | 1 2 3
 
There's supposed to be beat stressing on the notes.. Is that implied? Like when i'm playing 3/4 is it assumed without accents that the 1rst beat of every double is stressed? How do I know?
 
And like 6/8 vs 3/4, is it assumed to stress the first beat of each triplet?
 
How as the music player do I know what to accent when it's not like specified?
 
And do you just play the note louder or quieter with stressing? It sounds a bit easy, but like it's really hard for me.. I have to like memorize the stressings to play it and stuff. Makes my head hurt!
 
 


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Technical death metal <3.



Replies:
Posted By: O666
Date Posted: October 11 2009 at 14:34

Hi. I think Camel's " RAJAZ" album help you. The song named " RAJAZ" (instrumental)  is a good example.you can  listen to this song and then try to cover it.



Posted By: wreckfan1
Date Posted: October 11 2009 at 15:56
More often than onot the drums will accent the required beat, and so you will most likely do it without thinking about it.
 
If there are no drum parts then yes you do need to stress the beat by playing the note louder
 
The easiest way to differentiate between 3/4 and 6/8 on guitar is that in 6/8 every other emphasized beat will be on an up stroke, whereas in 3/4 all the emphasised beats will be down strokes


Posted By: cjgone
Date Posted: October 11 2009 at 18:07
How does changing the accents like if i'm playing a 6/8 riff over a 3/4 riff affect the mood of the music and such?
 
How do I know which I should choose? Is it supposed to be the natural "feel" or w\e everyone else tells me?


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Technical death metal <3.


Posted By: The Runaway
Date Posted: October 12 2009 at 00:44
It's your feel man, you shouldn't play exactly like the ones that will teach you.

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http://www.formspring.me/Aragorn224" rel="nofollow - Trendsetter win!

The search for nonexistent perfection.


Posted By: cobb2
Date Posted: October 12 2009 at 02:35
Beat stresses should be accented in the music ie. in simple 3/4 you would have a bass note on beat 1 with the melody and this would accent the music without necessarily playing beat one louder. So beat stresses are implied and the player doesn't have to play beat one louder and beats two and three softer. In modern music the drummer will usually accomplish the beat stresses simply by using the snare. When writing you have in mind what the standard stress is of any time signature and write accordingly. Note that standard stress is often thrown out the window in prog music.


Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: October 12 2009 at 10:19
It is a good musical exercise to play with the stress beats in a situation of 6, first as 3/4 (1, 3, and 5) and then 6/8 (1 and 4). Switching in a song can be a nice, proggy element, and of course polyrhythm (in this case for example accenting with one instrument or drum on 1,3,5 and another on 1,4) is a classic technique.
 
Just for own music sense, learn doing the polyrhythm with your right and left hands. Count out loud 1 2 3 4 5 6. With the Left hit 1,3,5 with the right 1,4. You'll start noticing how often these kind of ideas are used. Again, these are musical ideas to play with, to get your mind accustomed to. The best songs typically come more spontaneously, but when you have more complicated ideas incorporated into you musical vocabulary, they're more likely to come up spontaneously.


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You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all.


Posted By: cjgone
Date Posted: October 13 2009 at 17:10

Some people told me that with electric guitar distortion, you probably can't even hear note accenting.. I only have an acoustic.. is that true? =X



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Technical death metal <3.


Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: October 14 2009 at 08:35

there are multiple ways to accent...but yes distorted it's not as easy to bring out dynamics on a guitar. Luckily on acoustic it's quite easy.



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You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all.


Posted By: mrcozdude
Date Posted: October 14 2009 at 09:15
Originally posted by cjgone cjgone wrote:

So, i'm learning guitaring and i'm interested in time sigs associated with prog.
 
I know some stuff about time sigs like 3/4 with 8th notes is grouped like
 
1 2 | 1 2 | 1 2
 
and 6/8  is like
 
1 2 3 | 1 2 3
 
There's supposed to be beat stressing on the notes.. Is that implied? Like when i'm playing 3/4 is it assumed without accents that the 1rst beat of every double is stressed? How do I know?
 
And like 6/8 vs 3/4, is it assumed to stress the first beat of each triplet?
 
How as the music player do I know what to accent when it's not like specified?
 
And do you just play the note louder or quieter with stressing? It sounds a bit easy, but like it's really hard for me.. I have to like memorize the stressings to play it and stuff. Makes my head hurt!
 
 


You don't need to accent anything unless the music mentions staccato.

 Otherwise I think your just trying to find different methods to count common time?


