Messing up timing deliberately

Isis

Since my playing has come to a grinding halt the past couple of months it gave me some time to reflect on the.........well.......experimental side of music. I think Tosin Abasi and Tool manages to pull this off quite spectacularly. So this got me wondering, to what limits music can be pushed whilst still remaining something that makes you go "That's wicked, wish I thought of that" instead of "Sounds like a trip to the dentist".

One of the ideas I'm toying around with involves deliberately messing up the time shifts within a song. I reckon a solo or guitar part that goes out of beat and syncs up again to create tonal bliss might sound pretty cool if done right. The contrast might make for something special when it finally comes back into sync. I've noticed many of the metalcore bands use contrast to create those epic clean choruses by following frantic guitar and double bass with a sudden slow tempo and clean chorus.

Do any of you know of any bands or artists that deliberately play solos out of timing.

I've tried this with a simple guitar interlude thingy, but I can't seem to stay off the beat. It makes my head spin a bit. I'm just not good enough to play independently and in stark contrast to the beat of the song :'(

Warren

There are two people that really stand out for me in terms of their rhythmic phrasing (this sort of off-kilter, syncopated stuff you're talking about):

Robin Trower (Procol Harem)
John Frusciante (Chillis)

John in particular has written about how he's very interested in solos that speed up and slow down and mess around with the timing. And if you can pull off any of Robin Trower's phrasing, well, you're doing pretty damn well I reckon. He has such odd ways of grouping his notes, but it still sounds so cool. Will try find some vids at home.

Going back earlier: certain blues players have always had a syncopated style of playing, with odd note groupings and off-beat timing. SRV did this very well in his solos. Maybe revisiting the blues is a good way to start developing the technique?

Malkav

Isis wrote: I think Tosin Abasi and Tool manages to pull this off quite spectacularly. So this got me wondering, to what limits music can be pushed whilst still remaining something that makes you go "That's wicked, wish I thought of that" instead of "Sounds like a trip to the dentist".

In the case of Tool you're talking about odd time signatures, in the case of Animals As Leaders you're talking about polyrhythms. Neither play "out of time" they're all very much within a context.

For clarification which AAL song would you be talking about?

Isis wrote: Do any of you know of any bands or artists that deliberately play solos out of timing.

I'd say Frank Zappa is probably the only person I know of who does this deliberately, most other people just use groupings that still make musical sense on closer inspection. There are others but they probably just have bad technique, Zappa most likely knew exactly what he was up to.

Averatu

Listening to 'Aphex Twin' as I type, talk about messing up the beat. I'd think its rather the signature than playing off beat. Its common in metal for the drummer to at times play triplets while the band plays a standard 4, which can to me sound like a big mess if not executed properly. Also, how do you reproduce 'of beat' playing, or would that just be a swing?

Bob-Dubery

Music is made interesting by tension and the release of tension and by surprise. This is why the syncopation that Warren talks about can be effective - the notes and especially the stressed notes don't come quite when we expect them. They're a little early and that surprise keeps the brain engaged and interested.

To me, as a listener who doesn't have a lot of formal theoretical music training, it seems to me that you can have tension and surprise etc but not too much of it - otherwise the perceived structure of the music vanishes and it's not music anymore - and you can have it at some times and not others. You can try to superimpose time signatures (Led Zeppelin do it on "Black Dog") but it all has to resolve before too long (Led Zepplin do it on "Black Dog" ?) or else the listener may experience it as jarring or just plain "meh" and switch off. Same with tonally sophisticated/wierd things - you have to resolve at some point or the "music" (if it is still music at that point) doesn't make sense any more.

I think that often what we perceive as being an altered time signature is actually just very clever (perhaps instinctive) manipulation of things that happen within a bar or measure of music. It still all has to "come home" at some point.

Now... I do know that some people seem to be able to understand, even enjoy more "surprise" and "tension" than I can. I recall some years ago watching John Zorn and David Sanborn (who usually doesn't go down this particular musical route) engaging in some "free improvisation" on some TV show. It seemed to me to have abandoned any concept of tonality or time signature or tempo or anything. Very quickly, for me, it stopped having any kind of form that I could latch on to and I briefly considered Frank Zappa's observation that some modern jazz "sounds like geese honking" and then changed channels.

It may be
a) that some brains are wired differently to others and can take more stretching of structure
b) that some folk have a deeper understanding of musical theory and thus a deeper or more sophisticated appreciation of unusual musical structures
c) the Emperor's new clothes.

I can't say - and I'm biased anyway.

The thing is to do these sort of things smoothly so it's interesting but not jarring. I remember an entry I put in for a GFSA competition which was in 4/4 but I slipped in a bar of 5/4 at one point. I didn't understand what I'd done. I knew that something had just happened. Pete M and Stratisfear - who have far greater musical knowledge than I do - spotted what had happened. I just knew that something interesting had just gone on - and I think that's the effect that you want to aim for.

