today I want to talk to you about the difference between polyrhythms and polymeters: two fantastic
tools that you can use in your music to create more groove and get people dancing straight away.
By the way what a cool studio is this, huh? Look at these colors, amazing! I love it! So, first I'm
gonna play you a track idea that doesn't have any polymeters or polyrhythms applied, then I'm
going to show you a version of that track where they have been applied, then I'm going to explain
to you exactly what each of those terms mean and then I'm going to show you how you can implement
them really simply in your own music to start getting the benefits today; and it doesn't matter
whether you produce house, techno, drum and bass, any genre of music - they will definitely be enhanced by
these two things. So, first let's listen to that idea with no polymeters or polyrhythms applied
Oh, yeah, it's okay but it's going to get boring
pretty quickly. So now let's listen to it with polymeters and polyrhythms applied
Listen to that the groove! Just keeps on going. It makes people want to dance
and that's exactly what I'm going to show you how to do today. First, I want to give a
massive shout out to my Accelerator student John, who cracked the top 10 in Beatport.
Nice work, John! I'm going to link to your track below this video and you can also download my
music producer starter pack below this video as well. In this pack it includes a book, it includes
some cheat sheets and downloadable samples - everything you need to get started with music
production. Right, so first thing we're going to cover is polyrhythms. So a polyrhythm is when
you've got at least two different rhythms and the notes within each rhythm are evenly spaced but
there are a different amount of notes within the same length of time. I know it sounds complex but
it's actually not that hard once you understand the fundamentals. So, for example you might
have four evenly spaced notes and your second rhythm there would be three evenly spaced notes
and both those phrases take the same amount of time to play so here's an example of that
now a polymeter however is when you've got two different length phrases but the notes within
each of these phrases are the same length as each other so for example you might have one phrase
that's playing four sixteenth length notes and you might have your second phrase that's playing six
sixteenth length notes and then those two phrases can loop around and here's what that sounds like
so in this example we've got three kick drums all evenly spaced so it sounds like this one two three
one two three but on this other layer on the sixteenths we've got this gembe hit and this is
being hit four times in that exact same length so we've got three kicks and four of these gembes so
the gembe on their own sound like this we can hear it's a regular beat the same space in between them
we can hear that with the kick same space in between them but together they sound like this
and it just keeps things grooving because these jambos are hitting just before these kicks
and then after three hits of the kick it loops background
but the thing is you never use kicks in that way you always have four kicks in a row but
if you just keep this pattern extending out and this is the trick on how to do it really easily
if you have a hit on a sixteenth miss two sixteenths have another hit miss two
sixteenths have another hit etc and keep on going then you get this kind of effect
so you've still got four kicks in each bar and it just loops around
so that is the best way to get groove in your drums and this actually works
when it comes to other instruments as well it doesn't just have to be drums
so let's have a listen to these synths here okay we've got one then we've missing two sixteenths
so we've got one and then one and then one and again with that kick whoops
let's hear what it sounds like and i turn off the jambo so that doesn't confuse matters
and here comes the kick
it just keeps things rolling so that's one of the most common poly rhythms that we use now
i'm going to show you the second most common polyrhythm that you hear in dance music which
is still not that common but a triplet in effect and that's where you have this kind of effect
so if we were to look at that in drum terms all you need to do
is change your grid to triplets by pressing command 3 if you're using mac
and then you have three gem bays to every one kick and that's going to sound like this
which is going to give a really kind of samba feel so those are the two most common poly rhythms when
it comes to dance music but they don't have to be you can do crazy different ones as well so
say we want to have four kick drums but we want to have seven gem bays in the same time
it takes to play four kick drums well then this is what we could do to create that firstly i'm
going to delete these existing gem bay zoom in make sure that triplet mode is now turned off
and then i'm going to just draw in seven gem bays because that's the amount that we want
to play within four kick drums but you can see one two three four five six seven they
don't reach the end of these four kick drums right so we need to do something about that
now the way to do it in ableton is to draw in an extra beat so one more than the amount that
you want because at that point you can then select all the gem bay and then this little
marker here you can drag until that matches up with the end of your four kick drums like this
and you have to have one extra than the seven that you want because ableton links it to the
beginning of each hit and then you can just delete that one so now we've got seven gem bay
in the time it takes to play four kick drums the same amount of time but different beats so this
is how the kicks sound on their own all evenly spaced this is how the gembase sound on their own
all evenly spaced and then together
