7/4 or 7/8 time signature

Not sure whether to put this in ILM or IMM, but I thought I'd open it up to the main board in the end.

As a sort of challenge-slash-experiment I'm trying to write a bit of music around a 7-beat time signature. It's not easy, especially since I'm using software (Reason 7) which is pre-rigged to deal better with regular 4/4, and also because the temptation to write and improvise in 4/4 is so habitual that I have to really concentrate on what's happening.

Someone gave me a tip and said to think about it in clusters of 3and4 or 4and3 rather than 8minus1 (which I think I was doing). As such I think I'm going to have to readdress the entire rhythmic template. But is there also a melodic method to writing in 7/4?

To open this up to the non-musicmaking part of ILM, I thought I'd also ask if anyone has any good examples of music in 7/4 and also what people think about this time signature. Seems that in the more successful cases, the irregularity of the time signature actually sounds very fluent - Peter Gabriel's 'Solsbury Hill' sounds effortless in execution for example. Elsewhere the 7/4 signature on Brubeck's 'Unsquare Dance' gives it a light funkiness thanks to the offbeat clapping patterns. On other tracks it's used deliberately to give a track an off-kilter exotic feel (Animal Collective's 'What Would I Want Sky'), and on Hedningarna's 'Forshyttan' it's almost impossible for me to wrap my head around how the rhythm and melody sync up.

So any Ilxors got any tips on writing in 7/4 as well as any suggestions for further listening?

food for thought

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/jjmsmusic/the_odd_time_library___a_list_of_songs_in_odd_times/

The best tip I can give in learning how to write music in odd meters is learn how to "feel" it. Listen to a lot of music in 7/4 or 7/8 until you learn how to feel the meter. And yes, whoever told you to think about it in clusters is very much OTM.

I still count 9/8 as three blocks of three, rather than the whole nine, for example.

yo. if a song or riff doesn't come to you in 7-time then you shouldn't write it in 7-time. sure I know you're trying to practice in order to expand your musical vocabulary, but it should come from a place of 'hey shit this sounds awesome in my head' rather than 'i wish to be sophisticated' - you come across as a bit of a dilettante that way tbh

basically, my tip is that you should not do this until you're working on music and suddenly something pops into your head in...let's count it...oh shit, seven-time

Well, it did come from a jam I was having with my band in which I started playing the bassline in 7-time so we decided to keep it that way. The object isn't entirely academic. Also, as a product of that jam/bassline, it uses a weird scale I'm not familiar with, which could be a Romanian Minor.

well, free world and all that - do as you wish, you might stumble across something sweet. just don't expect this very programmatic way of making music to brook instant rewards. if it came from a jam, then yeah, lay down the bassline, experiment with how the rhythm sits atop it. usually 4 then 3, yeah, but there are alternatives

Cool. I have the rhythm and bass down although I might change the swing on these a bit cos at the moment they're very DUN-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun and then I'm trying to improvise on various lead instruments, but that's where things start slipping back into 8-beat signatures. I'm almost convinced it's the swing feel which will help this.

not that I'd ever ask anyone to listen to more prog, but...yeah, it's a sort of canter, a blitz of intensity whose eccentric orbit is realms away from the relaxed jam of kosmische

might post a few examples with ILM's blessing

yeah go for it man. this is an ILM thread, post away.

Someone gave me a tip and said to think about it in clusters of 3and4 or 4and3 rather than 8minus1 (which I think I was doing).

Or 2and2and3 or 2and3and2, etc.

