Looking at More Complex Polyrhythms - Music Theory Crash Course
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- Опубліковано 5 чер 2024
- So in the last video I gave a short introduction to polyrhythms and mostly talked about 2 against 3 and 3 against 4. But while I was working on that video I was trying to come up with different ways to visualize the polyrhythms besides just using the music notation. After looking back at the first video I did, I think I should share these other visualizations with you because they might help someone understand what a polyrhythm is besides just looking at one on sheet music.
Polyrhythms are based on the concept that any note can be broken down into any number of smaller notes - musicians call this subdividing or subdivisions. The idea is that you can take any note and divide it equally into 2 parts, 3 parts, 4 parts, into infinity. And a polyrhythm is created when you play two different subdivisions at the same time. My first idea was to use shapes and in the video we look at a few examples using this method. My next idea was to use a simple rectangle, then for however many subdivisions there are, divide the rectangle evenly. We listen to some examples of this in the video as well as combining polyrhythms into poly-polyrhythms? Not sure what to call it, but you'll see what I'm talking about at the end of the video.
I hope this gives you another way to think about polyrhythms and maybe some ideas about how you can practice polyrhythms on your own. Thank you for watching. If you would like to support this channel please check out the Patreon link in the description.
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So basically the more polyrhythms we stack, the closer we get to the sound of Mr Krabs walking sound
who would have thought that Mr Krabs walked in polyrhythms? 😂 9:14
#facts
Funniest comment I've read in a long time 😂😂😂
Ultimate prog master
Mr Krabs type beat
Ultimately one must be able to feel the musicality of a polyrhythm for it to be valid. West African drumming makes much use of 6 against 4 to produce tightly interwoven patterns that are the basis for dance and song. People native to the cultures in that region understand these rhythms with ease and fluency. I needed extramusical analogies to comprehend them, including transcriptions in western rhythm notation. It took a little woodshedding on my own before it clicked, but once there I never had to think about it again. We use polyrhythms all the time without knowing it in our everyday speech.
This is very interesting. I knew West Africa tribes but also Native American tribes used a lot of complex rythms during ceremonies and now I wonder if this knowledge did not spread out to Detroit for the "birth" of electronic music.
@@Sqlut -- such direct connections are unlikely if we're talking about the latter half of the 20th century. It is interesting to note what African musical characteristics did remain in the African American culture that developed and thrived more or less independently of the wider Euro-American culture of North America. And certainly, an emphasis on the lively and sensual physicality of dance is one of those characteristics. And rhythms such as the shuffle are resultant, if in a subtle fashion, to a polyrhythmic approach. Also, I would argue that the sort of wild abandon of solo and heterophonic vocalizing that emerges in certain predominantly Black church services and early "Race Music" recordings of Rock 'n Roll, heard against a steady pulse marked out by percussion instruments, one finds polyrhythms manifesting in higher subdivisions of the metric pulse. Such phenomena emerge in a subliminal mind frame and are uniquely associated with the North American Black subculture of which the music played in urban dance clubs is certainly a part.
6:4 polyrhythms are the same as 2:3?
For those wondering what a 6:4 / 3:2 polyrhythm sounds like, just think african bell carol
Wtf
1:35 Nitpick: "A polyrhythm is created when you play two different subdivisions _which aren't multiples of one another_ at the same time"
3 against 6, 2 against 4, or 3 against 12 are not polyrhythms for instance (for each, the second rhythm fits into the first).
Indeed, that's why 2:3:4 in his example is the same thing as 3:4
Shapes would work better if they had a sweeping line like a clock, and when the line intersects a corner, a sound plays. So for 3:4, it would be like a clock with a triangle pointing to 12, 4, and 8, and a square pointing to 12, 3, 6, and 9.
very interesting
Kind of disappointed this isn't where he went with it. It seemed like the obvious next step to me
and have them concentric so you sweep with the same arm.
