DRUMMER CAFE

Hey..

This came up elsewhere.. but.. I thought I might stir the ideas up over here..

I have found, that in western culture at least.. possibly all. We see rhythmic time has being equally divided and subdivided, never fluxuating or changing.. always remaining equally divided in some way..

Now.. my idea, you might be interested in discussing.. well I don't know if it's just my idea but..

Fluxuated time is something I've worked on my own for a while. Fluxuated time is time, meter if you will, that is not equally subdivided at all times, if at any.

To give an example.. a simply 8th note single stroke roll at 60 bpm..

Here we have 8th notes striking exactly (assuming perfect   time) 2 every second, or every .5 seconds.

Now this is VERY normal.. in fact, it's all there is..

Fluxuated time may look something like this in a single bar.. The 1st  note strikes, an 8th note.. but we will change this notes value from .5 seconds.. to .4 the second 8th note could remain the same or we can lengthen i's value how about.. .7 seconds.. the 3rd we shall just leave at .5 seconds.. and so on and so forth.

What we have now developed is a highly abnormal and strange "out of time" sounding rhythm.

However! It's not out of time, if I were to play this bar over and over and over, you would hear the pattern, and it would generate a sense of time and feel. All be it, not a strange one.. but still it's keeping time..  a different kind.

Now we can add more things, create these unequally divided rhythmic patterns, combine them with straight time things and produce some of the most profound rhythmic statements.


I think this is an area of drumming and music in general that has been neglected to the highest degree. While I do advocate playing straight time.. I think the realm of "Fluxuated" time holds an infinite amount of possibilities and ideas.

I have also designed a 'metronome' of sorts, I have been working on this as well, it is programmable to .01 of a second between the pulse notes, the speed is determined by an average of notes per "bar".
This creates a most monumental problem with notation however.. and, I have yet to solve it.

I believe this will be the realm that will be the most challenging and incredible thing ever seen. Some might it's strange, but that is simply due to the use of "straight" time for the last zillion years.

What do you think?

I will continue to explore this newly discovered area of rhythm along side my 'straight' time studies. I came up with this idea when listening to the rain drops on my window a LONG time ago.. so I got a tape recorder and recorded it, then learned to play the pattern. You see nature knows no bounds, no perfect meter.. it is what it is.. we listen to rain and hear music.. music in the most rhythmically unpredictable way.

Ponder, Meditate and think on these things.. then tell me what you've thought..

Peace
Josiah

Ah..

yes i agree with you.. I know about those things..

I'm talking far beyond that though.. all of those still base of a straight time, swung notes and the like..

I don't think anybody has ever composed a peice of music that was completelly "out of time" on purpose.. maybe I dunno..

I'm still talking far beyond simply stretching or swinging notes.. into the realm of complete oddity, I have writtin out rhythms based on this and played them for a few of my instructors, i've gotten some interesting feedback, from.. 'Thats astounding" to "That sounds like crap, but has got to be a butt to play"

So I dunno.. like I said i'm jsut working on it, but has anyone ever played a piece on a drumset that was based off that idea vs straight time?

Peace
Josiah

heh, yeah, I've come up with some pretty cool ideas following the off patterns of my car's turning signal which is never constant.

The idea's you're talking about have been explored...the 70s (and 80s even) were full of experimentation. Also a lot of Indian music has very deliberate speeding up and slowing down.

Brian Eno and Jon Hassel's album "Possible Musics" explores nature's rhythms extensively...they had Tabla players fill in the in between accents against differnt looping patterns. It was minimalist so it didn't venture as far as you seem to be going but nevertheless it has been done before.

In my improv jams, exact sub-divided time is almost never important to me (Bart slammed me pretty hard once on the drummer forum for that )...especially the stuff I was doing about 2 years ago...but lately I've been spending more time trying to improve my steady groove.

Good luck in what you're doing...sounds like a lot of fun and a very worthwhile exercise. I imagine the approach you are taking, consider how analytical you are about it...can only improve your timing...straight or not.

Hey..