Try listening to some Nick Drake. He had some unusual harmonic things going on in his music, and did occasionally play games with time signatures, but it's all done so smoothly and cleverly (and perhaps instinctively rather than conciously) that the listener can enjoy it and be stimulated by it without actually having to count the beats in a bar or think "oohhh.... there was a 2nd in that chord". Drake got it right - it was interesting, satisfying, intriguing but never jarring.

In folk music (especially cajun styles) you often get a timing change in a song for effect. Again if it's handled deftly it interests the listener but doesn't bother them. It's a fine line.

I don't think music should REQUIRE analysis for enjoyment. You might say "what just happened there" and go and figure it out, but that should be because it struck you in the first place. If it HAS to be analysed then I think it's missed the point.

Isis

I was actually referring to Tool and Tosin Abasi as musicians who push the envelope in a direction I find appealing and not so much as examples of messing around with time signatures that don't gel well.

I've noticed that as soon as soon as the various parts stop being on the same page as far as timing goes I become quite disorientated as my brain is trying to make sense of the stuff going on. I haven't been able to do this "tastefully" as of yet. It sounds like rubbish when I try it.

The guitar part at 1:29 is suppose to attempt this but it sounds stupid to me. I think it captures what I'm trying to do but this example falls in the dentist category.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22891804/liedjiekieweird.mp3

Isis

I do reckon some valid points are being raised here. Bob, I do agree with you in that music should first and foremost be something that moves you in some way. What I'm trying to do is figure out how my perception of parts gets influenced by what goes on in the background or what came before or after a specific part.

One of my favorite solos can be found in a song called Floods by Pantera. Dimebag Darrell himself said that it's actually the bass track that creates that specific ambiance that makes the solo sound the way it does.

I'm trying to find my own "Honey tastes sweeter when eaten after coffee beans" principle as applied to music.

Jack-Flash-Jr

Take a listen to traditional Japanese music for unresolving music... holy cow. As for honey after coffee, try some Faith No More as well...

Svengali

American avant garde classical composer, Charles Ives for one was smitten with the idea of, let's call it 'out of phase' music. Many years later other composers followed suit and came up with aleatory music. Music that happened by chance. Their scores would have directions such as; play the highest note possable given to twenty different violinists or have different groups of instruments repeat sections of varying lenghts for set amounts of seconds, differing for each group or have individuals improvise by playing a group of notes in random order, repeatedly, etc.
I like what Ives did better.
He would superimpose different melodies on top of each other. He'd have for instance the strings play something in a modern classical style while the brass starts to play a marching band piece and maybe an organ would join in with a hymn. (These were forms of music that were influential in his youth in New England.)
The different parts would all be written out in note vallues that are at odds with each other, for instance the modern string bit would be in 5/4 with a quatrer note and eighth note movement. The marching band would be in polyrhythms, maybe 3 against 2 with uneven accents, and the hymn would be in dotted quarter notes in a 9/8 time signiture.
Ives' genius lay in the way all these elliments remained intelligable which often resulted in an impression of musics experienced in real time, that is to say, the listener feels like he's passing by a church while there's a marching parade approaching. This often has a sentimental effect as Ives also incorporates well known hymn melodies.
(He also dabbled with the effect of having extra musicians offstage and (unrelated to this topic) quartertone music. Way ahead of his time.
Another device he used was polyrhythms whithin polyrhythms.
All this makes some of his music quite challenging for the performer. Today it is easier to experiment with the results of such rhytmic complexities with the aid of computer technology.
I have experimented on occasion with written out ritardandi aginst written out accelerandi. The proof of course is in the pudding and cleverness per se is not that impressive...

Averatu

Jack Flash Jr wrote: Take a listen to traditional Japanese music for unresolving music... holy cow. As for honey after coffee, try some Faith No More as well...

Or try Mr Bungle for that matter.

AlanRatcliffe

Solo-wise, Zappa was the king of rhythmic oddity. Interestingly enough, while his compositions were usually structured and orchestrated to the nth degree, his solos were usually completely improvised - and he seemed to naturally play polyrhythms and odd groupings. The Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar trilogy (i]Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar[/i], Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar Again and The Return of the Son of Shut Up and Play Yer Guitaris a good place to hear this kind of stuff. There is also a CD just called Guitar, which is good.

I like how King Crimson (the mid-80s version) play with timing, specifically some of the interlocked guitar parts, which would often be the same phrase in two different time signatures (Discipline, Three of a Perfect Pair, etc.).

Mr Bungle are another great example.

Jack-Flash-Jr

All of Mike Patton's projects are off kilter in the same way but not all work that well... Phantomas plays with dissonance but I find it hard to listen to... Tomahawk I got to see live and Patton conducts the band in a similar fashion to Svengali's description of Ives. When the resolve comes it's orgasmic, 9 times out of 10.
I think training oneself out of rhythmic habits is a great idea... it's a good way out of a rut for sure.