Wanna learn how Steve Buscemi and Jack Nicholson can improve your time-feel? Read on.
Theory: Intermediate
Lesson Overview:
ā¢ Understand the elements of polyrhythms.
ā¢ Learn how to subdivide in different time signatures.
ā¢ Create more rhythmically interesting lines. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.
Have you ever started listening to the intro of a tune only to realize youāve been ātrickedā as soon as the rest of the band enters? You thought you knew the beat, but then the drums just proved that you needed more information. Youād been dancing all wrong in your head. Sometimes, finding the āoneā is really difficult if you initially had a different rhythmic perception. Then again, all it would likely take is for you to back up and hear it againājust with counting this time.
Imagine playing with a great drummer and they are in the middle of an exciting solo where anything could happen. If you donāt pay really close attention, you might get turned around. What do you do?
What if you worked out some super-cool shred lick using 16th-notes, but then find yourself in a situation where you try to play it starting on a different beat, or in a different time signature, or maybe in a different feel, only to realize you really donāt know the lick like you thought you did?
These, in my opinion, are the most fun aspects of playing music. Things can shift and I love it! But to feel comfortable with more time options it may require a deeper look at time and how to practice it. Working on time-feel, groove, and rhythmic perception is often more learned than taught. In this lesson we will explore how polyrhythms can improve your time, but first, here are a few things that have helped me:
- Working on polyrhythms to help calibrate your eighth-notes, triplets, or 16th-notes.
- Using different word phrases in polyrhythms to help shift the rhythmic perception.
- Using movement with music (āeurhythmicsā).
- Exploring the options in the Afro-Cuban 6/8 pattern (AbakuĆ” or AbaquĆ” clave).
- Practicing musical phrases, licks, or arpeggios with different rhythmic options.
Polyrhythms are more than just an awesome party trick. They are actually very helpful in improving your feel and make sure that all the ālittle beatsā line up exactly right. Control of your time-feel is one of the most important aspects of musicianship.
I prefer to work on technique in the context of time-feel exercises. If you canāt physically hit that note or chord exactly when you want it to be played, your audience will think you have bad time and will literally (or figuratively) leave the dance floor.
Learn this little eight-note technical exercise (Ex. 1) and weāll go from there. You can play it as eighth-notes or 16th-notes. Notice it really works out the weakest finger (the pinky) the most, so thereās a little bonus.
Click here for Ex. 1
Next, take that same exercise but play it as triplets (Ex. 2). Itāll be tough at first because itās an eight-note pattern and youāll have to play it through three times to complete the cycle. You may have to play through Ex. 1 a million times to be able to play it instinctively enough to try it in this new and different way. To get it to sound like triplets, make sure you accent the first note of every group of three. If you alternate pick, the accents will alternate between downstrokes and upstrokes.
Click here for Ex. 2
The previous exercise points out an interesting phenomenon: Certain aspects of your playing will need to be practiced exhaustively so that it goes into your subconscious. Almost like a reflex action, developing the ability to do it without using your cerebral cortex so that your conscious thought is freed up to do other things.
Look at these two different ways of playing a 3:2 polyrhythm. Ex. 3 (the āJack Nicholsonā one) is in a ācompound dupleā meter (6/8) and the accents are clearly ā1ā2ā3ā4ā5ā6ā with a straight 16th-note subdivision. You can try this on guitar, drums or whatever. For now, try this tapping on your knees and play the top-line rhythm with your right hand and the bottom-line rhythm with the left hand. With the āJack Nicholson Eats Broccoliā phrase in mind, notice how your conscious thought will gravitate towards the right hand. These are the main accents and will tell your body how to dance. This consciousness will create the accents.
Click here for Ex. 3
Next, see if you can continue with the same knee-slapping pattern but now play the Ex. 4. Notice how itās the same rhythm, but your conscious thought is now on the left hand, the duple rhythm. You are now in a āsimple dupleā meter with a triplet subdivision. Notice how the in-between notes are not evenly placed between the accents. Your conscious thought is now on the main accents played with your left hand. Itās the same rhythm but a different dance because you shift your weight differently. Your consciousness has shifted causing a shift in how you move to the beat. These two patterns show a difference in rhythmic perception.