Apologies in advance for the peculiar strain of British indieprogmetal I keep trying to foist on ILX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHM6M82rj9U

^^^this slays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQnDH9SQ6Sc

^^^this also slays. not all in 7-time tho but has significant bits in it (i.e. the verses)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_jhBoM0_As

^^^pvmic

the Cardiacs one is probably the most interesting actually - it starts as a thrash-punk thing that throws in a seventh beat (or subtracts an eighth beat, depending on yr point of view), and then has a midsection that has a bar of 8 next to a bar of 6, then does something I can't even really follow before reprising the thrash bit

yo. if a song or riff doesn't come to you in 7-time then you shouldn't write it in 7-time. sure I know you're trying to practice in order to expand your musical vocabulary, but it should come from a place of 'hey shit this sounds awesome in my head' rather than 'i wish to be sophisticated' - you come across as a bit of a dilettante that way tbh

basically, my tip is that you should not do this until you're working on music and suddenly something pops into your head in...let's count it...oh shit, seven-time

― You cannot interrupt his tea stirring because it is his holy trick (imago), Tuesday, February 25, 2014 12:12 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I cannot say that this always gels with my own experience. I have sometimes gotten very good results from making these sorts of decisions very consciously - 'Think I'm going to do one in 5/4 now' etc. I don't think you necessarily have to just base it on what sounds good in your head, sometimes making these conscious planned decisions about structure can push you into doing something unexpected that you might not have come up with if you were only basing it on the sounds in your head. It then becomes something you can draw on in the future.

Here's a great effortless-sounding 7/4 example (it's even in the title!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uev2J_cBHjQ

yeah i always liked that one.

yo. if a song or riff doesn't come to you in 7-time then you shouldn't write it in 7-time. sure I know you're trying to practice in order to expand your musical vocabulary, but it should come from a place of 'hey shit this sounds awesome in my head' rather than 'i wish to be sophisticated' - you come across as a bit of a dilettante that way tbh

basically, my tip is that you should not do this until you're working on music and suddenly something pops into your head in...let's count it...oh shit, seven-time

― You cannot interrupt his tea stirring because it is his holy trick (imago), Tuesday, February 25, 2014 12:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, yes, ideally this would be the case. But, forcing himself to write in 7 will help him feel the meter more. Once you have a feeling for a meter, then you can write naturally in it.

I like it (Shoreline) too but it sounds effortful to my ears. The drum part makes the end of the bar line a bit too obvious for the track to flow.

One More Red Nightmare is a good one.

Fair, mirostones - and it may be useful to always consider shaking the complacency of 4/4, but I'm just saying, it should cohere naturally, not have a weird metre logjammed into it just because whoo crazy

It does indeed always come down to thinking in terms of adding 2 and 3. No matter how complex the rhythm is it will always break down to groupings of 2 and 3.

I super recommend practicing/writing against a straight 4/4 drum beat with the snare on 2 and 4 so you get used to the way the accents flip flop back and forth. Once you kind of get a feel for that it becomes second nature.

Also good to practice are drum paradiddles! A paradiddle is a kind of mirror pattern between the two hands LLRL|RRLR. A 13 pattern I've been practicing for an album I'm recording now is 3+3+3+4 LLR|LLR|LLR|LLRL|RRL|RRL|RRL|RRLR. If that makes any sense. I mostly play guitar and synthesizer but this practice is invaluable no matter what you play and you can practice it anywhere just tapping your fingers.

For soloing I tend to ignore the rhythm and play through the bar lines instinctively and usually it works out, although sometimes you have to work out little tricks/signals/cues to resolve everything on time but that's part of the fun!

I did a post in the Circle thread about one of the newer LPs by the group which is almost a study of different time signatures... the band grooves on them so hard and the rhythm section is so tight you don't even notice until you start counting. That album is called Six Day Run and it's a hell of a good album at that.

And that's as much advice for myself as for dog latin xp ooh good post fennel

Can never get my head round the fact that Pyramid Song is actually in 4/4.

don't know that this is really my favorite example, but it's the one that immediately comes to mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcYP5XP0Rlk

It does indeed always come down to thinking in terms of adding 2 and 3. No matter how complex the rhythm is it will always break down to groupings of 2 and 3.

OTM

Can never get my head round the fact that Pyramid Song is actually in 4/4.

Arguably, it's in 12/8.

Holy shit, I was coming here to post the same Rush song! I remember a review of the album with a quote along the lines of "It's not hard to rock out in 7/4, it's impossible," which of course is not true.