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http://www.last.fm/user/cozfunkel/" rel="nofollow">




Posted By: wreckfan1
Date Posted: October 14 2009 at 10:57

for a good way of comparing listen to america from west side story (the nice did a cover), it alternates between 6/8 and 3/4 every bar

If you listen closely to the rhythm you will hear: |123 |456 |12| 34 |56


Posted By: cjgone
Date Posted: October 14 2009 at 20:31
Quote Otherwise I think your just trying to find different methods to count common time?
I wanna play progressive <3 but I don't know how I would use 3/4 vs 6/8 and stuff. It's all new to me.
If there's no accenting whats the point of 6/8 vs 3/4 then? 
 
Is there any like prog metal song that emphasizes the stressings if they're used? I was trying to see if I could tell the time sigs in Schism and Vicarious by Tool, but i'm not sure whether the accenting was just for the drumming or also for the guitaring.


-------------
Technical death metal <3.


Posted By: cobb2
Date Posted: October 14 2009 at 21:28
Originally posted by cjgone cjgone wrote:

Quote Otherwise I think your just trying to find different methods to count common time?
I wanna play progressive <3 but I don't know how I would use 3/4 vs 6/8 and stuff. It's all new to me.
If there's no accenting whats the point of 6/8 vs 3/4 then? 
 
Is there any like prog metal song that emphasizes the stressings if they're used? I was trying to see if I could tell the time sigs in Schism and Vicarious by Tool, but i'm not sure whether the accenting was just for the drumming or also for the guitaring.

It's how you write it that is the point- the music itself should achieve the stressing. Let me go back to the simple example of 3/4- three melody notes, one bass (harmony) note at beat one- so the bass together with the melody accent beat one.
Simple 6/8 (don't confuse this with simple time, as 6/8 is compound time, meaning two beats of a dotted quarter) would have 6 melody notes- eighths grouped in two groups of three to signify the beat count. Two bass notes on count 1 and 4, to accent the beats.
As I said before beat stresses are implied in the music and the length of notes must be accurately applied when playing to achieve the rythme.
The only type of stress a player needs to worry about and physically play louder are stress accents (>) placed above a note (not forgetting crescendo and diminuendo markings). Stress accents are there to change the beat pattern with the flavour of an off-beat accent (syncopation).

addition: if you are truly interested you should get a good beginners book for classical guitar playing. I can recommend Frederick Noad's Solo Guitar Playing Book 1.


Posted By: cjgone
Date Posted: October 14 2009 at 22:30
Originally posted by cobb2 cobb2 wrote:

Originally posted by cjgone cjgone wrote:

Quote Otherwise I think your just trying to find different methods to count common time?
I wanna play progressive <3 but I don't know how I would use 3/4 vs 6/8 and stuff. It's all new to me.
If there's no accenting whats the point of 6/8 vs 3/4 then? 
 
Is there any like prog metal song that emphasizes the stressings if they're used? I was trying to see if I could tell the time sigs in Schism and Vicarious by Tool, but i'm not sure whether the accenting was just for the drumming or also for the guitaring.

It's how you write it that is the point- the music itself should achieve the stressing. Let me go back to the simple example of 3/4- three melody notes, one bass (harmony) note at beat one- so the bass together with the melody accent beat one.
Simple 6/8 (don't confuse this with simple time, as 6/8 is compound time, meaning two beats of a dotted quarter) would have 6 melody notes- eighths grouped in two groups of three to signify the beat count. Two bass notes on count 1 and 4, to accent the beats.
As I said before beat stresses are implied in the music and the length of notes must be accurately applied when playing to achieve the rythme.
The only type of stress a player needs to worry about and physically play louder are stress accents (>) placed above a note (not forgetting crescendo and diminuendo markings). Stress accents are there to change the beat pattern with the flavour of an off-beat accent (syncopation).

addition: if you are truly interested you should get a good beginners book for classical guitar playing. I can recommend Frederick Noad's Solo Guitar Playing Book 1.
Ahhh... wait you can just stress a beat by playing a bass note at the same time? O_OOO
 
So if I did that on the piano, I could play like C on the treble clef and the bass C note together?


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Technical death metal <3.


Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: October 15 2009 at 00:11
Originally posted by cobb2 cobb2 wrote:

Originally posted by cjgone cjgone wrote:

Quote Otherwise I think your just trying to find different methods to count common time?
I wanna play progressive <3 but I don't know how I would use 3/4 vs 6/8 and stuff. It's all new to me.
If there's no accenting whats the point of 6/8 vs 3/4 then? 
 
