techno in 7/4 or 13/4 or summat

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So I woke up this morning being unable to sleep and booted up my laptop and wrote some stompy techno, in 7/4. All right, so it's not exactly dancable, but you do get the sort of Detroit "Drooooom sht'Drooom sh'ta Rooom sht'Droom" wavey grindy feel, as in 4/4 but it has a little catch in the tail. I imagine it'd be far better if I did it in 13/4 (1 a ra da 2 a ra da 3 a ra da 4 1 a ra da 2 a ra da 3 a ra da 4 1) which is my plan for after work tonight..

But has anyone else done this? Solid Detroit beats in non-4/4 time? Slsk hungers, give me names :)

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 21:38 (twenty-two years ago)

oh, by 'not danceable' I mean in the traditional sense. I mean, I can dance to 7/4 and still keep the emphasis on the 1, but then again, I have so much rhythm that I swear I must be either gay or black, just secretly.

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

It sounds like you're talking about 7/8 time (at least that's what your latter example is). 7/4 could still be pretty danceable, just 1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a 5 e and a 6 e and a 7 e and a 1 etc.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 21:48 (twenty-two years ago)

kirk degiorgio did a track called "soul, soul, soul" in 7/4. you may want to check it out. some of the other tracks from planetary folklore are in wonky time signatures, i think.

i guess his work is closer to early broken beat than techno.

― vahid (vahid), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 21:50 (twenty-two years ago)

"Lusty" by Lamb is also in 7/4.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 21:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Jordan - I meant the 'a ra da' bits to stand for beats - so 1 a ra da is four beats, not 1 beat with four semiquavers, ifyaknowwhatImean.

But if you dance like I do (following the pattern of the rhythm closely, so in 4/4 kind of sub emphasise every second beat, and majorly emphasise the first beat of the bar - I usually swing side to side with extremes of sideways motion on 1 and 3 and head bopping on either 1+3 or 2+4 depending on where the rhythm's weighted) 7 is tricky. In fact anything not 4 is tricky.

cheers vahid, will check out.

true, a lot of Lamb is in non-4 (they made a whole album of the concept, didn't they.. but I'd never call Lamb's rhythms 'stompy'.

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 21:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm sure I read somewhere that they ('they', haha) did some study which involved people's brains, and discovered that people who were good dancers or professed a strong sense of rhythm tended to have a certain part of their brain that was larger or more active when listening to rhythmic music; moreover, it tended to be larger or more active or something in black people and gay people.. this was in New Scientist, or something, but I can't find it.

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:07 (twenty-two years ago)

oh, come the fuck off it

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:08 (twenty-two years ago)

"natural rhythm"

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:08 (twenty-two years ago)

I guess my reason for interest is in trying to counter criticisms from some of my jazz muso friends that it's all in 4/4... is the grindy head-noddy feeling of listening to stompy techno tied up in the 4/4 timesig or can it feel just as stompy in 7/4 if your ears are practised up to listening to it?

I'm convinced I lot of the techno oomph comes from the little hihat/click/whatever one semiquaver before the major beats and the volume of the beats following - but I'm not sure if that only works because the 4/4ness makes your brain stress the beats more or, if it does, whether you could learn to do the same in 7/4.

xpost - wot, the gay/black thing? Yeah, I'm starting to think I imagined it. Never took the whole thing too seriously anyway :)

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:12 (twenty-two years ago)

If techno's in 7/4, it's still all hard quarter note downbeats with the upbeats (the hi-hat or whatever) in the same places, it's just a different length beat cycle. It's only when you start messing around with adding and dropping eighth notes (your 'semiquavers') that things start to get jagged.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:15 (twenty-two years ago)

"Lusty" is totally stompy. Those drums are like a gigantic sledgehammer wrapped in the marshmallow fluff that is Lou's singing.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:38 (twenty-two years ago)

hold on hold on... so if yer rhythm goes erm

1 - - - 2 - - - 3 - - - 4 - - - 1 &c
o o o o o
x x x x
` ` ` `

it's the `o that makes the oomph. Cos you can drop the x's and it still sounds just as stonky.

but by my reckoning the x are 8th notes and the ` fall on the 16ths - yeah?

xpost - haven't checked out Lusty yet but it's on my dl list :)

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:39 (twenty-two years ago)

crap, the preformatting didn't work.
1 - - - 2 - - - 3 - - - 4 - - - 1 &c
o o o o o
x x x x
` ` ` `

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:40 (twenty-two years ago)

right I give up.

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:41 (twenty-two years ago)

try this:
o-x`o-x`o-x`o-x`o
works just as well if it's o--`o--`o--`o

I've forgotten what my point was anyway.

