Ableton Forum

Nice post localhost, I needed the refresher. The bassline to Money is a great example.
1 2 and 3
4 5 6 7
If I remember right.

I think that was called the only 7/8 "hit" ever..........of course there is soundgardens spoon man, which swaps 14/16, with 4/4 and 6/8.........er, am I missing something?

Tone Deft wrote:Nice post localhost, I needed the refresher. The bassline to Money is a great example.
1 2 and 3
4 5 6 7
If I remember right.

exactly. It's like a 3+4 type of thing.

It's good to break 'longer' meters (11, 7, 5, 13, etc..) into piece that help capture the musical phrasing.

Another nice odd time song is 'the becoming' by NIN. it's alternating bars of 7 and 6.

Schism by tool is a nice piece song that is 7 + 5. Or 1+2+d 1+2+3+d.

There's tons of the other songs in odd time.

Name your favorite!

thelocalhost wrote: This isn't true. 1-2-3, 1-2-3 isn't 3/4.

surely the comma in this pseudo notation indicates this is 3 notes of some kind in two bars.

1-2-3-4-5-6 , would be a more likely indication of 6/

I would accept anyone telling me 1-2-3,1-2-3 as referring to 3/4 - IMO it would be unusual to regard that as 6/8.

Angstrom wrote:

thelocalhost wrote: This isn't true. 1-2-3, 1-2-3 isn't 3/4.

surely the comma in this pseudo notation indicates this is 3 notes of some kind in two bars.

1-2-3-4-5-6 , would be a more likely indication of 6/

I would accept anyone telling me 1-2-3,1-2-3 as referring to 3/4 - IMO it would be unusual to regard that as 6/8.

I didn't realize I was being so carless; I should clarify. I meant in terms of writing 1/8 notes (so you could compare things on a somewhat equal footing). I didn't mean the ',' as a measure marker.

If someone told me to play a beat in 6/8, it definitely would be different than 3/4. Would you agree on this?

You don't count 3/4 as 123123 (in terms of 1/8). It's 1...2...3... in quarter notes , or you count it as 1 + 2 +3 + (in terms of 1/8 notes). The 1 is the strongest beat, the 2 and 3 are the next strongest. If you put hihats on the 1/8 and add a kick on 1, and the snare on 2. That's a good starting point for a 3/4 'rock' beat.

For a waltz, It's normally written in 3/4 because the 1 is so dominant. (written in 1/4) It's always 1...2...3...1...2...3...

When you play in 6/8, it's counted as 1 2 3 4 5 6, or what i previously was sloppy writting as 123123. In a 6/8 context, I was infering that the second '1' is not as strongly accented as the real 1. Since this is horribly confusing, Let's just start over.

In this 1 2 3 4 5 6 notation of 6/8, the 1 is the strongest beat and the 4 is next strongest (for example: a lot of the first "a perfect circle" album is in 6/8). If you put hihats on the 1/8 and add a kick on 1, and the snare on 4. That's usually the canonical example of a very basic 6/8 beat. This is also a good time to show why a typical waltz isn't 6/8. The 1 and 4 aren't accented equally in 6/8, but in 3/4 the musical repeat is such that the constant 1...2...3...1...2...3... is driving the song (written in 1/4). Every 1 is just as strong.

However, these are just the simple cases. When the musical phrase starts to become more syncopated, how the meter is written and felt can be somewhat ambiguous. But, I still feel that a 6/8 beat is very fundamentally different than a 3/4.

In the end, it's all about counting the proper musical phrases.

do people really sit around and think: i have to write a song in 3/4 or i have to right something in 7/8
who cares?
i listened to the songs named that are in different timings and i can still tap my foot to them like any other song.

nvrmnd

nathannn wrote:do people really sit around and think: i have to write a song in 3/4 or i have to right something in 7/8
who cares?.

After you've practiced are very comfortable playing in 7,9,11,5, etc... Things just come out in odd meters. It's not forced. It's just part of you vocabulary.