Click here for Ex. 4
For another example of a rhythmic perception contrast, try these next two. They are more complicated polyrhythms: 3:4 and 4:3. Ex. 5 (āPass the Stupid Butterā) feels like a straight 16th-note rhythm in 3/4 with perfectly placed subdivisions. One way to feel this is as a funk with the backbeat on three.
Click here for Ex. 5
Ex. 6 (āNo Yelling on the Bus!ā) once again has the exact same distances between the notes but your consciousness is now on the other hand. There are now different accents, a different rhythmic perception, and a different dance. Itās now a 4/4 meter with a triplet feel.
Click here for Ex. 6
To explore this 3:4 vs 4:3 distinction even more, check out Ex. 7. Itās an arpeggio pattern that I love to practice. It has 24 notes, so you can change the feel between two measures of 16th-notes in 3/4 or two measures of triplets in 4/4 (Ex. 8). Going back and forth requires a shift in your accents and conscious thought. I have it here as a sweeping exercise using some barring with the pinkyāagain, trying to work out that weakest link. If youāve become comfortable with one way of feeling the pattern, the other feel will feel surprisingly differentāeven though the order of notes is the same. You have to aim for different notes. A different dance.
Click here for Ex. 7
Click here for Ex. 8
Try recording it into a looper pedal in one time feel and then comp with yourself in the other time feel just to see how accurate your micro-time is.
This talk about ādanceā is also an interesting study. The practice of learning rhythms with movement in formal music education has been done (look up āeurythmicsā), but in many African and Latin American cultures, the dance is inseparable from the music. Itās often the dance that tells your ear whatās going on.
One of my favorite rhythms that illustrates this concept is the Afro-Cuban 6/8 (also known as the Afro-Cuban 6/4, or Afro-Cuban 12/8, or AbakuĆ” clave, or AbaquĆ” clave). One thing I love about it is that it doesnāt spoon-feed you the backbeat. Itās not obvious to the Western ear exactly how to dance to it or how to hear where the main accents are. Itās almost like you have to dance to it to hear it properly.
There are many variations, but Ex. 9 shows one common version.
In that version, the downbeat is on beat 1 and the backbeat is on beat 4. Notice how thereās a gap (a rest) on that backbeat? Cool, right? Thatās one of the ingredients of syncopation.
Hereās that same rhythm written in 6/8 or 12/8 (Ex. 10).
C
Now, letās use the rhythm to make some actual music. In Ex. 11, I combined this rhythm with a relatively simple chord progression over an A bass note.
Click here for Ex. 11
Another thing I love about the Afro-Cuban 6/8 rhythm is that you can use it to pivot to other time feels. The same pattern can be ādanced toā differently, for a different rhythmic perception. In Ex. 12 you can see how it looks in 4/4 and 3/4.
If itās felt in 4/4, it dances with a swing feel or a shuffle. Check out how jazz drummer Elvin Jones plays a medium swing on āSpeak No Evil.ā You can hear the Afro-Cuban 6/8 rhythm in his comping and his fills.
If itās felt in 3/4 it can feel like a funk rhythm. The backbeat would be dancing on beat 3. Incidentally, the 4/4 example (Ex. 13) will remind you of the āNo Yelling on the Bus!ā polyrhythm and the 3/4 example (Ex. 14) has shades of āPass the Stupid Butter.ā
Click here for Ex. 13
Click here for Ex. 14
For an even deeper study, the next three examples show how you can imply different subdivisions within new pulses. In Ex. 15, I am playing the rhythm in 4/4, but moving the subdivisions from eighth-note triplets to simple eighth-notes.
Click here for Ex. 15
In Ex. 16, weāre staying in 4/4, but the subdivisions go from eighth-note triplets to 16th-notes.
Click here for Ex. 16
Finally, in Ex. 17 we hit that funky 3/4 rhythm with 16th-note and eighth-note triplet subdivisions.
Click here for Ex. 17
This shift in rhythmic perception and subdivisions is one of the essential ingredients in understanding the concept of metric modulation. You can take the same rhythm perceived as eighth-note triplets and again as 16th-notes and you get a shift in how the phrase is felt. To drive this point home, take this random collection of random subdivisions (Ex. 18).
