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It's a short bit of Hell's Kitchen from Dream Theater. I'm writing down what he's playing and want to get the rythm exactly right. Now I stumbled upon this bit where the rythm is really weird, and I'm really bad at these things.

At the start of the sound bite you hear a D ringing which was played on the first beat of the (4/4) measure. Sorry that it's slightly cut off at the start.




After the 1st beat of the 3rd measure, somewhere right before the 4th beat he plays this quick riff. But somehow the beats seem to shift slightly there. As if they just cut out a sixteenth count or something. Listening to the music I find it impossible to continue counting within a strict 4/4 measure, but maybe that's only because Mike Portnoy (the drummer) does something weird and it's actually all very neat in the end, it just confuses the hell out of me.

Its really tough to get precise rhythm down on tab....

yes I know i'm writing down notes but I have no idea how to do that on my PC :icon32:

edit:
that's also why I'm writing it down. As an excersise but also because on the internet there's only tabs to be found.

you should listen to spoonman by soundgarden - has a (somewhat) similar "irregularity"

been over a decade since i studied music, and i did so under the british system so i think in terms of bars - dunno what measures are.

what i'm hearing is that the regular rhythm has four sets of "triplet" beats (for a total of 12), and then in the transitional bar you only get 10/12 beats


it's like switching gears really fast.

It's something like this though My tabbing is all screwy, but its 4/4 timing with the 12 being the first beat, and 4 dash (-) marks being one beat.

i have no idea how to read that format. I studied piano mainly and music theory - never learned percussion or guitar notation.

What I can say for sure is that although it sounds neat in the end, there is an accounting error with respect to the 4/4 - that's because the bar in question isnt' a 4/4 bar.

1/6th of the bar has been cropped and the next bar starts immediately after that.

so it goes from 12/12 to 10/12 and then back to 12/12

(though i'm not sure if you're supposed to notate it as 12/12 or whatever)

[xeno]Julios wrote:been over a decade since i studied music, and i did so under the british system so i think in terms of bars - dunno what measures are.

Um yes a measure is a bar. Not sure if I use the wrong terminology when I use "measure" (english not being my native language) or maybe that's what americans call it

we had this stupid terminology - crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, etc.

[xeno]Julios wrote:i have no idea how to read that format. I studied piano mainly and music theory - never learned percussion or guitar notation.

What I can say for sure is that although it sounds neat in the end, there is an accounting error with respect to the 4/4 - that's because the bar in question isnt' a 4/4 bar.

1/6th of the bar has been cropped and the next bar starts immediately after that.

so it goes from 12/12 to 10/12 and then back to 12/12

(though i'm not sure if you're supposed to notate it as 12/12 or whatever)

Damn I thought it wasn't 4/4 (would be too easy for Dream Theater ofcourse ) but it worked for the first part so I just took it as 4/4 and went with it to see where I would end up.

12/12 notation could technically be correct. The first 12 would mean that there's 12 beats in a single measure/bar/whatever. The second 12 would mean that a 12th note counts as 1. So 6/8 would mean that there's six 8th notes in a single measure/bar/whatever.

A 12th note is kinda odd though.

[xeno]Julios wrote:we had this stupid terminology - crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, etc.

Them bloody wayward english

Knowing DT, they probably did something fucked up like have a 7:4 polyrhythm with the first 2 notes as rests so you get some weird ass little odd-time lick right before the start of bar 4. Actually it sounds more like it's just a 4/4 bar + whatever duration a triplet of 16th notes would add. Something like 18/16. DT does weird crap like that all over the place.

The bar isn't getting cropped, it's getting extended, because Portnoy does a snare/cymbal crash right at the end of the quick lick, which would signify a new measure/bar, especially since all the other bars started with a snare hit as well.

Hmm. Just checked PTA and apparently the first few bars are 12/8, then it switches to 10/8 for the weird lick. So I guess you guys were right, mostly.

this reminds me of a DVD I've got by Mike Portnoy on which he counts through Dance of Eternity. It's really amazing how complex that song is.

riddla wrote:but it would help if you uploaded the whole phrase

not the entire song but the entire segment of the song the previous bit comes from:
download

the bit I originally uploaded comes at around 0:37

I don't know exactly how DT notated it but basically there's a bar of 4 in the middle,

Here's the options:

12/8, 12/8, '4/8', 12/8, 12/8 etc

6/8, 6/8, 6/8, 6/8, '4/8' , 6/8/, 6/8, etc

3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, '4/8' , 3/8, etc

3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, '4/4' , 3/4, etc


Take your pick, they all work

Btw, there is no such thing as a 12th note.