The only issue with this idea is the shapes are not circles, so the sides won't line up with a uniform movement around a given "clock path." In this way, the line that sweeps in a circle will cause the actual contact point with the given shape to change velocity along the shape to keep in time with the circular motion in a non-circular path. But I agree this whole idea does give a more promising way to visualize and compare rhythms.
@@surikoshiro140 That's not the point of this. We're using regular polygons. This means their vertices will be spaced regularly around the circle (clock as OP said) and that's what we care about. Not the concentration of points representing the edges of the shapes along the circle (e.g. a triangle would concentrate around 12, 4, & 8, but we only care about the 3 vertices at 12, 4, & 8).
In other words, this takes the rectangle visual and curves it around into a circle. The line is just rotating around the circle about its center like a radius and therefore a revolution around any of the rectangles (shapes in OP's case) takes the same amount of time as any other because they're both just a 2π rotation by the same line.
2:3:4 is effectively the same as 3:4 since 4 is a subdivision of 2. That is, it doesn't add any unique syncopation - although using different voices for different subdivisions may provide some variation.
This is exactly what I was thinking. Same with 6 and 3
Came here to say this.
Same with any number & its exponents...I think... The lower values become redundant. Like (1:)2:4:8:16 etc. 3:9:27:51, but also 3:6:12:24. It's the whole point, to put 2 or more numbers that don't divide by 2 & itself in juxtaposition.
I might be a bit wrong somewhere, I'm not thinking this particularly well through lel
no, you're right. Properly phrased: when you have a poly-polyrhythm with components n and m and m is a factor of n, then all beats of m will also be beats of n, so adding or removing the m-subdivision won't change anything
@@decare696 Poorly phrased again. When N and M share factors this appears. 6-4 is just two times the 3-2 rhythm because two is a shared factor.
Edit: Dan seems actually spot on except the typo of exponent instead of multiple.
@@AP-dc1ks Thanks, good to know. It's because I was thinking of 2^n specifically, then 3^n - got myself mixed up - you're right, multiple is sufficient, making exponents redundant. Quite aptly so. Also, it's been like 19yrs since I had my last lesson in maths; I can't remember anything properly...
3:30 fat beat. Already vibing
3:48: More oontz-oontz-oontz in this one. Just needs a few tss-tss-tss-tss!
All you had to do to make the shape one work better is stipulate that every shape has the same perimeter. The dot would move at a constant speed then.
I also visualized it inside of a circle, that could help using a rotating radius
If you inscribe them in a circle you can have the point go around the circle and click whenever it hits a point
I was imagining this, then unrolling the shape on screen into a line with a point where each corner was. Stack two of these lines on top of each other and draw some stems and you're basically just re-creating the staff, combining the two concepts.
@@RagingViperGamer yes, it's constant angular velocity (but not linear velocity) - would work well
I don't usually comment on videos, but I wanted to thank you for all your hard work in teaching us these things. Your videos are a refreshing way to learn and you explain things really well. Thank you.
Thank you so much. That means a lot to me.
@@Oddquartet for real tho, if you search "polyrhythm" on youtube and scroll through the thumbnails, your way of explaining it is out of the box AND visually accurate, I knew you'd explain it better BEFORE even clicking on it, and almost did not need to see the video to understand because the thumbnail is also damn good at explaining the concept
i think so. the out-of-the-box explanation in this video, it was helpful for me to understand the polyrhythm more accurately and more detail. although it's a video from a year ago, still VERY helpful.
This is much better than the previous video.
The 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 sounds like flamenco indeed.
Thank you for your hard work.
Nice observation!
Mr krabs walkin
I would have liked to hear a primes only series: 1,2,3,5,7
As someone who plays rhythm games, this is a really good and easy to follow visualization of polyrhythms! I also loved how you you used POLYgons to visualize POLYrhythm :P
"poly" means more than one, so of course polygons would visualise a polyrhythm, it wouldn't work any other way.
Yo what rhythm games do you play? Asking as a fellow rhythm gamer myself.
Honestly I used to hate OSU but at least it's not FNF...