but as i said that would be a bit unusual and there's not much use for it so the other two
examples i've shown are the two polyrhythms that you are definitely most likely to use i
just wanted to give you an example of how you can experiment and take things even further boom okay
now on to polymeters so if you remember from the beginning of the video a polymeter is when you've
got at least two phrases and the notes within those phrases are the same length but the phrases
themselves are different lengths so the easiest way to show you this is by using a couple of
synth riffs and that's how i'm going to explain the notion of polymeters and show you how to use
them in your own music so if we've got this basic kick drum and we've got a synth riff that plays
1 2 3 4 16 notes within every kick it's going to sound like this against the kick
just repeating now if we've got a second synth riff as well
we've got that playing 4 16 within each kick as well
kind of hypnotic kind of cool but this is how you can use a polymeter so each of these notes
is a 16th long let's change the grid to make that clearer now i've actually programmed in
more notes within this clip they're just hidden at the moment so i programmed in eight notes
so if we change this phrase length say to play 6 16 and then loop that you get this kind of effect
and if we run that on let's just copy and paste that
like so then we get this kind of effect
so again kind of like the polyrhythm it's just changing all the time and keeping that groove
going because every time this loops through it takes a while before it gets back to the exact
same place where they sync up so in this it takes two bars before it sinks back to the same place
but if we were to say play i don't know seven notes in this second phrase like so
and then loop that it's going to take even longer before you synchronize the one
and the one so you've got more variation over this time so now let's have a listen to it
yes so we could even make it shorter if we wanted we could make that play three notes
that's a pretty common one as well and then we have this effect
so it's pretty simple when it comes to poly meters each of the notes in these phrases
in this example are a sixteenth long but in the second one we're playing more
or fewer sixteenths than in the top one and you could make it a bit more interesting as well
you could double up those poly rhythms so in this one we're playing i don't know
seven in this one we're playing six and let's just see what happens shall we
so we we're not actually having any more instruments or any more notes we've just
got a simple kick these two synths and listen to this just constantly evolving groove and rhythm
much more interesting and a great way to use arpeggios but now let's listen
when we combine everything together and i'm going to make some polyrhythms in our track and
some polymeters as well so if we go to our drums here's one i made earlier let's have a look at
what's happening in here so firstly we've got the normal kick on every beat we've got a normal clap
and the normal hats simple but you can see we've got our gembe poly rhythm
and i've doubled that up with a second gembe which is just playing one note before on every
other of the first gembe so let's just get those things soloed so we can hear what's going on
already interesting let's bring the normal clap in
so all the drums into playing with each other now the second thing that i've done of note
is add this guru if that's the name of the instrument and i've just used a polyrhythm
here and i've created triplets so there are three of these hits with every kick
drum as we looked at earlier so now let's listen to what happens when we bring that in
so now we've got something pretty interesting
now what i'm going to do now is just add a couple more beats in a standard hi-hat
and then i'm just going to add in a few tom drums the last of which are going to be
triplets here so we can create some really interesting beat
so now we've got something much more interesting going on
now let's add some of the other elements as well so we've got our first synth line
and this is a polymeter because we've got these three sixteenths playing
then it loops right right back round so we've got this constantly evolving groove so listen how much
interest there is already now let's bring in the second synth riff
so we could as we did earlier create the second polymeter
and let's just loop around those five beats and see what happens
so the easiest way to do this is when you've once you've created your 16th pattern here or
it could be on eighths so it could be like this if you want you know so it's half as
frequent it doesn't have to be on sixteenths but sixteenths or eighths would be the most common
so let's just loop around this eighth riff now just one two three four five playing and when
you're copying and pasting then make sure that you select the blank space as well so it's even
when it loops around let's just duplicate that now let's have a listen
now i've combined both polyrhythms and polymeters on the stab riff
there are the triplets there at the end
and now the last thing we need to bring in is the baseline and the baseline is just
standard but i'm bringing in each note just before the beat i think on the 16th
so by using polyrhythms and polymeters we've created something way more interesting than
what we started out with yeah so that's it guys i hope i've explained things clearly if
you enjoyed this video and you found it useful please do consider subscribing to my channel and
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you can also download my music producer's starter pack below this video thank you so
much for watching if you want coaching from me and to get your music to a professional level do check
out my accelerator program and until next time thanks for watching cheers and happy producing
you