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+--- Thread: [Music] Ow...my brain hurts... (/showthread.php?tid=10400)
[Music] Ow...my brain hurts... - HoagieOfDoom - 05-12-2010
So I've been recently tooling around with my music software, mostly trying to get a feel for composing and mixing drum beats as an on-again, off-again project. Not too long ago this one particular rhythm got stuck in my head until I had no choice but to program it out. So I pull up Reason, drop in a drum machine and manually sequence the kick drum leaving everything else out for the time being. Now, the sequence grid defaults to 4/4 and after finishing the beat I realize that it doesn't line up with the grids. At all.
"The hell?" I thought. I'd been pretty sure that it wasn't in too weird a beat, but then I shrugged. The sequencer has a box to input the time signature for a given piece, so I navigated to that and tried 3/4.
Not even close.
7/8?
Closer, but still off by a bit.
5/8?
Way off.
2/3?
Uh-uh.
After several attempts with more and more esoteric and odd time signatures, the closest one that I had of the bunch was 7/8, so I pulled that back up and stared at the grid lines for a minute. On a lark, I doubled the numerator and that got me real close. After a little bit a fiddling I finally got to the true time signature of the piece.
15/8.
I believe my exact reaction was "Abuhwuhhuh?" and then I got a headache from trying to think about it too much.
- Foxboy - 05-12-2010
That's not really all that weird. Exotic, maybe. I'm pretty sure that there are some musicians working in electronica that have weirder.
Oh, that 15/8 can be written as 5/4 with triplets if that helps you any.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
- HoagieOfDoom - 05-12-2010
It was more the surprise than anything that got me. Even after years of being a musician, time signatures are still something I grapple with and never consciously think about whenever I play. So to see something I program out come as, what is to me, a really, really odd time signature was a bit of a shock to the head.
5/4 with triplets, huh? I'll take a look, thanks!