That pattern of 48(!) subdivisions seems pretty ridiculous to read, right? Letās arrange those subdivisions into smaller, bite-size chunks and add some barlines. Since there are 48 subdivisions, we can arrange it in a number of ways:
1. Four measures of 12 subdivisions each felt in 4/4 (four measures of 12/8 or 4/4 with triplets)
2. Four measures of 12 subdivisions felt in 3/4 (four measures of 3/4 with a 16th-note subdivision)
3. Three measures of 4/4 with a 16th-note subdivision
In Ex. 19 Iāve taken that same rhythmic pattern and created a funky lick over E7 using triplets.
Click here for Ex. 19
Finally, in Ex. 20, I use the same rhythm over three measures of 4/4 using 16th-notes.
Click here for Ex. 20
As you can see, there are multiple ways you can practice this stuff to give your ideas more rhythmic interest and variation. Any idea should be adaptable to multiple time feels and even musical styles. Try taking some of your favorite licks and work them out using a different subdivision. They will seem like completely different licks at first, but eventually this way of rhythmically adapting your ideas will come easier.
Whitman Audio introduces the Decoherence Drive and Wave Collapse Fuzz, two innovative guitar pedals designed to push the boundaries of sound exploration. With unique features like cascading gain stages and vintage silicon transistor fuzz, these pedals offer musicians a new path to sonic creativity.
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Introducing: Decoherence Drive -Ā YouTube
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Introducing: Wave Collapse Fuzz - YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.In our third installment with Santa Cruz Guitar Company founder Richard Hoover, the master luthier shows PG's John Bohlinger how his team of builders assemble and construct guitars like a chef preparing food pairings. Hoover explains that the finer details like binding, headstock size and shape, internal bracing, and adhesives are critical players in shaping an instrument's sound. Finally, Richard explains how SCGC uses every inch of wood for making acoustic guitars or outside ventures like surfboards and art.
We know Horsegirl as a band of musicians, but their friendships will always come before the music. From left to right: Nora Cheng, drummer Gigi Reece, and Penelope Lowenstein.
The Chicago-via-New York trio of best friends reinterpret the best bits of college-rock and ā90s indie on their new record, Phonetics On and On.
Horsegirl guitarists Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein are back in their hometown of Chicago during winter break from New York University, where they share an apartment with drummer Gigi Reece. Theyāre both in the middle of writing papers. Cheng is working on one about Buckminster Fuller for a city planning class, and Lowenstein is untangling Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmannās short story, āThree Paths to the Lake.ā
āIt was kind of life-changing, honestly. It changed how I thought about womanhood,ā Lowenstein says over the call, laughing a bit at the gravitas of the statement.
But the moment of levity illuminates the fact that big things are happening in their lives. When they released their debut album, 2022ās Versions of Modern Performance, the three members of Horsegirl were still teenagers in high school. Their new, sophomore record, Phonetics On and On, arrives right in the middle of numerous first experiencesātheir first time living away from home, first loves, first years of their 20s, in university. Horsegirl is going through changes. Lowenstein notes how, through moving to a new city, their friendship has grown, too, into something more familial. They rely on each other more.
āIf the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band, without any doubt.āāPenelope Lowenstein
āEveryone's cooking together, you take each other to the doctor,ā Lowenstein says. āYou rely on each other for weird things. I think transitioning from being teenage friends to suddenly working together, touring together, writing together in this really intimate creative relationship, going through sort of an unusual experience together at a young age, and then also starting school togetherāI just feel like it brings this insane intimacy that we work really hard to maintain. And if the friendship was ever taking a toll because of the band, the friendship would come before the band without any doubt.ā
Horsegirl recorded their sophomore LP, Phonetics On and On, at Wilcoās The Loft studio in their hometown, Chicago.
These changes also include subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in their sophisticated and artful guitar-pop. Versions of Modern Performance created a notion of the band as ā90s college-rock torchbearers, with reverb-and-distortion-drenched numbers that recalled Yo La Tengo and the Breeders. Phonetics On and On doesnāt extinguish the flame, but itās markedly more contemporary, sacrificing none of the catchiness but opting for more space, hypnotic guitar lines, and meditative, repeated phrases. Cheng and Lowenstein credit Welsh art-pop wiz Cate Le Bonās presence as producer in the studio as essential to the sonic direction.
