Cross-rhythmsPolyrhythms and Polymeters. Lets talk about it.

[osha]

Mike parker, Abdullah Rashim, and schxxxhch or whatever on avian craft some excellent off kilter time and poly rhythmic techno

[Planar]

All tracing back to Steve Reich really.
The true originator of techno

Glad you've mentioned him as this popped up on CDM yesterday:-

Techno as Science

I thought it was interesting, not a bad track as well (the first one).

[Barfunkel]

I got no idea about the science behind polyrhythms and whatnot, but I just made a track (just for the heck of it) where the kick pattern is 62 steps long, the hihat pattern is 5 steps long, the bassline pattern is 12 steps long and the lead pattern is 11 steps long. Sounds a bit weird, but I don't see it as impossible to play in a DJ set because of the rhythms.

[Lost to the Void]

Polythms are fine, it`s when you go into stuff like triplets and quintols etc, that you can get problems as they will clatter against anything on a standard note meter.

[don_questo]

I got no idea about the science behind polyrhythms and whatnot, but I just made a track (just for the heck of it) where the kick pattern is 62 steps long, the hihat pattern is 5 steps long, the bassline pattern is 12 steps long and the lead pattern is 11 steps long. Sounds a bit weird, but I don't see it as impossible to play in a DJ set because of the rhythms.

it will sound weird if you mix triplets and quintuplets. Even if you put 2 different triplet patterns together it sounds a bit shit. Oh I see you put in 11plets as well:). Whats the next prime number?

[LaurentOrchard]

OK Steve, well to my ears it does. Maybe you can show us an example.

Count the beats.

1st tune, right at the beginning I just noticed the loop start is staggered a few times, so I guess that part is, but after that short little section, the main riff goes 4x4. Restarts 1st beat of every 4.

Regis tune is the same, main riff repeats 1st beat every bar

3rd tune, is fucking great, but there are no polymeters, everything repeats at the start of each bar, although some parts repeat every 2 bard.


Here`s a great example. Hardfloor are ALL about polyrthmic parts in layers.

Check out the rather legendary track Acperience.

The first 303 line is a 2 beat/half bar loop
Then the second 303 line is a 3 note loop (You start hearing it around 1:39)
(The later 3rd 303 repeats every 4 beats/1 time a bar)

the interaction between the two causes the track to have a forward energy. Classic trick.

youtu.be/-SGH_ZwGcZ0

Now that's one sick track!

[ozias_leduc]

Polythms are fine, it`s when you go into stuff like triplets and quintols etc, that you can get problems as they will clatter against anything on a standard note meter.

definitely. great when it works though, i love when the 808 hats come in on this track at 3:20 in triplets - it's a smoother sound though so doesn't clash with anything

youtu.be/RNG5vAZ_sDI

[Lost to the Void]

Polythms are fine, it`s when you go into stuff like triplets and quintols etc, that you can get problems as they will clatter against anything on a standard note meter.

definitely. great when it works though, i love when the 808 hats come in on this track at 3:20 in triplets - it's a smoother sound though so doesn't clash with anything

youtu.be/RNG5vAZ_sDI

You mean the offbeat open hats that come in at 3:20?
Not triplets, just on the offbeat, pretty standard.

[tdmusic]

All tracing back to Steve Reich really.
The true originator of techno

youtu.be/Mv_8UaP_QRI

Truly masterful, sends you into a trance.
Reich is my absolute hero.

You can learn a shitload from this video alone

Went to the Reich evening at the South Bank a couple of weeks ago, not knowing much of his work except for "Music for 18 Musicians" (which I love, beautiful piece of music) and "Come Out" and I came out thinking the exact same, blew my mind a bit to be honest... particularly as earlier that day I'd been down to Jaded to watch Rrose so I got to experience techno in a very modern form, and then experience music which you could legitimately claim to be the origin of it all.

