Have some of you ever noticed that you might hear a "false" pulse in Meshuggah's song "Combustion" although there are hihats counting in at the beginning? But it always sounded odd to you? (for me too!)

Long ago I couldn't understand why Thomas Haake counted us in like that and it sounded always totally off to my ears! Later I noticed in many comments that many people have had that difficulty too, although there are surely some (i believe not many) people hearing it "the right way". This doesn't mean that the other pulse is wrong or anyone is dumb, by not hearing it "correctly". I'm not trying offending anyone. Our ears have certain patterns they are familiar with and some just seem impossible to understand. This mystery seemed to create some discussions and attempts of solving it. And just a putting a Metronom didn't really help a lot.

I could just hear the snare on the downbeat the whole song (aside the halftime part) but Haake counted in somehow on the off beat 16th notes and I couldn't believe that this would be a mistake because why would he do that? So my wish was to hear it in the real (or so to say "intended") pulse. This was quiet challenging for me although I listen and play drums with a lot of prog and complicated rhythms. My ears are somehow already trained for more complicated pulses and rhythms, but this was heavy without some help.

I found a way by playing a simple half time drum beat to it trying to keep the pulse alive (crazy challenge i can tell you that!). I finally could hear that Haake was counting in correctly and that the whole riff is based on the 16th note off beats. I realised that the whole band never accented one hit on the 1. That was mindblowing for me. For the first time I could hear the song in a totally different way! Suddenly everything made sense and the 4/4 bars stayed the whole song through without having one single odd time bar!

So I made a drum cover playing and jamming my version of the song but rearranging it with different halftime beats so the "real" pulse is easy to hear. (I hope so)

FYI This was just for fun and I didn't try to make it perfect or to insult any Meshuggah fans or anyone by changing the beats. I totally honor and love the original beats and version by Haake. He is a big influence for me!

I just hope my version can help some of you understand and hear the "real" pulse so you can have the same experience of hearing it in the original version. And I can tell you it was mindblowing for me!

Tell me what you think and if it helps!

https://youtu.be/_7gug9AdgQ4