Sunday, June 22, 2014

Deceptive Meter

Part 1: Thoughts on Rhythmic Tension, Macro-scale Polyrhythms, and the Art of Counting

It’s not surprising to me when it comes to jazz, you find an artist who not only understands all the rules, but also generally understands how to break them with vigor. Vijay Iyer has become a centralized figure in my study, as his concepts of rhythm have taken me well beyond anything I was taught in school and anything I thought I was capable of moving forward with.

->Side Note:
In any musician’s life, reaching a plateau is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you’ve improved from your previous state of musicianship. On the other, you might find yourself looking out in all directions and asking, “Where do I start?” This listlessness is totally normal, especially if you’re constantly trying new things. Part of my practice routine is what I call “Moving forward to move backwards.” What I do is try to find something modern and break it down into its constituent parts, which usually involves quite a bit of music history and world music study. The search is endless!

<-Back to the Article:
One thing for my current practice that started to become a question was when I happened upon odd meters. How, in my right mind, could I quickly assimilate difficult information in small chunks that would improve my conceptions of these variations from the norm and how could I begin to move towards practicing more interesting rhythms in my straight-ahead playing?

Of course, Vijay Iyer came into the equation (as well as a plethora of other artists). And it wasn’t until I actually sat down and tried to replicate what was on the albums that I noticed something fishy going on.
Iyer’s Tragicomic (2008) nearly ends with the tune “Threnody” which Iyer composed. The live version of this from the Bridgestone Music Festival brought tears to my eyes. I hadn’t heard something so heartfelt and simultaneously complex in a long time.




But where does the complexity start?

Naturally, right at the beginning.

Iyer does something clever in “Threnody,” in that he alludes to the tune being in 4/4 time. The problem with this assumption is when he begins improvising melodic and harmonic content, different in each version of the tune. It seems like his rhythms are loose, all over the place, hard to extract from what should occur as comping. Marcus Gilmore comes in and seems to save the rhythmic day. One realizes that Iyer’s rhythmic pattern hasn’t changed. But Gilmore is playing in 5/4 time. And Iyer… well, Iyer is playing in 5/4… but he isn’t, is he?

And this is where I came up with the term deceptive meter. To untrained ears, the beginning of this tune might sound like a mess. Patience shows that everything is generally A-OK and that Iyer and his team are doing just fine. Damn, I think. Something is still bugging me about the beginning of this tune every time I hear it.

Iyer is very good at this.

What Iyer tends to lean towards is alluding to one type of meter versus the actual, overall underlying pulse. The listener’s ear is imperative here because s/he is not hearing an internalized tempo, but simply what is going on. They are given strictly the visceral options: what can I grab onto that makes the most sense. Then, when the tension becomes obvious, there is a new spectrum of rhythm to play with. So Iyer’s use of the audience’s natural rhythmic tendencies in the brain actually creates another layer of rhythm. Imagine that: music meant for an audience!

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Part 2: Rhythmic Cycles--When Traditional “Meter” is no Longer a Factor

Rudresh Mahanthappa gives an amazing master class at the New School of Music.

What I’ve noticed in several types of contemporary music is a trend towards rhythmic cycles (which I tackled a bit in an earlier article) rather than time signatures as an avenue for expression.
Mahanthappa performs “Blackjack” with the New School students, which he explains is a rhythmic cycle of 4-3-2-3-2-3-4, meaning the individual counts of those micro (smaller) phrases. Because the time signature ends up being 21/16, it is quite easier to begin practicing in smaller subdivisions against this macro-phrase.

Marko Djordjevic explains in his master class at PASIC on his tune “Celebration.”


“Celebration” is a rhythmic cycle of 3-2-2-2-2-3-2-2, or 18/16 (9/8 for simplicity, not accuracy) and shows what Mahanthappa is talking about by showing these individual counting structures against groups of 3, 4, and 5 on the high hat. Made into an independence exercise, one can run short rhythmic ideas against the longer phrase in an attempt to land on the top of the cycle, play two bar phrases, and assimilate the information mentioned in both master classes.

Where this gets trickier is when it is a simpler meter, but the harmonic rhythm is adjusted to move around. I was reading up on Radiohead and their discussion of “Pyramid Song” off of Amnesiac in the book Listen to This by Alex Ross. They claimed the song had no time signature. This could be true if we think of things in terms of traditional harmonic rhythms. But Pyramid Song is a two-bar phrase in 4/4. The rhythmic cycle is 3-3-4-3-3 (in eighth notes). It’s just the chords that change in a greater eight-bar phrase which looks something like this:

3-3/4/3-3-3/3-4/3-3
3-3/4/3-3-3/3-4-3-3

(Sheet music is available online.)

If we look back at Machine Days by Vijay Iyer, the same science applies to this musical setting.


