Polyrhythms

[Liarspoker]

Does anyone here mess with polyrhythms?

You could spend a lifetime on this stuff.

I woke up early this morning and inspired by the Debussy thread I wrote and recorded this short piece.

My first foray into polyrhythms was 9 months ago it seems when I recorded this.

Man, I'll make the most of the time that I have left but I sure wish that I was younger

Post your polyrhythms below for us to enjoy!!

[Greywolf]

Having started my musical journey 6 decades ago as a drummer I've always loved them . Latin and North African percussion is filled with amazing ones. Playing guitar over them is a blast

Thanks for the post

[Bop Head]

In another life I played music that included a lot of polyrhythms, mostly 3:2 / 3:4.

(This album was released after I had left the band but includes rhythm and lead guitar tracks recorded by me. And we probably tried to win the Loudness War LOL.)

[marcwhy]

Dave Allen has a great book and other programs on rhythm:

This is fun:

[BWV]

Have a book I someday mean to read seriously on W African polyrhythms, but the basic takeaway is everything happening within a cycle - you see this with clave in Latam music. An interesting question is how much funk, swing and other styles have this feature. Is it useful, for example, to think about jazz not as syncopated, but polyrhythmic? definitions of syncopation center around placing accents on normally unaccented beats, but in swing the same 'unaccented' beats are nearly always accented, so is it really 'syncopation'?

[Christian Miller]

Have a book I someday mean to read seriously on W African polyrhythms, but the basic takeaway is everything happening within a cycle - you see this with clave in Latam music. An interesting question is how much funk, swing and other styles have this feature. Is it useful, for example, to think about jazz not as syncopated, but polyrhythmic? definitions of syncopation center around placing accents on normally unaccented beats, but in swing the same 'unaccented' beats are nearly always accented, so is it really 'syncopation'?

Bebop is definitely a 2-3 clave. Earlier jazz too

Also there’s a Bembe clave at slower tempos, superimposed 6/8

The syncopations are baked in to the cycle as you say. There’s an interplay between lag, upbeat synch, downbeat swing, dot length, straight on swing, quarter, odd groupings and half note triplets and so on. You can be super playful within that, provided there’s some reference point for it.

I do find the way a lot of young modern players are taught (esp in London) they tend to see swing as an excuse for ‘mathematical polyrhythmic farting around’ and ‘interactivity’… So it becomes a sort of abstract non-feel. This can be cool, but I’m not so into it for straight ahead stuff which I really see
as groove music. Maybe I’m set in my ways…

When they play latin feels it’s always a different story, they do that stuff much less for some reason.

whereas in fact swing historically is closely related to other African diaspora rhythms and has some common features.

Probably I’m one of them old fart jazz musicians who complains about the younger players not doing it right lol. Just let me play this old ballad, guys. Just a Spang-a-Lang for ole Miller lol

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[ccroft]

Okazaki has spent some time on polyrhythm. Geek alert: he starts explaining what he's doing around 2 min in.