Dumbass.
Accents have little to do with time sigs.
You keep digging a deeper hole for yourself.
Go!
Tell me how could you even go about accenting a song in same way in 4/4 and 2/2 unless 1 and 2 were accented the same as 3 and 4?
I don’t do bridges.
You quoted yourself again.
IANAM, but …
To return to the OP – a good way to learn some stuff about rhythm would be to take tap dancing. It will definitely get you tuned into rhythm in a way nothing else quite does.
As far as the stuff on time signatures is concerned – that seems more like music theory to me. Is there a college near you where you could sign up for a class in Intro to? I took that as an undergrad and it was extremely cool, just as someone who enjoys listening to music.
[Official Moderator Warning]This is NOT The BBQ Pit. I count eight times you tossed out insults in this thread, and that’s eight times too many. Knock it off.[/Official Moderator Warning]
dnooman, what’s wrong with 12/8?
If someone tells me a song is in 12/8 I can quickly get an idea what the feel would be like. I see it as a four beat bar with each beat having a triplet feel. I wouldn’t get that if they said 6/4. I don’t see the necessity of boiling a time signature down to it’s lowest common denonator. Nor do I see 12/8 as an odd time signature.
Anyway, NAF doesn’t have a lot of money, so ballroom dancing and tap dancing are out. I started out with sticks and a pad, a metronome, the rudiments, the elementary school music teacher who was a drum & bugle corps guy, and I was off. The rudiments are especially important because they reinforce independance and equality between your left and right hands and this can only be a good thing for your guitar playing.
There are probably more concise pages of rudiments than this one, but here you are:
I may be a dumbass too, but I’m also a music major, and 12/8 and 6/4 are definitely not the same thing. Jebus H. Christ is right about 12/8 being a compound time signature. If I were reading music in 12/8, I would (unless otherwise directed) count it in four groups of three eighth notes. I would count 6/4 as six quarter notes. Really not the same thing.
Sure, you can put music in 12/8 into 6/4 and have all the notes fit, but the musicians will be really confused if it’s still meant to be counted like 12/8. Time signatures aren’t necessarily simpler if the numbers are smaller. It’s not just a fraction; the top and bottom numbers actually mean something, as I’m sure dnooman knows. (For those who don’t know, the top number is the number of beats in each measure, and the bottom number is what sort of note equals one beat. In compound time signatures like 6/8 or 12/8, the beats are usually counted in groups of three eighth notes, where in simple time signatures like 4/4, they are counted in groups of two eighth notes.)
Which would make it 3/2.
[/nitpick]
Since you’re in LA, NAF1138, you might be able to find some sort of drumming group (usually hand drums) or a teacher that does clinics where you can get some instruction but you don’t have to pay an arm and a leg.
I see now you probably said this response to mojave66’s post and weren’t implying 12/8 was an odd time signature.
Apologies for my angry drunken assery. I should have clarified the meaning of the time signature (thanks ErinPuff).
Why are so many songs in 1/1?
This post is amazing.
Everyone listen to erinpuff!, she nailed it, more less
At the university I attend we recently did a reading session for the arranging class…there was some differences between the way the arranger wrote this particular melody and how it felt naturally…when we read thought with me thinking in the written 6/8 feel in mind i couldn’t wrap my head around it…as a 4th year percussion major at the time felt pretty dumb it just seemed crazy…we did one more read through where i went at it thinking about 3/4 and it worked beautifully…granted the arranger insisted that this arrangement worked in 6/8…but that’s another story
the moral of the story 6/8 and 3/4 same notes totally different feel. It ain’t the same
Erinpuff where and what do you study?
Grab a drum and go play somewhere, anywhere. Find other drummers and hang out with them. The more you do, the more you’ll know; getting that essential feel and timekeeping down will help you whatever else you play.
Played for a Brazilian samba outfit once; they made every musician play drums for hours before they let you pick up your horn. The beat was in your body; it was more than counted, it was felt like your heart beat. The ensemble was amazingly tight and the groove was incredible. I recommend this to everyone, it’s also very cool.
A 12/8, 6/4, and 3/2 will all have the same total note value (namely a dotted whole note) per measure, but will have totally different feels.