Laika has lots of cools stuff in odd times. Like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMJAwgcmb5U

And then this is actually 8/8, but it sort of swings like 7/8:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hO-83CIVKM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHMe2nW0d08

One trick is not to get too hung up on where the beat actually falls, which can give the song this weird robot metronome feel. Like, deciphering the time signature of, say, "Cattle & Cane" is actually really hard, but it's not like they were some prog band trying to trip you up (like Yes does). They're just playing for the song and surely not thinking of numbers at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq1s6FCEoZM

Can never get my head round the fact that Pyramid Song is actually in 4/4.

Arguably, it's in 12/8.[

i don't think it's a very good argument, unless you want to think of all swung music as in 12/8. if you count "1 2 3 4 5 6 2 2 3 4 5 6" over the pulse, that's pretty fast and not super helpful imo.

New car caviar four-star daydream...

Man I have so much opinion about 7/8-- boils down to "it's the best" + "few songs do it right"

Pyramid Song, so I've been told, is in a really uneven time sig or may not have a set one at all.

I still count 9/8 as three blocks of three, rather than the whole nine, for example.

9/8 is three blocks of three. It's compound triple meter, three dotted quarter notes to the bar, ONE two three TWO two three THREE two three. Similarly 6/8 is two dotted quarters and 12/8 is four.

For bars of 7, you could try writing a riff in 8 and just repeating before the last note; or thinking first about words (even if it's meant to be an instrumental) and coming up with a phrase that fits in seven. I think the latter can be what makes a lot of songs in 7 feel so natural. If the words flow right in 7, the songs seems like it can't be any other way.

'Pyramid Song' is in 4/4 but 'swung'.

'Cattle & Cane' is in 11/4 (or 1 x 6/4, 1 x 5/4).

Turn It On Again by Genesis is in 13! Sort of:

The song is also characterised by a rhythmic structure uncharacteristically complex for pop music, with verse/chorus sections in alternating time signatures, 6/4 to 7/4 (13/4), while the intro and bridge sections are in 4/4 and 5/4 (9/4).

turrican is right, 'pyramid song' is just 4/4. it's basically a bossa nova rhythm...dotted 8th, dotted 8th, quarter, dotted 8th, dotted 8th. what makes it feel weird is that no one plays a straight pulse against it, and that the chords are floaty and don't really let you know where the '1' is harmonically, right?

i'm kinda over odd time signatures, i'm waaaay more interested in something that makes 4/4 feel fresh (and 'pyramid song' is a good one). odd times that feel like 4/4 are cool though.

That Dylan song i posted is a good example of a straight song swung so hard it sounds like an odd time. I want to say a lot of classic Timbaland tracks do that, too.

Jordan, why so jaded? Good music can be in any, or no metre. Is it just what you're accustomed to?

Can, "One More Night", is 7/8 (I think?) and still funky

i don't think it's a very good argument, unless you want to think of all swung music as in 12/8. if you count "1 2 3 4 5 6 2 2 3 4 5 6" over the pulse, that's pretty fast and not super helpful imo.

When the drums come in, the fills subdivide each individual beat into three.

i'm kinda over odd time signatures

Met a very musoish guy once who was completely the opposite of this, he found anything in 4/4 all the way through 'boring'.

(also the subdivision isn't really that fast but I'm coming from the perspective of someone who has to sing "For Unto Us A Child Is Born" from Messiah every year)

of course not, i've been through my prog phase and learned to deal with all kinds of odd meters and it's just not what i'm interested in now, it's not a virtue in itself. i still like figuring out what a song is doing in the same why i like doing a crossword puzzle. however, as i've gotten older i'd say i've come to appreciate the whole world of subtlety that make a few bars of 4/4 feel good & connect with people. and like i said, if you're gonna do something in odd time, for me the challenge is to make it feel as symmetrical and unnoticeable as possible.

