polyrhythmic since jazz no one can dance
to that chances are your body is
hardwired into the time signature of 4/4
you have ate slept and breathed in 4/4
since long before you knew what 4/4 was
it's everywhere we can't really escape
it from the background music that's
pumped through the speakers and grocery
stores to pretty much every song that's
on the radio counting to four is as
simple and natural as it comes to those
of us raised in an Occidental tradition
of music so it follows that if you've
ever found yourself in the position
where you're playing with musicians in
an odd time signature in which you
aren't comfortable you know the futility
of keeping up and also the despair of
getting lost your mind and body has had
a lifetime of experience of organizing
every note every chord every syllable of
every lyric to every song that you've
ever heard into four evenly spaced beats
all this goes out the window when you're
playing in odd time signatures learning
an odd time signatures and just like
learning a new scale it requires
fundamentally altering how your body
fuels music how do we do this exactly
well first we need to understand
compound rhythm essentially means
breaking down larger meters into smaller
metric groupings usually groupings of
two or three eighth notes each of which
represent a unit pulse four-four can be
thought of as four groupings of two
eighth notes apiece each reflecting a
quarter note unit pulse six a it can be
thought of as two groupings of three
eighth notes apiece each reflecting a
dotted quarter note pulse in odd time
signatures groupings of two and three
will be mixed and matched which means
that the pulses will be uneven and some
Vulcan folk dances groupings of two are
called the short beats and groupings of
three are called the long beats this
imbalance of pulses would make playing
an odd time signature so difficult
because it undermines that feeling of an
even steady pulse that we know from for
for our first foray into odd time
signatures usually involves learning a
central rhythm that helps us here these
uneven pulses and the Mission Impossible
theme for example you can clearly hear
the bass line reflects three plus three
plus two plus two or possibly long long
short or long long short short borrowing
a term from afro-caribbean music we can
call this rhythm the clave a or the Kira
because it's the central rhythm that
explicitly delineates all of the pulses
learning the klava can be helpful in the
beginning but as you progress it can
become more and more limiting the clavia
is kind of like a helpful word or phrase
that can help you just sort of get by
within an odd time signature language I
guess but if you want to have a
meaningful conversation with other
musicians you're going to really need to
expand your vocabulary beyond that of
just the klava
you've been working on the rhythmic
vocabulary of four for your entire life
just the same way as you've been
speaking your native tongue your entire
life so when it comes to add time
signatures it's almost like you have to
think of them as learning a foreign
language there might be similarities
between languages and we might call them
cognates we're taking this language
analogy to that level but fundamentally
they remain very different let's take a
look at five eight a relatively simple
odd time signature language they're a
total of 31 if note rhythms or words
with which we are going to need to
acquaint ourselves if we're going to be
reasonably fluent in the odd time
signature language of 5-8 an effective
means of practicing this is to very
slowly play each one of these rhythms in
order and also count to five out loud
just to get used to the feeling and the
sound of each word a PDF of all of these
rhythms is available in the description
one do three four five one to d4 back
when doo-deen 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1
2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 etc etc you
get the idea now if you like try new
words out in a new language some of
these might sound and feel very awkward
to say or to play but after slow and
deliberate practice you'll be able to
reasonably speak all 31 words of
vocabulary it might take a while but
when you consider that the time
signature of 7/8 has a hundred and
twenty seven words in its lexicon 5 it
doesn't seem quite as daunting in order
to truly master this language you need
to be able to hear each one of these
rhythms in different accent contexts
either in plus 3 or 3 plus 2 it's like
how spoken language can have subtle
distinctions of meaning depending on
where the stress is placed within a
sense
consider the differences between I've
been there and I've been there and I've
been there
now consider this rhythmic word and try
hearing it in different accent contacts
one two three four five one two three
four five one two three four five one
two three the next step beyond
internalizing these rhythmic words is to
string groups of them into rhythmic
sentences just the same way that there's
a huge amount of rhythmic vocabulary
within 4/4 there's also a huge amount of
rhythmic vocabulary within five eight
the majority of which is heretofore
unexplored here are a couple longer five
eight ideas that I got from stringing
shorter groups of five eight rhythmic
words together in graduate school one of
my professors told me in a conversation
he had with another musician who opined
man if we played in 4/4 the same way
that we played an odd time signatures
we'd be fired right on the spot when he
meant by that this is extremely
difficult to play expressively and
fluidly and odd time signatures with the
same degree of conviction that you have
in 4/4 until we take the time to truly
immerse ourselves and the vocabulary of
odd time signatures are playing is going
to feel very stilted and potentially
unmusical 5/8 and other odd time
signatures are kind of like foreign
languages to us and in order to truly
become fluent in them we need to immerse
ourselves in them anyway this has been
Adam Daly's bass lessons I hope you've
enjoyed this little four into the other
time signature five eight if you've
enjoyed what you've been hearing please
comment like them subscribe I have a new
lesson coming out every Monday so stay
tuned and until next time
bass
fish