It might be easier to feel these pulses as such, rather than as meters because of their length. Another Mahanthappa tune which features an extended rhythmic phrase ending up in 12/4 (or something of the sort, perhaps a bar of 7 followed by 5) is “Breakfastlunchanddinner,” which breaks into the cycle of 3-3-2-2-2-2-3-2-2-3.

In my next article, I’ll be tackling ways to practice this and maintain a natural sound. Lots of research ahead and plenty of practice!

Thanks for reading!

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

On Time, Tempo, Metric Modulation, and Polyrhythm

On the subject of all things rhythm, I discovered something in practice the other day. What I discovered was not necessarily new, but what it did was instantly create an exercise which I think, with time, will greatly improve any player’s sense of timing, rhythm, polyrhythm, ability to metrically modulate, and hear tempos that would otherwise be entirely unrelated.

To give you a little background, I started music on the clarinet at the age of ten. For some musical prodigies, this is an extremely old age to start. I did not “really” start playing the bass until I got into college when I was seventeen and realized I neglected to do most of the general education homework I was assigned in college. So my time, naturally, was as natural as it gets. When I say this, there are two types of time: Natural and Perfect. In the same way one has relative pitch, one can have perfect pitch. When I say “Natural,” I literally mean whatever comes first without the advantageous use of the metronome. “Perfect” would mean time/rhythm that could be measured and seen as flawless—a relative term within itself—but some of the greatest musicians we’ve seen have approached having what we might call perfect time—say, Brad Mehldau, Jojo Mayer, or the late Jaco Pastorius. That list is growing incredibly to huge numbers and includes one person I think should be studied well (or at least listened to for some extreme pleasure): Chris ‘Daddy’ Dave. My time is somewhere floating in the middle, but I believe with some foresight, it is easy to see these exercises for what they are: for hearing drummers themselves in a better context, especially as a bassist.
The exercise was to set the metronome at a low tempo, one without a lot of hesitation, which was 60 BPM. I usually always practice lines at this tempo first, then play the same line gradually faster (click-by-click or up by fives), to the point of playing the line again at 60 BPM’s, but twice as fast. Thus, it sounds like you are playing at 120 with the click on every other beat.

Side/Foot Note: I am going to agree with Jeff Berlin on one front—you shouldn’t use a metronome to practice. You should use a metronome as utility for learning things in perfect time in order, much like the use of training wheels, to eventually get away from the metronome. Victor Wooten argues the same thing. The metronome is essentially a visual and aural reminder of where time is happening. One way to do this is to be able to beat steady time on one hand and be able to sing aloud a rhythm or beat the rhythm entirely on the other hand. This way your time becomes organic and not molded to the metronome. If things shift around live (which they shouldn’t, but sometimes they do… fires do happen, lightning does strike) you should be able to shift with them. Joe Hubbard talked about this when I took lessons with him as well as Paul Hindemith in his book Elementary Training for Musicians.
The metronome at 60 I think was perfect because of the relationship to a ticking clock which happens virtually (or I suppose analogously) anywhere. We don’t have to argue about some clocks being faster or slower because, obviously, the timing of the clock would be way off (or for a better argument, it doesn’t really matter).

Thus, the exercise goes like this (in case the introduction bored you):
Metronome set to 60 as the quarter note. Begin to set the metronome at other tempos in order to facilitate the hearing of those other rhythms against it. Eighth notes at 120, sixteenths at 240. Where it gets more heady is eighth-note triplets (180) and quarter note triplets (90), quintuplet eights (300) and quarters (150 over the span of two 60 BPM bars), septuplets eights (420) or quarters (210 over two bars again), and on. We could do this for ridiculous number of beats, but we might slow the metronome down significantly to get numbers like 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19 and on, over a single bar or two bars.

You hear the metronome at 60 and begin to count these other time signatures out loud. It may sound crazy, but using two different metronomes (or especially one online) expedites this exercise. In Indian (native to India) rhythm systems, one should be able to count these rhythms independent of a metronome. This obviously takes time (no pun intended). As a general rule: the slower the better. As a secondary rule: repetition equals improvement.

Why do an exercise like this?

Well, the benefits are twofold: on one hand you are personally ingraining the sounds of these rhythms in your ear. On the other hand, you are beginning to open yourself up casually to odd-meter and hearing different rhythms over entireties. The focus and attention of say a group of seven notes over one bar frees you up to hear two notes in the same space, as well as three, four, or five. So you’re pushing your focus.

What good does changing your rhythmic focus? Well, it allows you to play rhythms more freely and to hear bigger pulses generally. One thing I’ve observed from untrained rhythmic ears is that during the drum solo in jazz tunes, coming back in on one or a rhythmic figure seems to be a worry or some sort of impossibility. But does a drummer seem to lose a chord progression? Rarely, because it happens in time.

Why then is harmony and melody put on the forefront if the basic foundation of time is neglected?

Well, that is a serious question to ask.