Talking of funky, what is this then?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIas_yxduDw

Unnoticeable is not perhaps the word I would use, but I feel we are largely in agreement there - it shouldn't be an end in itself

Talking of funky, what is this then?

basically it's 4+3+2/4

Nice!

heh i feel 'south african man' as a bar of 5/4 + a bar of 4/4.

(same thing though, it's funny how even people playing in a band together can divide things very differently in their heads)

with no concepts of numbers beyond 3, however, it would be hard to hear rush because you could never turn the volume knob high enough.

but more seriously, i would think most people's internal rhythmic clocks do have that analog, which is how people can successfully dance to a waltz without having a clue what 3/4 time is.

What about when the bass player is riding in the pocket and the drummer is intentionally stalling a little behind the count:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPoJUjnhF0o

Audience members at Karnatak concerts clap 8-, 10, and 7-beat talas.

xpost

I mean, they already know what those talas are, though, which probably makes this different from your example. Still, are many people really dancing to waltzes with no preparation for what 3/4 is?

i think a lot of people know what a waltz FEELS like, and how to dance to it, without actually knowing what a time signature is, yes.

(but i may be mis-reading philip's argument, because to me his second sentence refutes his first sentence.)

isn't 'the crunge' in 9/8, with some 4/4 variations?

(but i may be mis-reading philip's argument, because to me his second sentence refutes his first sentence.)

It confused me too tbh. By "internal rhythmic clock", I thought you were referring to something innate. If you just meant that people can learn to feel a metre without actually learning about it theoretically, I completely agree.

I mean both: there is some innate mechanism and left to its own development, it would be completely different/separate from the numeric count representation. I've come to this conclusion mostly by how frustrating it is to keep going "1-e-and-a" while simultaneously trying to drum.

What do you mean by "left to its own development"?

(xp) and i was simply suggesting that you can feel a meter without counting it out in any conscious way. (which, based on what philip just wrote, may be neither agreeing nor disagreeing with him. it may just be a different thing.)

i don't think most musicians are actually counting when they're playing, it's just a useful way to communicate verbally about it, whatever syllables are used.

Crazy time signatures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b66vZKCI-rA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsnWg0SXY-A

In the Vinnie one, I found some clip where someone asked him to break it down, and he had trouble putting it into words.

The Mahavishnu is in 19/8.

7/4 is a bit silly -- I just feel like that should be 3/4 + 4/4

"Time Stands Still" is more like 6/8 + 4/4.

"Distant Early Warning"! 4/4 into 7/8 and then that break which is accented like 5/8 + 7/8.

Jute Gyte - "Endless Moths Swarming"

Black Flag - "Black Love" (7/4 divided as 4/4 + 3/4).

R. Stevie Moore - Rock 'n' Roll Kit

"losing a beat", yeah, sarahell otm. My favourite moments in 7/4 are the loping ones you wouldn't even know were in 7/4-- the intro to Toto's "Africa" is weirdly my favourite 7/4 moment ever, "losing a beat".

7/8 works best when it's divided not 3+4 but 7/16+7/16, although I can't think of any precise examples where I'm at

Hate any time-signature that just feels like dudes counting

with regards to tala I was under the impression that although tala are collated into patterns of 7, 8, 10 etc., they are felt in one, every "beat" is equal? (I haven't studied that stuff in a while)

I have a zero tolerance policy with comp students for unnecessarily time signatures and use the word "obscurantism" a lot. "Putting it in 5/4 doesn't magically turn your Schubert-pastiche into something else"

with regards to tala I was under the impression that although tala are collated into patterns of 7, 8, 10 etc., they are felt in one, every "beat" is equal? (I haven't studied that stuff in a while)

Hm, I'm not sure that this is correct, although I’ve referred the question to someone with more expertise. I checked three ethnomusicology textbooks, which state that the claps, finger strokes, and waves indicate different levels of emphasis and also that the sam ('1') is especially accented. (One book was admittedly discussing Hindustani music, one was discussing Karnatak, and one discussed both.) Interestingly, none of the actual Indian sources I looked at frame the concept in terms of accented vs unaccented beats; they tend to discuss tala more in terms of combining units of varying lengths into a cycle.