Is there any like prog metal song that emphasizes the stressings if they're used? I was trying to see if I could tell the time sigs in Schism and Vicarious by Tool, but i'm not sure whether the accenting was just for the drumming or also for the guitaring.

It's how you write it that is the point- the music itself should achieve the stressing. Let me go back to the simple example of 3/4- three melody notes, one bass (harmony) note at beat one- so the bass together with the melody accent beat one.
Simple 6/8 (don't confuse this with simple time, as 6/8 is compound time, meaning two beats of a dotted quarter) would have 6 melody notes- eighths grouped in two groups of three to signify the beat count. Two bass notes on count 1 and 4, to accent the beats.
As I said before beat stresses are implied in the music and the length of notes must be accurately applied when playing to achieve the rythme.
The only type of stress a player needs to worry about and physically play louder are stress accents (>) placed above a note (not forgetting crescendo and diminuendo markings). Stress accents are there to change the beat pattern with the flavour of an off-beat accent (syncopation).

addition: if you are truly interested you should get a good beginners book for classical guitar playing. I can recommend Frederick Noad's Solo Guitar Playing Book 1.


Well said cobb. The time signature or if you prefer 'pulse unit', is dictated by the phrase length in the music and as you point out, once you have identified what this phrasing is, the implied accents should become more clear.

(As an aside) One of the pitfalls of some prog is that you very often hear bands who simply add or subtract beats to plain vanilla 4/4 riffage to come up with pseudo complexity for its own sake. Any undistinguished basher can count to 5, 7, 9 or 11, it's coming up with phrases or thematic ideas that breathe naturally over uneven beat lengths where the talent lies. So-called 'odd' time signatures are like good soccer referees, if you don't notice them they must be doing their job correctly.


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Posted By: mrcozdude
Date Posted: October 15 2009 at 03:53
Originally posted by cjgone cjgone wrote:

Quote Otherwise I think your just trying to find different methods to count common time?
I wanna play progressive <3 but I don't know how I would use 3/4 vs 6/8 and stuff. It's all new to me.
If there's no accenting whats the point of 6/8 vs 3/4 then? 
 
Is there any like prog metal song that emphasizes the stressings if they're used? I was trying to see if I could tell the time sigs in Schism and Vicarious by Tool, but i'm not sure whether the accenting was just for the drumming or also for the guitaring.


Cobb's explanation is good and more to your point.My point is you don't have to stress anything if your playing in 3 or 4,there isn't just one technique to play it.I don't understand why you have to stress anything.6/8 is 6 beats in a eighth note pattern as 3 is in a quarter note pattern.It is a difference but what ever makes it easier for you count in 3 or 6.




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http://www.last.fm/user/cozfunkel/" rel="nofollow">




Posted By: cjgone
Date Posted: October 15 2009 at 23:11
Originally posted by mrcozdude mrcozdude wrote:

Originally posted by cjgone cjgone wrote:

Quote Otherwise I think your just trying to find different methods to count common time?
I wanna play progressive <3 but I don't know how I would use 3/4 vs 6/8 and stuff. It's all new to me.
If there's no accenting whats the point of 6/8 vs 3/4 then? 
 
Is there any like prog metal song that emphasizes the stressings if they're used? I was trying to see if I could tell the time sigs in Schism and Vicarious by Tool, but i'm not sure whether the accenting was just for the drumming or also for the guitaring.


Cobb's explanation is good and more to your point.My point is you don't have to stress anything if your playing in 3 or 4,there isn't just one technique to play it.I don't understand why you have to stress anything.6/8 is 6 beats in a eighth note pattern as 3 is in a quarter note pattern.It is a difference but what ever makes it easier for you count in 3 or 6.


^Does that sound different at all? Like if 3/4 is played the same as 6/8, like if I have 6 eightnotes in 3/4 or 6 eigth notes in 6/8... then they're the same if i don't worry about how they're all grouped together.... So then I don't see why I would ever even use 6/8.

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Technical death metal <3.


Posted By: mrcozdude
Date Posted: October 16 2009 at 02:10
It's more to with tempo.3 quarter notes is different to 6 eighth notes.Eighth notes are play twice as fast then quarter etc.

Like I said stick with Cobbs,explaining on the internet can only confuse you more.

Wish I could think of some songs as examples.


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http://www.last.fm/user/cozfunkel/" rel="nofollow">




Posted By: cjgone
Date Posted: October 17 2009 at 20:15
..?
 