They performed:
youtu.be/BhhIZscEE_g
(actually performed by Reich himself and Colin Currie, interesting exploration of how two rhythms interact with each other and quite an impressive display of timing by them both!)

youtu.be/g0WVh1D0N50
(they just played a recording of it, I found this piece pretty inspiring when I first heard it a while ago - it's an exploration of how a simple voice loop changes when layered and phased (done on tape back in the day, something that was explored a lot back then, e.g. Eno on Music for Airports), it goes from a simple loop into weird doubled rhythms and then finally into a blurry, unrecognisable smudge of sound as more loops are added over the top)

"Music for Pieces of Wood", which Steve posted above and was the one that I felt had the closest ties to techno - polyrhythmic, hypnotic... quite a strange experience watching five people playing claves that in such a grand concert hall, but you really felt that the crowd were "immersed" in it, certainly judging by the applause

"Pendulum music for 3 or 4 microphones, amplifiers & loudspeakers", can't find a decent vid of this but basically it was four speakers with four microphones hanging on a swing overhead, one mic over each speaker... someone sets all the microphones swinging like pendulums and as they pass over their speaker, it makes a feedback noise. As the microphones gradually drift out of time and swing smaller and smaller distances, interesting patterns emerge. This was probably the least sonically interesting of all the pieces, but I definitely admired the concept behind it.

and then finally, a one hour performance of:

youtu.be/ZXJWO2FQ16c
Which as well as being a beautiful and very hypnotic piece of music, was incredible to watch the stamina and accuracy of these performers repeating the same phrases over and over, and of course has an interesting process/concept aspect to it when you read up. Standing ovation for a good few minutes at the end of that... I listened to it all the way through again when I got home, nothing else quite sounded right after it had worked its way into my brain haha.

So yeah, was a pretty amazing experience and I found his process and repetition driven approach to music really inspiring in the context of techno, especially as that's part of what I find so fascinating about stuff like Alva Noto/Raster Noton, so seeing how Reich had been into that sort of thing many years before them was pretty impressive!

I'd like to get into more of his work - any particular recommendations?

[Lost to the Void]

All tracing back to Steve Reich really.
The true originator of techno

youtu.be/Mv_8UaP_QRI

Truly masterful, sends you into a trance.
Reich is my absolute hero.

You can learn a shitload from this video alone

Went to the Reich evening at the South Bank a couple of weeks ago, not knowing much of his work except for "Music for 18 Musicians" (which I love, beautiful piece of music) and "Come Out" and I came out thinking the exact same, blew my mind a bit to be honest... particularly as earlier that day I'd been down to Jaded to watch Rrose so I got to experience techno in a very modern form, and then experience music which you could legitimately claim to be the origin of it all.

They performed:
youtu.be/BhhIZscEE_g
(actually performed by Reich himself and Colin Currie, interesting exploration of how two rhythms interact with each other and quite an impressive display of timing by them both!)

youtu.be/g0WVh1D0N50
(they just played a recording of it, I found this piece pretty inspiring when I first heard it a while ago - it's an exploration of how a simple voice loop changes when layered and phased (done on tape back in the day, something that was explored a lot back then, e.g. Eno on Music for Airports), it goes from a simple loop into weird doubled rhythms and then finally into a blurry, unrecognisable smudge of sound as more loops are added over the top)

"Music for Pieces of Wood", which Steve posted above and was the one that I felt had the closest ties to techno - polyrhythmic, hypnotic... quite a strange experience watching five people playing claves that in such a grand concert hall, but you really felt that the crowd were "immersed" in it, certainly judging by the applause

"Pendulum music for 3 or 4 microphones, amplifiers & loudspeakers", can't find a decent vid of this but basically it was four speakers with four microphones hanging on a swing overhead, one mic over each speaker... someone sets all the microphones swinging like pendulums and as they pass over their speaker, it makes a feedback noise. As the microphones gradually drift out of time and swing smaller and smaller distances, interesting patterns emerge. This was probably the least sonically interesting of all the pieces, but I definitely admired the concept behind it.

and then finally, a one hour performance of:

youtu.be/ZXJWO2FQ16c
Which as well as being a beautiful and very hypnotic piece of music, was incredible to watch the stamina and accuracy of these performers repeating the same phrases over and over, and of course has an interesting process/concept aspect to it when you read up. Standing ovation for a good few minutes at the end of that... I listened to it all the way through again when I got home, nothing else quite sounded right after it had worked its way into my brain haha.