12/8 is going to sound like 4/4, except instead of each beat being divided in two, it’ll be divided in three.
4/4 = ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR and
12/8 = ONE two three FOUR five six SEVEN eight nine TEN eleven twelve, where the 1, 4, 7, and 10 sound like the 1, 2, 3, and 4 of a typical 4/4 measure. Your big beats are actually dotted quarters here.
6/4 is going to sound more or less like 6/8: ONE two three FOUR five six, except you’re likely to divide up those beats more in 6/4: ONE and two and three and FOUR and five and six and. Your big beats are dotted half notes.
3/2 is very simple: ONE and TWO and THREE and. Your big beats are half notes.
I hope that helps a little.
4/4 has four beats to a bar.
12/8 has four beats to a bar.
In fact, there are tons of pieces that are ostensibly in 4/4, but since each beat is swung with a triplet feel, it comes out de facto 12/8. There is literally no difference between 12/8 and a 4/4 where each beat becomes a triplet.
One good example of this is the second movement Adagio cantabile from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C Minor, op. 13. It starts out in a plain 2/4, where each of the two beats in the bar is subdivided into four sixteenth notes. In the middle section, each pair of sixteenth notes is converted into a triplet: three notes in the space of two. So the rhythm of each bar from then on uses four of these sixteenth-note triplets; in effect, the meter has gone from 2/4 to 12/16, all without altering the melody or harmony of the main theme one bit. It’s a simple experiment in polyrhythm: a 2/4 melody overlying a 12/16 rhythmic accompaniment.
Play a 4/4 piece with a strictly duple division of the beats, like the drums in an Indian war dance, and it is just 4/4 and that’s that. But play your 4/4 piece with a tripleted feel, like the 1950s rock style imitated by the Beatles in “Oh! Darling,” and that is 12/8.
I study music composition and flute at Moravian College (in Pennsylvania).
Ya know, I start a topic expecting to get my usual 3-4 replies, and I come back to it a couple of days later and there is a full fledged flame war right in the center. I am not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed. (Or neither. Neither is probably the way to go.)
I should mention, I guess, that I do have some formal musical training. So I have got the very basics of the rhythm thing down. Also, I have played in a band for years now so I understand (I hope) the elements that tap dancing and ballroom dancing would bring.
But those are good ideas anyway, when I get the time I will definitely take a ballroom dancing class, sounds fun and I had never thought of it before. Plus, I could use the exercise.
My problem has been, I suppose, that being a guitarist for the last 12 years or so, and having a fairly good natural sense of rhythm, I always just ignored the rhythm theory portions of the music classes because I wanted to learn about chords and harmonies etc. I am getting to the point now where I am really wishing I hadn’t, because (like I said) I think my playing lacks a certain rhythmic oomf. And little things like not knowing that my song was in 12/8 because of the triplet swing in it (and I am just going to trust my drummer that it WAS in 12/8) are a tad…embarrassing when you have played as long as I have. It was actually that conversation that prompted this thread. It made me realize that I need to go back and bone up on my rhythm theory, but I wasn’t sure how. I am not certain that just reading a book will really get it in me.
So, thanks for the advice. I am going to pick up some sticks (and if they are not too expensive) a practice pad, and see what I can do about tracking down a drum group that will let me tag along and screw them up for a while. (Per **Tuba **and Mack’s suggestions)
If anyone has ideas on specific theory books I should check out shoot. Also let me know if you think that the whole self study thing will be a complete waste of my time. I don’t want to pay for lessons, and I REALLY don’t want to take another intro to music class (it would be my third), but I will if there isn’t another (cheaper) way. (I get the feeling that most of the music majors at the local JC’s feel the same way I did about rhythm theory, the only classes that seem to tech it are the intro classes.)
I want to keep pushing my playing forward and right now this is the area that is consistently drawing my interest. You guys have given me some great ideas, and the…discussion of 12/8 time was fascinating.
Just my two cents here.
Books can be useful, but the best is in the doing, especially in terms of something like this.
If you’re looking for drummers to hang with you might also consider groups that mix percussion with martial arts like Capoeria or Tiger Drumming.
Hope this helps.
Jenny