Can I not have 8th notes in 3/4?


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Technical death metal <3.


Posted By: cobb2
Date Posted: October 17 2009 at 22:14
Yes- you can write with any notes as long as the total adds up to three quarter notes per measure. This doesn't change the beat value. My examples were extremely simple- just keep an understanding that a measure 3/4  is counted one two three and the counts are placed on the quarter beat. If you write with eighth notes this doesn't change it to 6/8. Your eighth notes when written down will be grouped in twos as 3 groups of 2 eighths ie. 3 beats. Same goes for sixteenths or thirtyseconds or smaller- just remember they must be grouped (join the tails) to the value of a quarter note to keep the implied beat structure. The combinations of notes can be as varied as you want- they just cannot be more or less than 3 quarter notes per measure when added together


Posted By: cjgone
Date Posted: October 18 2009 at 00:57

Mm... Well I guess what i'm trying to figure out is what's the difference between triplets and double eighth notes.. The effect on the music.



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Technical death metal <3.


Posted By: cobb2
Date Posted: October 18 2009 at 01:21
Triplets are three notes played in the same time it would take to play two. You can write a triplet of three eighth notes (they must have a number 3 placed over the top of the joined tails). In a 4 (beat equals a quarter note) based time signature these would be played in the same time it would take to play two normal eighth notes. A simple count trick is to count eighth notes as 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 and triplets as 1 e & 2 e & 3 e & 4 e &. Triplets are more difficult to play because you need to play them quicker and the three grouping in the beats will be more difficult to keep the time. It gets particularly tricky when you have triplets grouped with normal notes


Posted By: mrcozdude
Date Posted: October 18 2009 at 06:56
Again nice explanation cob^.

Just interested cjgone are you trying to learn to read music?


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http://www.last.fm/user/cozfunkel/" rel="nofollow">




Posted By: cjgone
Date Posted: October 18 2009 at 16:37
Originally posted by mrcozdude mrcozdude wrote:

Again nice explanation cob^.

Just interested cjgone are you trying to learn to read music?
Lol I didn't want to say anything, but I have like 3 weeks of instrumental experience. :P I can only do 4/4 but I listen to mostly progressive and tech death so I don't want to constrain my knowledge by only using 4/4. :)
Originally posted by cobb2 cobb2 wrote:

Triplets are three notes played in the same time it would take to play two. You can write a triplet of three eighth notes (they must have a number 3 placed over the top of the joined tails). In a 4 (beat equals a quarter note) based time signature these would be played in the same time it would take to play two normal eighth notes. A simple count trick is to count eighth notes as 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 and triplets as 1 e & 2 e & 3 e & 4 e &. Triplets are more difficult to play because you need to play them quicker and the three grouping in the beats will be more difficult to keep the time. It gets particularly tricky when you have triplets grouped with normal notes
 
Ah..?
 
So like...
 
6/8 with two triplet grouping of 8th notes plays faster temo wise than 3/4 with three double 8th notes?
 
Or how about 5/8s now...  Like a triplet of 8th notes and a pair of 8th notes.. How would that play out? Would that be the same amount of time as 3/4 three pairs of 8th notes because the triplet plays in the same time as one pair of 8th notes? 


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Technical death metal <3.


Posted By: cobb2
Date Posted: October 31 2009 at 18:03
re the 6/8 3/4 question. You are confusing beat values here, I think. 6/8 has a beat value of 2 dotted quarters per measure. The joining of tails of eighth notes into 3 in 6/8 (or any compound time signature) is to denote this beat value- they are not triplets. How fast they play is set by the speed setting- moderato, adagio, or dotted crotchet = 100 etc. When learning to play 6/8 you count 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & (just remember this is a count , not the actual beats).

5/8 is not compound time, but simple time- 5 eighth note beats per measure.

To tell whether a time signature is compound, the top number must be divisible by three, but larger than 3 eg. 6/8, 12/8, 9/4 etc. To find how many beats divide the top number by three. To find which note equals one beat, divide the bottom by 2, then dot the resulting note. eg. 9/4 is 3 beats each of a dotted half not.

Any questions on how quick they are is relative to a metronome setting.


Posted By: cjgone
Date Posted: November 04 2009 at 00:51
Um, how about if you add up time sigs like:
 
 
3/4 + 4/4 = 7/4
 
If they add up like that, why would I even want to use 7/4?
 
 
Quote Any questions on how quick they are is relative to a metronome setting.
What about those ratio things like 3:2, irrational timing or w/e.


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Technical death metal <3.



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