Yea I was wrokgin with that.. using 32, 64 and 128th note rests.. it's HARD to read.. but that is i think how it will end up.. the problem is you have to ignore the note value it self and just see it as "a note", and use the rest following it to detrmine the value..

maybe it's a lsot cause, but I really think this are of rhythm can lead to some amazing stuff.. it's VERY hard to learn though.. I have to write out some thing, slow it down and speed it up, memorizing the 'feel' of it.. and since we are so used to hearing straight time, that makes it even harder..

Peace
Josiah

Hey..

It's notatble in it's own way, i've been working on that.. because I think it will work off a resolution of .01 seconds then I can work with it.. the notation is just slightly more complex, but definatly doable. It however requires the drummer or percussionist to know exactly the length of 1, .1, .01 seconds and be able to add them.. it's doable but harder.

My metronome is coming along too.. I think if you spent as much time with this system as you did with the nomral system, it would be just amazing.

Like I mentioed though, I think one of the cooler applications is having a normal groove and having a ride or snare pattern or something in this other music system..

Peace
Josiah

hey Josiah, bottom line  ....i truly encourage you to explore this as far as it takes you. very interesting idea!

I'd call that mission impossible.  While sometimes you can adjust feel by changing the pattern you're playing or your hand or foot postition or technique, in general there's no way for a human being to reliably adjust time by such small increments.  I used to think I had to play "behind the beat" if I wanted to be really good, and I screwed up my timing and self confidence as a result.  

I would concentrate on playing consistent time, with the feel you're naturally comfortable with.  What you suggest might be interesting as an experiment, but it would be no good for keeping a band together.  I can't see what you're describing as grooving, although it might be mathematically correct.

I think music needs to groove, whether it's swing, rock, Indian classical music-when it's on, it's in the pocket.  It can get way out there, but that pocket still has to be there.

As I mentioned, I'm speaking from personal experience on this.  As an experiment, maybe interesting.  In the real world of music, it wouldn't work.

You don't need to change the tempo, pulse or meter to accomplish what you're referring to. It can all be written out in notation some way or another. For example, play alternating 16th-note quintuplets and 16th-note septuplets. Alternate accents between every third and fourth note, then take out the unaccented notes. You might get a hernia trying to anticipate those notes at fast tempos.

The more you practice something, the more natural it is to hear things in even groupings, even if it's not always expressed in those terms. Musicians living in a Western paradigm are usually inclined to resolve an idea -- melodically, harmonically and rhythmically -- in a typical evenly-grouped fashion. Do we have the Austrians to thank for that? I don't know. Doesn't mean odd-grouped polyrhythms aren't understood, we're just more likely to write things out and analyze them until the math bores us, then we return to our comfort zones of music with 90-degree angles.

I would like to add .... I would hope that anyone exploring these various concepts has a strong since of standard time keeping skills ... FIRST.

This really seems like an advanced study for someone who has been playing for many many many years ... and has already mastered mathematically sound rhythms.

The reason I say all of this is that I can see a young player jumping all over this idea. I can't tell you how many times I've heard ... "oh, I want it to sound like that" ... when I point out that they are not keeping steady time or playing in the pocket. I don't want this quest to turn into some excuse for people who haven't spent the time perfecting their craft.

_{Sorry, but the teacher/educator in me just had to voice this.}

Hey..

Yea Gaddabout nailed it pretty good.

I agree with bart to an extent.. but if we always keep only mastering what we do know and spending years and years on it, then we've gone and wasted a huge amount of time not learning anything new.

I see a lot of guys, younger players, they may not have the "gadd" time feel but they aren't exactly interested in learning everything that has already been done. They (including I) are starting to see the limits in what is being done, and are wanting to expand on those.
While I think eveyrone has a profound amount of respect for all the greats.. we want to move past whatever point they are at into new uncharted waters.

I personally can't see the sense in spending 20 years playing the same system ALL the time, yea you may master that 1 thing.. you can keep great time. But thats it, thats all you can do.. I think the idea of perfecting our timing (an impossible task really) is just something we can always work on.
But it shouldn't be the center of studies on the drums (that is speaking to more advanced players).

Peace
Josiah

Peace
Josiah