A thread about alternative time sigs: a practical thread

[Amberience]

Lets get some practical advice going in regards to metering. How do you approach it? This isn't meant to be a "this is how you do it" thread, just a "this is how I do it, you may get inspired" thread.

Sometimes I take a kind of modular approach to it. I'm more guitar bassed, but I guess it can work with any instrumentation. So i'll come up with a riff in common 4/4 time. (I think they even call it common time don't they?)

Then I will loop certain sections of the riff to adapt its timing. You can even just change a few of the crochets to quavers, and that gives you a different feel to the riff even though you're playing the same notes. You can hear this in a lot of progressive metal.

When I am composing though, I don't really refer to the notes as whatever duration they are, I'm just using the technical names to put the point across. But all I'm really doing is adapting the duration of the note to map up with a groove I have in my head.

Another thing I like to do is to drop notes. I got this trick from a song by The Soft Machine called something like Tale of Talesan (I can't remember the actual name, but I have it on an awesome Psychedelia DVD I bought.)

The trick is to come up with a riff, doesn't matter what metering it has. Then over a set duration, drop off the last note. This changes the timing of course, so I usually adapt all the instruments to the timing of the new bar.

So you may start off with a melody in 6/4. But then it would go over a series of bars: 6/4 5/4 4/4 3/4 - as an example.

Of course you can do a combination of all of these. So you could do the last "drop note" thing, and then adjust one of the bars to sound more how you imagined it - intuition plays a large role for me.

So yeah, post your more practical theoretical advice here. We could all learn something and help each other come up with new interesting stuff.

[Amberience]

So did all the people in these two threads die or something:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=161439
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=162145

[Xnah]

EDIT: cleaning up the off-topic posts.

[Amberience]

So did all the people in these two threads die or something:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=161439
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=162145

You mean... because nobody responds immediately to your thread, and it's only the most busy weekend of the year, when everybody is visiting family ?

"Immediately" ?? I posted this thread more than 24 hours ago. No one visits their family for a whole 24 hours (usually) and even then one can find time to jump on the internet if they wish.

Secondly.. you found time to reply to the thread did you not? Others aren't capable of the same level of freedom I suppose?

Thirdly, some of the people in those threads have replied to numerous threads all around the site, so it's not unfounded to wonder "why aren't they interested in posting in a more practical thread?" ... or is that too much to ask of mere musicians?

Busiest weekend of the year? Well me and you found time. I don't understand the reason for your post. Why don't you just call me a wanker and get it all over with?

[Xnah]

...

[Amberience]

"You have 500 private messages"

the first 100 being "make a cuppa tea"

[nuffink]

Thirdly, some of the people in those threads have replied to numerous threads all around the site, so it's not unfounded to wonder "why aren't they interested in posting in a more practical thread?" ... or is that too much to ask of mere musicians?

Change the title from "metering" to "meters" or something. "Metering" is confusing, it makes the thread look like it's misplaced from Prouction Techniques.

That's no guarantee of help of course. I read it through a few times and still have no idea what it's about.

[Amberience]

I read it through a few times and still have no idea what it's about.

It is about different techniques to turn melodies into intricate timings. I listed a few of my own techniques that I use. I thought it was fairly obvious.

[Deric]

Whinge, whinge, moan, complain...

As you may have noticed (in one of the threads you refer to at least) I have just-beginning knowledge of time sigs (I think it's called Simple Time as well as Common Time?)... anyway FWIW...

I too 'noodle about' (guitar, bass, keys, drums) this is, I tell myself, because I am riff-driven (whatever that is) whereas the reality is more than likely because my knowledge of music theory and in particular harmonic thoery (did I hear you yawn Amberience?) is pretty much non-existent beyond knowing what chord types are in a given Major or Minor key.

Anyway... I noodle about until I get a good groove going and then pretty quickly start morphing it (I try to remember to set an audio track to Record...), I mess around with the timing, and drop notes out, delay notes, repeat certain sub-sections of the groove, and see which combinations have a groove that appeals to me.

I find it really unhelpful to do this against a 4/4 backdrop and usually set up either a metronome (drum or snare hit) to give me some sort of reference to push and pull against.

As for the time sigs. I end up with... I'll let you know in a week or two once I've worked a few out (thanks to those here that continue to donate very much of their free time to trying to help imbiciles such as myself) as I can at least start to work them out now!

It's just crossed my mind... is this the sort of thing you were asking about???

Edit: I don't know about your metal reference but the jazz guys have been doing this sort of stuff since the year dot...

[Deric]

some of the people in those threads have replied to numerous threads all around the site, so it's not unfounded to wonder "why aren't they interested in posting in a more practical thread?" ... or is that too much to ask of mere musicians?

Hey, mere musician, you haven't responded yet!

[Amberience]

The yawn you heard was from your second response and why is it that I now seem to be labelled as anti-theory when all I said was that it was not the most important thing?

Symptomatic of the KvR user I guess.

But yeah, the general gist of the thread was to be a kind of "this is how I do it.." type thing, as opposed to just talking books and scales and what not.

Another thing I thought about was snare placement within a drumbeat. Often enough the snare placement kind of dictates where my accents are going to be in my riffs, so playing around with snare placement kind of plays around with my accents too, because I can change my riffs to accomodate the snares.

[Deric]

Hey man I was only pulling your leg I'm feeling in a mischevious mood today and was just teasing, thought I'd bait you a bit (in a friendly way)

Can't say I "change my riffs to accommodate the snare though", in fact not at all. If I get a cool riff going then I'll use the drums to enhance and support the overall groove so that the two mesh and push/pull at each other. I kind of 'see' it like a 'breathing' thing where they work together.

If I start with a cool drum groove then I'll try and riff 'into it' as (sort of) explained above.

Something like that anyway!

[Freeform]

When I am developing abstract timings & such, I first create a floaty texture, then once it makes me feel neat, I come up with a rhythm to a bass line & record it. Once I have a general feeling for the groove the rest just comes naturally (cept for editing out the shit notes! ). I generally build the beat around the feel of the bass line and then shift it off an 8th or so depending if it sounds neat or not.

[Xnah]

My music is almost always 4/4 and 120 BPM. I don't know enough about my hosts to change that .

[Freeform]

My music is almost always 4/4 and 120 BPM. I don't know enough about my hosts to change that .

lol! SX user by any chance?