So yeah, was a pretty amazing experience and I found his process and repetition driven approach to music really inspiring in the context of techno, especially as that's part of what I find so fascinating about stuff like Alva Noto/Raster Noton, so seeing how Reich had been into that sort of thing many years before them was pretty impressive!

I'd like to get into more of his work - any particular recommendations?

shit I really wanted to go to that but I couldn`t get tickets. Found out too late

[ozias_leduc]

Polythms are fine, it`s when you go into stuff like triplets and quintols etc, that you can get problems as they will clatter against anything on a standard note meter.

definitely. great when it works though, i love when the 808 hats come in on this track at 3:20 in triplets - it's a smoother sound though so doesn't clash with anything

youtu.be/RNG5vAZ_sDI

You mean the offbeat open hats that come in at 3:20?
Not triplets, just on the offbeat, pretty standard.

yeah but they're on a triplet grid K-hK-hK-h

(i always call anything on the 1/8T grid a triplet, not sure if that's correct - but regardless, if the hat had a sharp attack, it would clash with the other 1/16 stuff )

[Lost to the Void]

yeah but they're on a triplet grid K-hK-hK-h

(i always call anything on the 1/8T grid a triplet, not sure if that's correct - but regardless, if the hat had a sharp attack, it would clash with the other 1/16 stuff )

I don`t think it is on a triplet grid. It`s just a standard offbeat hat with a slow attack. Unless you are looking at the closed hats, and they are definitely on the 4`s

[ozias_leduc]

no no, defintely talking about the open hat. (606 ? 808? one of those)

i was happy to let this rest but then i was warping some tracks in ableton and there it was, terence fixmer's electric city in my library staring me right in the face.

SO i did some science in ableton and it turns out the truth is pretty much in the middle . it's too early to be on the 1/8T , but too late to be on the 1/8 - pretty much right in the middle actually. i assume he's either moved it a bit to the right on the grid himself, or has given it about 40% of 1/8T groove setting in ableton or indeed, opened the attack a bit

HOWEVER, this was all kinda off topic, because regardless, it gives that hat a bit of a swing which contrasts quite significantly with the super-straight-on-the-grid-1/16-hammering-stuff that the track does for the first 3 minutes. i found it quite surprising and interesting when i first heard it.

[Lost to the Void]

So its not polymeter, more likey just a groove template.

Not the best example of what we are talking about here anyway, although I was going to say in a post, that quite often you can give an illusion of polymeter through the use of groove, swing or just going off grid, it can have almost the same effect, dragging or pushing the beat.

[areyouin]

can someone explain how i put for instance hi-hats in 6/8?
I understand how to midi program 4/3 but not in 6/8.

[mick]

Well, its not too dj friendly, i did a lot of stuff with odd note lengths years ago, and its great in a tune, but as soon as you start mixing tunes dj style, it ends up really messy.

isnt this where mixing in key comes in? James Holden for example mixes up the weirdest stuff together that way.

[Lost to the Void]

How does mixing in key help with odd time signatures?

[mick]

How does mixing in key help with odd time signatures?

Not on drums, but on polyrhythm synth-lines.

[boris_miniutti]

Awesome lads

[Planar]

How does mixing in key help with odd time signatures?

Not on drums, but on polyrhythm synth-lines.

If it's on the grid it's easy, it doesn't matter where the repeat in the rhythm is as long as it's in time. Obviously you'd need to know your tunes to know what it will mix into and doing it in key will obviously sound better. I would say it would require 10% more concentration than a normal mix, max.