Why do I feel uncomfortable doing something else than 4/4?

[paveloso]

You're lucky, I only feel comfortable IN odd times. Too much Crimso and Yes as a lad...

Yeah, me too... Too much Tex-Mex and mariachi as a lad (3/4 time).

[jplanet]

You're lucky, I only feel comfortable IN odd times. Too much Crimso and Yes as a lad...

+1 for me (obvious from my sig, of course!)

There are lots of famous tunes that are not in 4/4, such as Pink Floyd's Money. It sounds natural when you're not looking for it. If you start with a melody, it's easier, but most electronic music workflow starts with a drum pattern, so unless you hear that odd-time groove to begin with, it's very tough to be melodic over an odd-timed drum beat.

Most sequencers don't make this easy, either. Tracktion is just about the only option for me because of the ease of inserting odd times and tempo changes. When trying to work with Live, or almost any other sequencer, they all seem to be made for a 4/4 world. (or, at least in not changing the time sig during the song. The capability is there, but not in a way that's fluid to work with).

[paveloso]

You're lucky, I only feel comfortable IN odd times. Too much Crimso and Yes as a lad...

+1 for me (obvious from my sig, of course!)

... Tracktion is just about the only option for me because of the ease of inserting odd times and tempo changes. When trying to work with Live, or almost any other sequencer, they all seem to be made for a 4/4 world. (or, at least in not changing the time sig during the song. The capability is there, but not in a way that's fluid to work with).

Live 7 will allow using several time signatures in a single tune.

[Meffy]

To aid in dancing to 5/4 and other unusual time signatures, I'd recommend growing a tail ([x-thread] Oolon Colluphid's coat has one, after all [/x-thread])... but that might be considered obnoxiously smug, so I'll refrain.

[xoxos]

took a lot of orientation to make footing for me..

you know the backing groove for 'take 5,' you can divide it as 3+2.. eg. 'bada, bada ba! ba!'

sample and play 3,3,3+2, 3+2, 3+2...

it's very natural sounding (played out) to western ear, ready for hiphop sampler.. yet it consists of 21 count..

ba! ba!

[Meffy]

To me the "Mission: Impossible" theme always sounded 10/8. ONE-two-three ONE-two-three ONE-two-ONE-two. These "odd" meters never seemed weird to me, I grew up with quasi-beatnik parents and heard lots of unconventional music from earliest yoofiness. (Another debt I can't repay. Ah well.)

[Voidoid Surrealist]

took a lot of orientation to make footing for me..

you know the backing groove for 'take 5,' you can divide it as 3+2.. eg. 'bada, bada ba! ba!'

sample and play 3,3,3+2, 3+2, 3+2...

it's very natural sounding (played out) to western ear, ready for hiphop sampler.. yet it consists of 21 count..

ba! ba!

Very good advice from Rurik, 3's and 2's is the way most Balkan folk musicians/dancers help cout it out.
Complicated compound meters like Sedi Donka (25/16) can be broken down to their component parts easily this way.
25=7+7+11, so broken down further: 7=3+2+2, and 11=2+2+3+2+2, so just count out "123,12,12,123,12,12,12,12,123,12,12" and you're set.
That wasn't confusing at all, was it?:hihi:

[xoxos]

or 3, 22 3, 22-22 3, 22

any links for concatenated phythms/var. systems appreciated.. coding soon :p

[multree]

I find myself writing in 3/4 & 4/4 most of the time... but I've written stuff that has both time signatures in it - and never realized until we tried to recorded and the drummer I was playing with at the time said...

you do realize that you're jumping from 4/4 to 3/4 to 4/4 to 3/4 to... you get the picture

[jplanet]

All these numbers bring up a good point...what host will be the first to offer accent option on odd-meter clicks? It would be nice to set 5/4, and then check off the beats where you'd like to hear the accent...Everybody, make feature requests for this!