Right?? Plz don't tell me u play FNF
@@jugemujugemugokonosurikire4735 sorry for late response - Main rhythm game I play is Cytoid, I also play Groove Coaster, Project Diva, Takio, and Rotaeno
@@mr.nazareth4501 fnf is just osu mania but worse anyway
i'm not op but i usually play mania
- Tool has entered the chat -
- Meshuggah welcomes Tool-
Omg someone made a Tool joke in a video about music theory xD
gross
Gojira liked "- Took has entered the chat -"
@@TheTylrBllmn uno reverse
9:14 "Mr Krabs has entered the chat"
The attention to detail in this video is amazing! I love how the highlighted part at 2:42 is playing louder in the left ear, which subconsciously helps you focus on it
One way to improve the "speed" issue of the shapes approach is to stack them concentrically. Then you could have a radar-style circular sweep, where each time the sweep hits a vertex it plays the sound.
Now imagine these polyrythms together with the dimensions of different sounds (horns, strings etc) and frequency for each 'hit'. This really shows complexity of music, and are the dimensions left in these visualizations compared to sheet music.
My god, the blend of graphic design, music theory and technology on this channel... I was wondering why I liked this video so much when I randomly stumbled on it. Now to binge on some of these other videos, great job!
I like how, the more subdevisions you add, the more it sounds like the 1 2 3 4 5 subdevision, just with a geiger counter ontop of it
Integer Becquerels
Love this. Great visualizations that make it easy to understand. Thanks for doing this. Subscribed.
This is an excellent visualization! I *can read music and still found this awesome! It was fun seeing and hearing your poly rhythms.
The best video on Polyrythms, hands down! so easy to understand and foolow. Thank you so much!
Cool exploration!
I'd like to see some visualizations of polyrhythm with third or fourth patterns triggered probabilistically based on the second or third pattern, respectively - or with pattern starting place occasionally "rotated" to a different time.
The divided rectangles are basically the same as notation though, its just inverted. With notes the beep occurs on the thing, with the rectangles the beep occurs on the little gaps between the things. But make the gaps bigger and round the rectangle and you get notation.
I think parallel lines of different lengths where a dot travels at the same speed from side to side couldve been a truely valuable other representation
I think it is very valuable to make the notes thinner and less round. Also the notes in the notation at the beginning of the video aren't aligned properly the way the rectangle divisions are (in the 4 against 3: fourth note at the bottom should come after third at the top, but looks like it's slightly earlier). I think this is because spatially separating e.g. into groups of 3 and 4 makes it easier to identify which rhythm you're dealing with, but it doesn't help visualize the rhythm.
Fantastic video! So simple...genius!
Killer vid as always!
This is like watching a video created by my thumbs about how I play kalimba. Polyrhythms sound so pretty on the kalimba 😻
James Tenney wrote a player piano roll on a similar concept, which was the harmonic series: the root note pulsed once a cycle, the octave pulsed twice, octave+5th pulsed three, etc. All the way up to 24 harmonics. Audibly, it produces these beautiful pitch cascades. You would've gotten something similar if you'd have kept going. (edit: the piece is named Spectral Canon).
Very beautiful video!
It changed my perception.
This makes understanding more complex polyrhythms so much easier!!
Thank you for all of this. The rectangles helped the most.
This is a very good visual representation of polyrhtyhms! I'm gonna draw this on my white board for my students! Great work!
Dude, that was AMAZING.. I am listening to Periphery with another understanding of the music right now after your vídeo. As an amateur musician, polyrhythms was always kinda of unreachabke and hi-level for me.. Thank you!
Brilliant execution!!
Very cool video. I’ve always visualized time like this but thought it was just me. Visualizing odd times like a Big Band leader or classical conductor using their wand to keep the time. It would be cool it you used different pitches for the different polyrhythms. Thank you for posting this
Nice visual! Thanks!
9:18 the striking sound just turns into popcorn cackles.