Further studies with this time-based application would include grouping those notes into individual cross-rhythms within the context of those polyrhythms. I’m looking of course at Vijay Iyer again. His contrafact of Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” called “Because of the Guns” shows off this type of performance in practice, entirely. 

What makes it truly difficult? Well, for one it is new. For two, it switches between these concepts seamlessly.
(Check out the PDF, thanks to Joshualopes.com.) One might even look to Steve Schick who worked out the piece “Bone Alphabet” over the course of a year. 

I think subconsciously I got the idea for this exercise from him (Schick/Ferneyhough [the composer]). 

But the truth is in the pudding. Because I think being able to hear all of these rhythms at different tempos and to be able to execute them in succession is one thing, but being able to hear their functions against one another is yet another difficult and pivotal step which would require slowing the metronome down even more. The results are flawless time and essentially a great grasp of playing different types of rhythms.

I am still arguing that it is the age of the drummer. Happy practicing!

Post Script:
A few examples in pop music might be the following:

“Claws” by Son Lux

-The synth part about halfway through the song plays septuplet quarter Notes against the bar, then subdivides them into eighths)

“Turtle Neck” by Bosnian Rainbows

-Deantoni Parks (drums) plays seven notes on the snare against the half note.


“Unluck” by James Blake

-The digital drum part comps quintuplets against the beat and alternates between straight eights, sixteenths, and triplets. 

And a link to the PDF Exercise!

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Self-Study For Rhythms: Vijay Iyer's "Machine Days"

The purpose of Konnakol is not unlike being able to sing any given interval and its inverse. When we talk about singing groups of five rhythms--say the syllables “ta-ka-di-mi-tom” for example--we are not just referring to western “quintuplets,” but both macro and micro pulses of five rhythms which repeat  themselves in groups. Thus, when we put spaces between those syllables, say in the sense of making a macro-grouping of seven notes in a group of five (ta „ ta , ta / ka „ ka , ka,/ etc. sung as sixteenth notes in a western 4 pulse in the hands), we begin to see how this applies to phrasing polyrhythms. The reverse of this process, then, would be to count groups of 4 while counting a pulse of 7 in the hands, facilitates odd meters without changing any rhythms, only the emphasis of these rhythms and the “generic” or perhaps “agreement” pulse in which the band feels the music. When listening to an artist like Vijay Iyer, we hear that sometimes these 4 counts are put on top of pulses in groups of four, seven, eleven, or even general mixed meter on top of larger counting structures.

Larger counting structures might be a 32 count form which would be two bars of 4/4 sixteenth notes in which the pulse becomes subtracted (since they are not superimposed upon one another and happen sequentially… 4+4+4+4+4+3+3+3+3=32 or 4+4+4+5+5+5+5=32) constitute smaller phrases which end up in an even larger structure of let’s say 8 of these 32-count forms, giving us 16 bars of 4/4 music.

Let’s look at one of Vijay Iyer’s tunes, “Machine Days,” labeled with the time signature 9/16. If you get a chance to look at the written music wherein the form is taken for the solos (the “B” section of the melody), the 16-bar form of 9/16 is broken into five larger sections of polyrhythms. It consists of what I call the first theme (34 sixteenths) and the second theme (21 sixteenths), given the accents of the chords changing as indicators that these themes are alternating. The easiest way to begin to be able to count a tune like this is to begin to understand the designated pulse of the bass or “agreement” pulse in 9/16 which seems to be 6 and 3 (a dotted quarter followed by a dotted eighth) only variegating by the accents in the melody/rhythmic themes. Those themes are further divided in smaller pulses which I’ll go ahead and write out:
Theme 1:
4+5+5+5+5+5+5=34
Theme 2:
7+7+7=21
If we look at the “A” section, a 16-bar phrase is still divided into smaller sections, this time simply being divided into 7 groups of 4 (+ 6) and 4 groups of 4 (+5) (alternating in a larger block of five of these). Again, the evidence in the score comes with the accents of chords changing.
Thus, 9x16=144. So 34 (x3) + 21 (x2)= 144. Essentially in the piece, he broke down the groups of 34 and 21 into two different counting manifests seen here:
Theme 1 in A and B
A: 4+4+4+4+4+4+4+6=34
B: 4+5+5+5+5+5+5=34
Theme 2 in A and B
A: 4+4+4+4+5= 21
B: 7+7+7=21
Thus, the title of the piece really fits. “Machine Days” does work as a name for the tune.

Last words on VI’s MD: the 3-bar pick-up plays by these same rules.

27 sixteenth notes-> 6+6+5+5+5=27

Lesson learned: counting is everything. The next great innovators will not have something harmonic for us, but something rhythmic.
Watch and listen to "Machine Days" by Vijay Iyer on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhGre0ReuE4

For further study on Konnakol, please visit the following links:
http://languageofrhythm.com/indian/konnakol/
http://lisayoungmusic.com/about/indian-music-konnakol/
http://lisayoungmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/masters/masters.pdf