Still, I feel like there is something analogous to an understood pattern of accents in e.g. the 8-beat adi tala (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOENGGdMuwQ). When listening to a piece like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJHh51Uvjx8 , I tend to think of 'accents' on the 'clapped beats', i.e. the 1st, 5th, and 7th: e.g. "de" in "devi", "nee" in "neeyai", and "nai" in "thunai" once the mrdangam enters. Even when the mrdangam shifts the accents, I feel like the implicit understanding of the clapped beats (which audience members keep clapping) is part of what makes that work? (This is another good famous example of a piece in Adi tala where the tala seems fairly clear to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAIlTAiV8N4)

Either way, the music is clearly organized into an 8-akshara ('8-beat') cycle, in terms of how the melodic lines work, and audience members are clapping/feeling this. This was my original point!

"Putting it in 5/4 doesn't magically turn your Schubert-pastiche into something else"

We're off the topic of 7/8 and 7/4 but I'll ask you to clarify because I'm interested in what you're getting at. To be difficult, Romantic form and harmony in an asymmetrical metre would be something other than straight-up Schubert pastiche, wouldn't it?

7/8!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcp8osYmU88

this page is fun:

http://www.cadaeic.net/meters.htm

I figured this super-dumb thing would have been posted here:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/02/the_time_signature_of_the_terminator_score_is_a_mystery_for_the_ages.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL72Tyxe1rc

March of the Pigs is 3 bars of 7/8 followed by 1 in 8/8. Probably one of my favorite non-4/4 singles.

Animal Collective has made loads of good 7/8 stuff, with What Would I Want? Sky as the crowning achievement, obviously. But I love the rhythm in For Reverend Green as well, which is in 7/8, but then there is a rhythm-track counting 7/4, which just means that it's offbeat half the time. Sounds great.

agreed, i think 'march of the pigs' is really effective.

listening to that terminator theme, it's 13 sixteenth notes, however you want to break that down?

oh, i guess the article gets to that. love the story and that the composer recorded it at home without thinking about the time signature.

in the article he says he changed it to 6/8 for T2 but i thought the theme songs were the same?

same theme but re-recorded with different sounds & rhythms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhWs3DVk-FU

Donny Hathaway - This Christmas

Cloud One - Disco Juice (/Mighty Dub Katz - Just Another Groove)

although I’ve referred the question to someone with more expertise

Two Karnatak music experts have no clear answer!

So the clearest answer so far, that makes the most sense to me, comes from my parents' bhajan group leader. She says that these divisions indicate phrasing rather than accents per se. Accent/emphasis has more to do with the lines of the individual song (e.g. where sa and pa and sometimes ma fall) and tends to be fairly fluid in improvisation.

Enjoying reading y'all's good work on this thread, especially Jordan and Sund4r. This thread boom chicka boom: Rolling Beats, Rhythms, Drums n Handclaps Thread has some links to a bunch of recent papers about rhythm if anyone is interested.

Thought I'd try something in 7/8 and it's actually piss easy. No need to count beats or anything like that - something I've never done and would have no clue how to - just get the feel of it and you're away. It makes me realise that I've been doing stuff in odd time signatures for years, without knowing wtf they were, what I was doing and how I was doing it.

I rank the subdivisions:

3-2-2 > 2-2-3 > 2-3-2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAFWd9lQPkM

Swap the first two
2-2-3 is clearly the best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrvGLesPHyg

that's in 5 not 7, right? I count 3-2, 3-2

would have no clue how to

the clue is in the word "count" tbh

that samla mammas manna thing is horrible btw

One of the more unnoticed uses of 7/4 is probably Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire. There's also a 2/4 thrown into the chorus for good fun.

Unnoticed because it's in 4/4 (with an occasional 2/4 shuffle).

Nope. The mariachi riff is in seven.