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 22:43 (twenty-two years ago)

See Laika too although their rhythms are less stompy than Lamb. I'm not really that interested in odd time signatures in dance though because a) from a dancing perspective they sap your momentum even if you can stay in time, and b) so much can be done to break out of the four-to-the-floor straightjacket while staying in 4/4 (eg. shuffletech, 2-step etc.), and odd time signatures aren't *inherently* laudable (I mean, I wouldn't criticise jazz because of the lack of good beats. Or maybe I would, but I wouldn't expect jazz fans to take me seriously).

Also NB. Gay men do not have good rhythm, really. Even trance is less monolithic than gay house.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I hear you mr Finney... just interested.. I'm thinking if you can manage to twist your brain so that you 'get' 7/4 as easily as you 'get' 4/4, then write some kind of deep trippy dubbed-out German techno affair in 7/4, you'd get some new kind of sinking downwards experience (a la 4/4 dubby techno) but with a little catch in its tail, which if properly managed could become a sinking downwards catch.. like when you've got music with a weird sampled loop that doesn't quite make four beats but this not-quite-making-four-beats irrhythmia ends up being brushed over by your brain as you get lost in the trippiness... mmmm.... Muchos fuckaroundos with Cubase must come tonight.

Mogwai's Christmas Steps always gets me like this, because it's basically in 13/4 or 17/4 (three or four bars of 4/4 then one extra beat) but you kind of don't notice, the mood is so overwhelming.

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:21 (twenty-two years ago)

The last time I heard good trance was in a gay bar.

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm not saying it's all bad of course, just very monolithic!

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:22 (twenty-two years ago)

yeahyeahyeahyeah. Ok, that looks crap written down. NZ non-word (more a succession of noises) that means 'yes, I knew you meant that, I'm on your wavelength' Kind of.

― damian_nz (damian_nz), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Lawrence, who puts out stuff on Kompakt and Ladomat does a lot of stuff that may or may not be in 4/4 (i could care less to count how many beats are in a measure), but he does tons of stuff where certain elements don't loop in the same time with others. for example he'll have a high hat that repeats every 7beats and a bassline that repeats every 6, all over a steady 4kick drum. totally weird and totally great

― JaXoN (JasonD), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah Lawrence is really good like that, though a bit disorienting sometimes!

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Thing is, your jazz muso friends are 99.9% right. There are very few counter examples. But who cares, there's still a lot of rhythmically interesting stuff in 4/4.

― Elliot (Elliot), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 23:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I've done something that's sort of techno and definitely in 5:4

I can dance to _anything_!

― mei (mei), Thursday, 18 March 2004 07:44 (twenty-two years ago)

You can still dance to 7/4 but counting in fours quite easily, think about the start of Zep's Kashmir, where the drums pile right through the guitars. (I know it's not a dance tune, but it's the only obvious one I could think of)

― mzui, Thursday, 18 March 2004 09:17 (twenty-two years ago)

It's super easy to dance to uneven time signatures if you have fully incorporated syncopation into your rhythmic sense.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 18 March 2004 14:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Dan OTM.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 18 March 2004 14:36 (twenty-two years ago)

i really like dancing with other man to some bum banging techno i currently am single if you are intrested contact me im 18 from cambridge and have a bright future with you baby. i want people banging me like my door. i also enjoy wearing women underwear espically my mums. i also rub fish under my arm pits and smell my dogs bum.

― heliu, Thursday, 1 April 2004 07:21 (twenty-one years ago)

I want see you do it in 13/4!

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 1 April 2004 07:32 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

frey - seven 7/4 techno

frey - recirculate 3/4 techno

i'm starting a netlabel for techno with wonky time sigs. anyone know of any existing stuff out there? friends in basements/bedrooms/backyards making it? love to hear.

― damian_nz aka frey (damian_nz), Sunday, 12 March 2006 21:19 (twenty years ago)

you'll dance to anything!

― dad milkmom, Monday, 13 March 2006 00:11 (twenty years ago)

I had an idea for a dance track that kind of goes "ah 1 ah 2 ah 3 (4) ah 1 ah 2 ah 3 (4) ah 1 ah 2 ah 1 ah 2 ah 1 ah 2 ah 3.

So it's kind of "Ah-dum ti-dum Ta-daaaa... Ah-dum Ah-dum Ta-daaa... Ah dumpty dum, Ah dumpty dum, Ah dumpty dum, Ta-daaaa"

Kind of not unsimilar to the Darth Vader music in Star Wars. What kind of signature is this?

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 13 March 2006 00:19 (twenty years ago)

4/4, actually.

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Monday, 13 March 2006 04:51 (twenty years ago)

You could also count the Darth Vader theme in 2/4, as a march, I suppose.

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Monday, 13 March 2006 05:56 (twenty years ago)

five years pass...

Playin' 4 The City: This Road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_dXK8-n4Bc

makes me dizzy listening to it, but thats not a bad quality for a house track.

― ☆, Saturday, 5 November 2011 11:15 (fourteen years ago)

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