āOn the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giantsāsuper minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little.āāNora Cheng
āWe had never really let a fourth person into our writing process,ā Cheng says. āI feel like Cate really changed the way we think about how you can compose a song, and built off ideas we were already thinking about, and just created this very comfortable space for experimentation and pushed us. There are so many weird instruments and things that aren't even instruments at [Wilcoās Chicago studio] The Loft. I feel like, definitely on our first record, we were super hesitant to go into territory that wasn't just distorted guitar, bass, and drums.ā
Nora Cheng's Gear
Nora Cheng says that letting a fourth personāWelsh artist Cate Le Bonāinto the trioās songwriting changed how they thought about composition.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Devices Plumes
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- TC Electronic Polytune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex .73 mm
Phonetics On and On introduces warm synths (āJulieā), raw-sounding violin (āIn Twosā), and gamelan tilesācommon in traditional Indonesian musicāto Horsegirlās repertoire, and expands on their already deep quiver of guitar sounds as Cheng and Lowenstein branch into frenetic squonks, warped jangles, and jagged, bare-bones riffs. The result is a collection of songs simultaneously densely textured and spacious.
āI listen to these songs and I feel like it captures the raw, creative energy of being in the studio and being like, āFuck! We just exploded the song. What is about to happen?āā Lowenstein says. āThat feeling is something we didnāt have on the first record because we knew exactly what we wanted to capture and it was the songs we had written in my parentsā basement.ā
Cheng was first introduced to classical guitar as a kid by her dad, who tried to teach her, and then she was subsequently drawn back to rock by bands like Cage The Elephant and Arcade Fire. Lowenstein started playing at age 6, which covers most of her life memories and comprises a large part of her identity. āIt made me feel really powerful as a young girl to know that I was a very proficient guitarist,ā she says. The shreddy playing of Television, Pink Floydās spacey guitar solos, and Yo La Tengoās Ira Kaplan were all integral to her as Horsegirl began.
Penelope Lowenstein's Gear
Penelope Lowenstein likes looking back at the versions of herself that made older records.
Photo by Braden Long
Effects
- EarthQuaker Westwood
- EarthQuaker Bellows
- TC Electronic PolyTune
Picks
- Dunlop Tortex 1.0 mm
Recently, the two of them have found themselves influenced by guitarists both related and unrelated to the type of tunes theyāre trading in on their new album. Lowenstein got into Brazilian guitar during the pandemic and has recently been āin a Jim OāRourke, John Fahey zone.ā
āThereās something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument,ā Lowenstein says. āAnd hearing what the bass in those guitar parts is doingāas in, the E stringāis kind of mind blowing.ā
āOn the record, I think we were really interested in Young Marble Giantsāsuper minimal, the percussiveness of the guitar, and how you can do so much with so little,ā Cheng adds. āAnd also Lizzy Mercier [Descloux], mostly on the Rosa Yemen records. That guitar playing I feel was very inspiring for the anti-solo,[a technique] which appears on [Phonetics On and On].āThis flurry of focused discovery gives the impression that Cheng and Lowensteinās sensibilities are shifting day-to-day, buoyed by the incredible expansion of creative possibilities that setting oneās life to revolve around music can afford. And, of course, the energy and exponential growth of youth. Horsegirl has already clocked major stylistic shifts in their brief lifespan, and itās exciting to have such a clear glimpse of evolution in artists who are, likely and hopefully, just beginning a long journey together.
āThereās something about listening to that music where you realize, about the guitar, that you can just compose an entire orchestra on one instrument.āāPenelope Lowenstein
āIn your 20s, life moves so fast,ā Lowenstein says. āSo much changes from the time of recording something to releasing something that even that process is so strange. You recognize yourself, and you also kind of sympathize with yourself. It's a really rewarding way of life, I think, for musicians, and it's cool that we have our teenage years captured like that, tooāon and on until we're old women.ā
YouTube It
Last summer, Horsegirl gathered at a Chicago studio space to record a sun-soaked set of new and old tunes.
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