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!