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.
"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.