[Britney Spears - Till the World Ends]
Come on, get me, get -
Yes, that was a Britney Spears song.
And yes, that notation was correct.
Huh?
[Intro music]
BASS.
[Intro music]
So in order to understand that notation,
we need to actually first understand the 4 against 3 polyrhythm.
Uh, now 4 against 3 polyrhythm basically means that
you're gonna be playing four evenly spaced notes
within the span of three evenly spaced notes.
And the easiest way I know of figuring this stuff out,
is through the "pen and paper" method.
Where we're going to write out three rows of four numbers apiece.
Then what we're going to do,
is we're going to circle every third number starting left to right, like this.
You can do this with other polyrhythms, but right now
we're just gonna do 4 against 3.
So for all of the 1's we're going to tap with our right hand
and for all the numbers we circled we're gonna tap with our left hand,
so here we go.
1 2 3
4 1 2
3 4 1
2 3 4
Polyrhythms!
1 2 3, 4 1 2, 3 4 1, 2 3 4
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4
Now the best part about this is that
you don't actually need your bass in order to practice it.
You can practice it while waiting for the train...
While on the train...
And at any one of New York City's great landmarks.
While you've been practicing this,
you might've noticed something called the composite rhythm,
which is the rhythm of both of your hands playing at the same time.
and the phrase to help you remember the composite rhythm, is
Pass.
the god damn
butter
Now how do you notate this?
Well if you remember what I said about 4 against 3,
you're having 4 evenly spaced notes within the span of 3 evenly spaced notes.
So, if you think about it, four dotted 8th notes
take the same amount of time to play
as three quarter notes.
And this is usually how it's written out,
not that godawful mess of tuplets and nested tuplets that I included at the top of the video.
Now why even talk about the 4:3 polyrhythm?
Well it's actually a very common rhythmic device built into a lot of pop songs these days,
just because there's a nice intrinsic 16th note syncopation built within it
if you're using that dotted eighth note paradigm.
Here are a couple of songs that I found, and I'm going to be playing bass to them.
Right, right, turn off the lights
we could lose our minds tonight,
what's the deal-i-o?
I love when it's all too much
5 A.M. turn the radio up,
where's the rock-n-roll?
Grab somebody sexy, tell 'em "hey"
give me everything tonight.
Give me everything tonight.
Try and mess with us, got Je-sus on my neck-a-lace, us, us...
Got that glit-ter on my eyes
Stockings ripped all up the side
Looking sick and sexy-fied
so let's go-o-o, (let's go)
tonight we're -
I can't take it, take it, take no more
never felt like, felt like, this before
come on get me, get me, on the flo-or
DJ, what'chu, what'chu, waiting for?
So these are just a couple examples of 4 against 3 in modern pop songwriting
um, but there's a ton of others, I know the electronic music producer deadmau5
uses it in a lot of his productions
but if you guys can think of any others, please let me know, I really really enjoy this stuff
like, finding the different connections between polyrhythms and how music is being written... contemp... contemporarily
meaning today. Anyway, uh, this has been Adam Neely's Bass Lessons,
uh, please comment and subscribe, we got a lot more cool content coming your way
and until next time,
BASS.