DRuM wrote:I don't know exactly how DT notated it but basically there's a bar of 4 in the middle,

Here's the options:

12/8, 12/8, '4/8', 12/8, 12/8 etc

6/8, 6/8, 6/8, 6/8, '4/8' , 6/8/, 6/8, etc

3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, 3/8, '4/8' , 3/8, etc

3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, 3/4, '4/4' , 3/4, etc


Take your pick, they all work

Btw, there is no such thing as a 12th note.

There isn't? What about an 8th note triplet?

An 1/8th note triplet is made up of three 1/8th notes.

While there are twelve 1/8th notes in 12/8, or six 1/8th notes in 6/8, you can say each note in 12/8 is a 1/12th of the notes. In 6/8 each note is a 1/6th of the notes, but that doesn't mean they're 1/6th notes or 1/12th notes. They're still 1/8th notes. Because in compound time ( ie 3/8, 6/8, 9/8, 12/8) each group of three notes is equal to a dotted 1/4 note. A 1/4 note equals two 1/8th notes and a dot in front of the 1/4 note increases it's value by half as much again, ie, three 1/8th notes.

Also, compound time is technically not triplets. Triplets are a group of three 1/8th notes equal to one 1/4 note, but not dotted. Confusing innit !

It's not confusing. I know all that shit. One 8th note that is within a triplet, but singled out, is a 12th note.

mrd wrote:It's not confusing. I know all that shit. One 8th note that is within a triplet, but singled out, is a 12th note.

You know all that shit huh? How the fuck can one 1/8th note from a triplet be a 1/12th note. I'm telling you, there is no such thing as a 1/12th note. One 1/8th note singled out is surprisingly, an 1/8th note!

riddla wrote:

mrd wrote:I know all that shit. One 8th note that is within a triplet, but singled out, is a 12th note.

apparently, you dont know.

shut your trap fagboy.

@drum: i know it's incorrect to CALL it a 12th note, but rhythmically speaking, its a 12th note.

if we ignore notational and theoretical convention, and just examine it from an objective perspective, you can easily see how one could divide up the rhythm into twelfths.

first off, there's a clear overarching 4 beat framework (or a 2 beat, depending on how you divide it up).

Now within each of the 4 "beats", there are 3 "sub-beats" - i guess this is sort of compound triplets thingie or whatever - forget about terminology for now.

So we have 12 sub-beats within each "measure" - or alternatively, 6 sub-beats (if we divide it into a 2 beat framework).

Now the important point here is that the amount by which the critical measure/bar is truncated by is 2 twelfths (1/6) of the 4 beat framework (or 2 sixths (1/3) of the 2 beat framework).

You can verify this by counting

Starting at the 2 second mark of the sample, count the sub beats (the "triplets"):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | etc.

or, for a 2 beat framework:

1 2 3 4 5 6 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 | etc.

You could even bastardize it into a 3 beat framework, in which case 2/3 of the bar would be truncated:

1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3| 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3| etc.


Do we all agree on this?

What he's referring to as a 12th note is basically an 8th note with a dot behind it. People are confusing 1/12th of a measure with 12th notes

Well since this entire thread was started over rhythmic issues, not what notes are called, I think it'd be safe to called it a 12th note or to say we're counting in beats of 12. Just because you didn't learn it in music class doesn't mean it ain't there. You have to be able to subdivide shit up more complex than 4/4 or 6/8 or something. Especially if you get into really fucked up polyrhythms or even nested polyrhythms. I guess what I meant up there was a 12th note beat, since drum was doing all this beat subdivision crap, like the drummer he is.

Eraser wrote:What he's referring to as a 12th note is basically an 8th note with a dot behind it. People are confusing 1/12th of a measure with 12th notes

Isn't that just a dotted 8th?