[justin3am]

Though it seems to be all the rage in the style of music I make, I tend to stay away from odd time sigs. When people force the use of odd meters it's very transparent in my opinion. I do however, like to play with timing within normal time signatures. For instance:

I'll treat five 16th notes as a quarter note so that my pattern resolves in five bars instead of four, or I'll treat tuplets like quarter notes and have my pattern resolve in three measures instead of four. In each instance the number of events stays the same but happen over a longer or shorter span of time. I like to simulate tempo automation this way because it sounds more natural than jumping to an unrelated tempo.

[Chris Walton]

... (Last night I forced myself and I came up with this experimental little piece, it does 4 bars 10/8, 4 bars 3/4 throughout (but see, there's still that prominent "4" number there!).

Dude, you are NEVER going to get rid of 4s in denominators, simply because that's how Western rhythmic notation works! (Unless, of course, you come up with a really avant-garde new notation system).

That is simply how music is divided: by multiples of 2. You can write stuff in out-there time signatures, like 17/16, 13/16, 9/8 and such, or a drummer can play triplets or quintuplets, etc., but the REFERENCE to which these are played is always a multiple of 2 ("3 against 4" rhythms, for example).

I was more referring to the amount of bars ... 4 bars of 10/8, then 4 bars of 3/4 (which is actually 9/8, I must have been high when I wrote the OP)

Thanks for the replies everybody.

[Lord Snarebottom]

No point trying to force it if you're not feeling the rhythm. You just end up looking like a dick trying to be clever. Prog rock, like. vomit.

Sometimes you just come up with melodies or rhythms that happen to be in an odd time sig.

+1. I wrote a particular song, thought it was 4/4 throughout, and didn't realize until much later that it has a bar of 9/8 followed by a bar of 7/8 in the chorus section.

[xtp]

I don't know what it is ... maybe it's because of the amount of 4/4 music out there, maybe it's because we're wired that way, maybe because it's just me that's wired that way

Its really strange you have posted this. Last night i was laughing at the fact that 4/4 is a timesig I really struggle to play in. If i pickup my guitar and start improvising the timesig i play to in my head is 7/4 and i cant get away from it. 7/4 is the most natural feel for me, in either a 4-3 pattern or a 5-2 pattern.

I have a basic bass-drum jazz/blues riff set up in cubase that i sometimes try to play along to, to try and get that 4/4 feel, but it never works, as soon as i close my eyes and start improvising it generaly goes 4-3. I just struggle to play 4/4 two bars in a row.

[blatanville]

This brings up the issue of music education.

People who have some level of training learn to count musical time, and that helps them sort out non-4/4 times by giving them references for the downbeats.

I heard an electronica song recently which was in 6/4 (not a truly off-time, and I think most reggae is in 6/4, also), which featured a sample of someone (sounds like an old blues musician, actually) counting the time four you:

"one two three, two two three"

and as you listened to the song, you could hear how the count connected to the drum pattern:

"kick Snare kick, snare snare kick"

which was just brilliant as a teaching tool...I suddenly felt empowered to tackle 6/4 more confidently, because I knew where to put my snares!

If someone just wrote out a chart, or gave me the formula (yes, that person would be a music teacher, smarty-pants!) the variations, I'd feel a whole lot more comfortable following the odd-time muse.

My favourite examples of off-times (that I'm aware of, for various reasons) include:

"Money" by Pink Floyd [7/4] (even cooler for the fact that the rhythm is introduced by the cash registers sounds -- all of which were created by cutting tape and assembling it!)

"Mars, the Bringer of War" by Gustav Holst [5/4] (this one just DRIVES the beat home)

"Follow You, Follow Me" [13/8] (guitarist Mike Rutherford came up with the riff while jamming then played it for Phil Collins (one of the best drummers in rock and pop, his lyrical crap notwithstanding) who told him, "You silly sod, you've come up with a pop song in 13!")

this is interesting...thanks to the original poster.