Say you have a 4/4 with simple hihats, one each eight for example. If you shrink it till you have only 7 hats, you have yourself a 7/8.
The easiest way to think it, is counting the balkan way.
Don’t count to 7, count 2 + 2 + 3.
I find using the hex line numbering saves me some thinking, and letting 10 be one beat. So 40 is 4/4, 50 is 5/4, 58 is 11/8 and so on…
By the way, if you haven’t noticed, in Meshuggah, even in their weirdest moments, there is nearly always a hihat or other sound keeping a steady beat. Nice trick to keep it together.
I read this somewhere on the forums once, here it is again:
4/4 = 80 lines with highlight on every 8 lines
6/8 = 60 lines with the highlight on every 6 or 12 lines.
5/4 = 50 lines with the highlight on every 10 lines.
7/8 = 70 lines with the highlight on every 7 lines.
I found some note info on Tomas Haake(Meshuggah drummer) and from what I see its a lot of 7/4, 6/4, 5/4, 11/8 that is used, but combined to sound even stranger
Also, remember what Snares said in CM: Simple melodies over complicated rhythms is often a good idea. It’s always about the song, not the math it’s based on.
Thats fast, just tried to make a test in speed 1 bpm 338 as The Man said, think I am close to an epileptic fit, now I can see why a big monitor would come in handy… Still I wonder if I understand the full benefit of speed 1, anyway one can always combine different speed settings in the same song, in case a fit is near…
Dream Theater, I almost forgot about those guys, better have a listen to them again soon, talking about strange beats and melodies then maybe it would be fun to dive in to some balkan music, think thats as strange as it gets…
Time signature has nothing to do with BPM… it has to do with the number of lines per pattern. If you convert the hex pattern lengths in Renoise to decimal, and factor the number of lines, you will get a good idea of the time signature. For example, A8(hex) converts to 168 (decimal) … 168 factored = 37222 … so if we ignore the 2s, because they’re just detail multipliers, we can take the 3*7 to mean that we’re either in 7/8 time using triplets, or 21/32 time. Both, btw, are indeed considered identical, although interpretation of tempo may change… I’m not sure of the actual music theory rules behind this… either way, the BPM is simply speed… time signature however, implies how one splits up the notes in a bar over time. 21/32 = 21 notes in a bar… and those notes will be 32nd notes … that of course doesn’t mean you can’t have 16th notes or 64th notes, or that you even have to have 32nd notes… but the timing is dictated by the invisible 32nd note timing. Keep in mind my above method works in reverse to create a viable pattern length for Renoise too
btw, meshuggah is known for polyrhythms, which are 2 rhythms that play side by side in different time signatures… the most common are 1/2 + 3/4 and 3/4 + 4/4… to acheive these kinds of time sigs in Renoise, simply multiply the time sigs together… example:
for 3/4 vs 4/4… 3*4 = 12/16
then your rhythms will fall on different counts:
4/4: 1…4…7…10…
3/4: 1…5…9…
periods being rests
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- It should be stated that those hex instructions suit my styles, which wouldn’t suit everyone.