I first learned about Polyrhythms using the rectangle method. It helped me to see the gaps between each beat at a different rhythm; it widens by the difference of the two rhythms as it approaches the middle, then narrows again. I would count the length of the gap, and then sort of reverse-engineer the polyrhythm from there
Love the shapes! I think that marking horizontal lines across both shapes at each corner on one shape would help you to see the order of the beats.
If you want to hear a 1:2:3:4:5:6 at high frequency, then on a keyboard, play C3, C4, G4, C5, E5, and G5 at time same time. You've definitely heard this before, it's just major triad with some reinforcement. Adding a seventh term isn't accessible in 12-tone equal temperament scales, though, so it would maybe sound pretty different to ears that are used to western styles. I tried adding an A#5 to the above and it sounded a bit weird, and tuning it downward by ~30 cents actually did make it sound less tense to me, although I didn't have the precision to get it right on a 7x frequency relative to C3, so who knows. Maybe it wouldn't sound weird to people at all.
it's amazing how the pattern changes when you focus only one side and when you switch the focus. Good visualization, but I prefer a circle with a rotating ball.
I am a visual learner as well. The very last poly-poly-rhythm (7 to 1) reminded me of Spanish/Flamenco music. While the second to last (6) had an African beat to it. Hey that's my ear. Either way, I learned something!!! Thanks.
the shapes' marker will also travel at a constant speed if you make sure the shapes' circumferences are the same
or overlay both shapes and have a line go around like a clock, making sound whenever intersecting a corner
This is awesome, you laid this out simply & beautifully
I had a similar concept in my head after playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild and started imaging the green stamina meters as quarter note heads
Wow, this was a great explanation! I first realized polyrhythm when I was learning Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. In bar 5 is where you have a triplet against an 8th note.
Very intuitive approach to tackle polyrhythms. I now very clearly see why this can be very useful in writing.
(other than 3/16 rhythms in a 4/4 environment.... I overuse that, cuz... well I often make stuff (hard) Trance (& acid) stuff. And it is a mandatory rhythm there. Also, delays may only have a 3/16 delaytime. It objectively is the best delaytime in 4:4 though)
Edit: LOL, that 2nd visualization is basically like a step sequencer. That is more or less my default way of thinking of rhythms... As most music I have made in a digital environment. I did also play guitar, but that was done way more on feel. So no clear picture with it…
Thank you so much for the explanation, I’m a visual learner and starting to learn drums and polyrhythms are such a struggle and this really made it that much easier to understand 👌
If you're just starting out drumming, focus on regular patterns until you are solid as a rock. Polyrhythms will come naturally once you've mastered the basics.
@@mattd6085 thank you so much 🥺🙏
@@spicymcchicken2272 no probs, just remember the fundamental point of a drummer, to keep good time. Some of the world greats weren't polyrhythm masters but they were like human metronomes. A solid 4/4 beat will always sound better than a sloppy 15/8
Thanks for this great video!
This was very helpful!
I'm wondering now if I've used polyrythmns before and not noticed it (probably not). I always thought it was just a way to say "the drummers realllllly good", I knew polyrythmns were a thing but I could never discern them when I heard them in a song. This was an amazing visualisation, thank you for this
Brilliant, finally I got it
5:45 I thought of the exact same thing but also thought about pitch when you were talking about the two axis of sheet music
the multiple layers of rhythms reminded me of Ballet Folklórico México Danza. pretty cool.
Another visualization is stacking the shapes while aligning their centers. Higher subdivisions have a bigger inner radius than others. A rotating radial bar can track the passage of time. What's more, you can rotate an individual shape to change its phase relative to the others.
When certain the number of subdivisions begins to look like too much, you can use star shapes instead of regular polygons. Odd numbers may be difficult with star shapes though, but you can always just snub a point and/or pit to add a vertex. Of course, you'd have to readjust the angles so that all vertices are equiangular.
FWIW, I used graph paper to block out the sub-divisions - I put pitch info at the bottom of the set where you chose the pattern. I made up one master and copy it. Especially helpful if you're trying to pass a 7 over 3 line around the band.
