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!

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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!