KVR Audio

cloudspine · Post by **cloudspine** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 4:16 pm

dont even follow time in the conceptual sense for running your day

Bet you often feel there's just too much time, or that it stopped, a frozen moment of eternity...
I'm not fond of these space/time categories either...

PugFace · Post by **PugFace** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:01 pm

I am not familiar with Sonar one bit so that is quite interesting. As far as i can see the time signature is fixed in Cubase SX but i haven't really tried much. I have been thinking of trying to make a Mike Oldfield Style epic for some time and signature changes would be vital for this music. However i could just put together the sections in audio and have a master audio file with each section strung together. I did one three years ago but it took 6 months to complete and i was having horrendous problems with CPU use (All those VSTi's). I was on VST32 then and i had a look into signature change but gave up. It ended up as 4/4 all the way through.

eternia · Post by **eternia** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:09 pm

I often use non 4/4 time signatures. I like the idea of trying to come up with riffs in unusual times that sound "sort of normal" to the great unwashed.

It's also fun watching people headbang to 9/8 (as 4+4+1/8), or to tracks that change time signature just about every bar.

One of my bands is just 2 basses and a drum machine, so we used to use such trickery to help introduce other types of variation into our songs.

Take a listen to Indian Raga music which will do things like add an extra beat (or half beat) to each successive movement.

David

torhan · Post by **torhan** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:13 pm

PugFace wrote:I am not familiar with Sonar one bit so that is quite interesting.

Why not dl the demo?

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:16 pm

PugFace wrote:As far as i can see the time signature is fixed in Cubase SX but i haven't really tried much.

Check the Tempo Track.

Devon

tjvigil66 · Post by **tjvigil66** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:44 pm

Is 6/13 considered weird?

If it is weird, then I absolutely don't use it like any of the other weirdos!

torhan · Post by **torhan** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:53 pm

piranha wrote:Is 6/13 considered weird?

If it is weird, then I absolutely don't use it like any of the other weirdos!

Only in SoCal.

PugFace · Post by **PugFace** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 6:25 pm

Thanks DevonB

jens · Post by **jens** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:31 pm

here are two pop tunes I did using odd time-signatures

fragments of complexity changes between 11/16 and 4/4

and
pluie d'autmomne changes continuously between 7/8 and 4/4

I think both tunes are good examples of that odd time-signatures do not neccessarily sound weird
or complex

jens · Post by **jens** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:43 pm

and here is a short snippet of a 7/4 tune I started working on a few days ago:

banana
jam

Kajiki · Post by **Kajiki** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:52 pm

piranha wrote:Is 6/13 considered weird?

If it is weird, then I absolutely don't use it like any of the other weirdos!

I think it's not a valid time signature (because your reader won't know what a 1/13 is).

Markleford · Post by **Markleford** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:04 pm

Kajiki wrote:I think it's not a valid time signature (because your reader won't know what a 1/13 is).

Weellll...

If you have a MFX-capable host, check out my TenCrazy.com MFX Autothrob, which can compute any numerator/denomenator timings based upon a given tempo and ppq.

- m

jens · Post by **jens** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:15 pm

well, there are quintlets just as there are triplets and even septlets (or whatever you call that in english)- but 1/13?

- I'd rather say that's faulty timing

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:40 pm

I wrote some poly meter stuff at uni which was a bit wacky. It had some rhythm instruments playing in 3/4 and the main melodic instruments playing in 4/4. In the background i had these weird ambiences and semi pitched sonorties which kind of worked at their own pace! After 'blah' many measures (I forgot) the music synced up again which was cool cuz it meant you continue at these points with a single meter signiture if so desired. Eitherway, i think the future of experimental rhythm is with stuff like this. People like Phil Glass are using it to great effect in score like Kundun.

Har · Post by **Har** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:49 pm

Heh, with most of the stuff I've been doing with Scot lately, rare is the time anything actually IS in 4/4.

But the cool thing is: he's so great at writing this kind of stuff, that it feels completely natural and not "odd" at all...as opposed to the occasional "widdly" (as Donk would put it

)artist who might use odd-time sigs purely for its own sake and because it wouldn't be officially "prog" enough if it was in (gasp) 4/4 time.
I personally enjoy whatever the signature happens to be at the time and try not to pay too much attention to the numbers (hey, I always sucked at math anyway

).

My two favorite "odd" time-signature stories/examples:

-- The core riff of The Allman Brother's "Whipping Post" is in 11/4 time.
When asked in an interview how he came up with that, Gregg Allman said the tempo reminded him of swimming laps in a pool, and then kicking off the far end of the pool to head back the other way in mid-beat:

1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2

After he described it that way, it made perfect sense to me.

-- I remember in an interview with the late James Honeyman-Scott, the original lead guitarist for The Pretenders: they had asked him about the weird time-signature on one of the tunes off their first album (I think it might have been "Tatooed Love Boys", but I'm not sure), and how he came up with it. His answer: "how many to the bar?? All to the bleedin' bar!! I have no idea: I just came up with a little guitar melody over the top that seemed to work with everything else."

Anybody using weird time signatures?