But why are the major of songs written in 4/4?

nathannn wrote:i listened to the songs named that are in different timings and i can still tap my foot to them like any other song.

That's because those songs are well constructed and they've learned how to displace the beat and make things groove and sound natural. if you don't know how to do that, you are going to struggle writing a song in non-typical meter. Hence most songs are written in 4/4.

nathannn wrote:do people really sit around and think: i have to write a song in 3/4 or i have to right something in 7/8
who cares?.

no, generally people don't decide they need to write in a certain time signature. The 'natural' sound of the tracks you mention and the foot tapping quality come from the fact that the musicians just naturally noodled them up, the same as normal.

my normal process goes -
"ah , now this bit needs to go - 'do be do diddle de dee do' ",
I play it into a clip and at that point I realise its 7/4 or something. I generally have to work out what I just did so I can set the bar markers correctly to record any further variations. Sometimes the bits can be quite weirdly signified and it takes me half an hour to figure out why.

If you are used to noodling in odd signatures the occur nearly as often as the 'standard' ones. Many people who grow up using computers to write never get acclimatised to noodling in odd signatures though, so it seems alien.

nathannn wrote:do people really sit around and think: i have to write a song in 3/4 or i have to right something in 7/8
who cares?
i listened to the songs named that are in different timings and i can still tap my foot to them like any other song.

You can tap your foot on quarter notes but you're not counting the beat 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 or 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 or 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7 (yes, I'm using that simplistic diagramming again)
If you count 1-2-3-4 on a 3/4 song it'll start sounding like 'yeah, I can count this beat out' then after a few measures it won't sound right. Keep practicing.

For me it's just a trip to count out songs on the radio, then you hear an odd time and the song really opens up, music becomes a lot more interesting, you hear new phrasing, like 1 2 and 3 4 5 6 7, go count out 'Money' by Pink Floyd, if you don't have it I'm sure there's a live version on YouTube.

You don't have to know theory but knowing it opens up a lot of insight into music, knowledge never hurts.

well, one work around is to set the metronome to 1/4---a quarter note. Set up your session view so that there is a seperate scene for each different time signature, and make sure the clips in these scenes have the same time signature as the other clips in the scene (or not, if you are doing 3 over 4 type stuff).

Basically, as long as all your clips are the same tempo, by setting the metronome to 1/4, you can just trigger clips on quarter notes (or eight notes if you are doing 6/8, 7/8, 15/8 etc.). Not perfect, but works fine, and allows you to easily move back and forth between time signatures in real time. works for me and my drummer....

OK so I have a question.
I'm writing a song in 5/4, and it sounds nice. Should I make a vamp every four bars or every five bars?

The old song "Take Five", written in 5/4 was done in groupings of 4 bars.

quandry wrote:well, one work around is to set the metronome to 1/4---a quarter note. Set up your session view so that there is a seperate scene for each different time signature, and make sure the clips in these scenes have the same time signature as the other clips in the scene (or not, if you are doing 3 over 4 type stuff).

Basically, as long as all your clips are the same tempo, by setting the metronome to 1/4, you can just trigger clips on quarter notes (or eight notes if you are doing 6/8, 7/8, 15/8 etc.). Not perfect, but works fine, and allows you to easily move back and forth between time signatures in real time. works for me and my drummer....

This was discussed on page3.

It should change on the bar.

thelocalhost wrote: Yes. It should work for 'correctly' for bars.

When I play drums, I want to trigger the clip change early in the measure (because usually a fill is played on the last half of the measure).

Also, making the quanization to 1/8's (for a 7/8 to 4/4 changing) might become easy to miss (depending on the tempo).

has anyone mentioned the fact that the bottom number in the time signature doesn't work at all in live anyway?


try it. the same loop at 4/4 and 2/2 are identical.

in 2/2 a half note should get one beat or the metronome, so everything should be twice as fast...


.lm.