polyrhythms

i’m not even going to pretend. polyrhythms was going to take up a whole post, so here it is. a Polyrhythm is a different flavor of the idea of two rhythms working against/with each other at the same time.

in my experience polyrhythms have always included irrational rhythms. so, let’s start with that.

Say we take a period of time. the time it takes between one click on a metronome and the next. and we chop it into bits. usually we chop it into the same sized bits out of habit.

we chop it in half and get eighth notes. the old [ 1 And 2 And 3 And 4 And] = {1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &}
we chop it into four pieces and get the familiar sixteenth notes [ 1 e And uh, 2 e And uh, 3 e And uh, 4 e And uh] or as i like to write it { 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a }
we chop it into three and get the triplet thing happening [ 1 trip - let, 2 trip - let, 3 trip - let, 4 trip -let ] or however you count it out. in here lives the shuffle beat, and a LOT of blues and swingy stuff.

here’s where it gets fun. you can chop that same slice of time into say FIVE pieces. drummers do this when they practice a rudimental five stroke roll to a metronome count. i think guitarists never do it. the idea should strike 98% of them as a wtf moment.

of course if the metronome is slow enough, and the piece of time between clicks is long enough, you can cut that piece of time into 7 notes of equal length, 9 notes (which breaks down into 3 sets of 3 notes, so it’s not as funky or odd sounding), 10 (which is a double time five stroke roll), 11, 13, 14, or 15 notes.

breaking that piece of time into 7 equal pieces is very unusual in the west. frank zappa used to do it. but i’d say he’s unusual.

so here i am, sitting at the snair drum with a metronome playing through the headphones. the click track is just a little too fast for me to play seven notes per click. so screw it, no shame it taking a little longer. i decide to play seven notes per TWO clicks. we’re chopping up time anyway, and now i can keep up the pace. every two clicks i’m hitting seven equally spaced notes on the snair.

you know how you make it a polyrhythm? add another voice, since poly means like, you know, more than one. I take the phones off and plug the click track into the monitors. now, you hear BOTH the rhythms. my seven notes over the click track’s two notes. and voila, a 7:2 polyrhythm.

Seven notes spaced over the time that is usually occupied by Two quarter notes. ”seven against two” if you’d prefer.

That, is a polyrhythm.

it is indeed put simply as one rhythm playing against another, but it’s a completely different beast than the contrapuntal independence thing.

the coolest polyrhythm i ever saw/heard was on zappa’s “the black page” from an NYC recording. he took 16 notes, which if you’ve ever gone ra-ta-tat around the drumkit you’ve played four on the snair and four on each of the 3 toms. totally simple. he chopped it into something along the lines of 5:2, 5:1 and 6:1, so it was 16 notes, in the space of 4 quarter notes, but totally different.

the simplest polyrhythms are 3:2 where you hit triplets on the ride against straight eighths on the kick/snair. that’s pretty standard; you can find it in a christmas carol. it would look something like this . . .

that’s bass cleff stuff, but you can see the note groupings. 3 against 2.

NOW, THAT THAT’S ALL SAID – the word polyrhythm seems to be stuck in a bit of a semantic struggle.

people will refer to things like layered time signatures as polyrhythms. RUSH used to do things like have the drums play in 5/4 while the band played in 4/4, and after 20 we’re all back together. if you play something in 3/4 and i play in 4/4, after 12 we’re back together again. i understand why you’d want to call that a polyrhythm, and i’m not gonna get all caught up in a struggle over words. but, i will call timeout and say we need to align our lingo here.

the term i’ve heard for that situation is polymetric.

oh duh, let me include the typical admonition for any drummers that wander into this fray. if you really want people to shake their heads – ADD SOME RESTS into all of this. as rests are like, unbelievably important.

P.S. - i just pushed BUY on a Mandala. at the moment they come in two parts. uber-midi controller and software you can run on a decent machine. i’ll need to upgrade the laptop or an old desktop (or both) to make it come alive.

February 24, 2010 Posted in: Drums