You could have the perimeter of the shape be constant so the speed can be the same, but I agree the bar method is easier to see.
edit: or just use a circle with dots in rings. I think there is an app that does this.
If you ever come back to this, I have a suggestion that came to my mind. In the linear bar visualisation, you could change the colour of the current box when the click sounds and then fade back to the original colour while the indicator move through the box. I'm also am a visual learner myself, and I felt like that would have helped even more.
I like the rectangles method. I did an excel spreadsheet that looked like this a while back.
I think the whole shapes thing is great. The way you can make it uniform speed is to match the total perimeter of both shapes. Then, both dots can travel at the same speed and still get the polyrhythm concept spot-on with a more intuitive (in my opinion) derivation of the visual aid.
I think a circle is also a great candidate for understanding this concept. When you take the subdivisions and put them on a circle with a chosen point to signify the loop of the pulse, when you "unwrap" the circle into a line, it becomes very clear the rhythmic relation between the subdivisions. So much so that if you split each line segment the length of each line would perfectly correspond to the rhythmic ratios of the polyrhythm written on a single voice. For example, for 3/2 you would get two line segments of equal length in addition to two more that are half the length of the others.
3+4 sounds like some melody. 2 notes + 2 rythms = music! Awesome!
Good idea!
I think at this particular subject the distances should be equal to show equal time signature. Maybe the time marker dots could go on the outer circles of the two polygons instead of the sides?
Also if you want to use the height of notes for distinction I would recommend you to give the lower note to the polygon with less number of vertices.
I have heard all of these rhythms, and beaten out a few of them at hippy forest festivals and living room jam sessions back in the relative innocence of the 2090s, those really were some days…
R.I.P to my beautiful old 1950’s Mamba and all the other instruments that were lost to fire not long ago.
This is really cool. Maybe they used rectangles like this back in the days before computers to figure out polyrhythms.
Bueno vídeo bro, gracias por sintetizar un tema tan complejo al menos para mí.
Great video! Thank you!
Sounds like (simplified) traditional African drumming rhythms. Polyrhythms are as old as humanity. Loved the video.
What about putting the shapes inside of eachother with the beginning note overlapping. You could also put the rhythm on a horizontal scale with a red shift effect in between the notes representing the different amounts of time.
Pass the Goddamn Butter
This is excellent. In my opinion, you have to put the same perimeter in the two shapes, in order to make to point travel at the same speed in both shapes. Cause the timeline goes at the same speed anyway. But I really like the animation, the details, and explanation! Thank you for sharing.
But, of course, the sides would become smaller and smaller as you go up.
But, that is kinda the point, the beat of the square will be faster than the triangle by definition, and this will be shown either in the speed or if you make the velocity constant, the width will get smaller accordingly
@@andrebenites9919 Thank you! :) Last words about it, cause at the end of the line I think all of these options are correct in some way. Imagine you have two lines (as you see at 6:54) same length. if you fold each one into regular polygons (without changing the length) you will get what I said in my comment. So the timeline is always the same speed for both figures (cause is the same song), but you will hear more beats cause you have more divisions in the line. But... probably I am wrong. thank youuu
@@briantriesart Something that we can also do is put those regular polygons inside a circle. And make a dot go the same speed around the circle. (Or we can make it travel on the shapes, but respecting the angular velocity).
A lot of different and interesting ways of representing.
wow this is beautiful
Brilliant !!
.
Thumbs up + subscribed.
that second last one! absolute fire, I adored the way that sounded! it's 2 against 3 ag 4 ag 5 ag 6, right? amazing
Well I was thinking of rock'n'roll and now i've thought of something new. Therapy triangle, therapy square. Whoa nice music numbers!
But once you used the bar method, it's basically just regular notation without pitch.
May I ask about your approach to making your videos? The preparation that goes into making such a clear explanation is perfectly supported by the animated graphics. Which software do you believe is the most intuitive? I rely on apple’s Keynote for my slides as it’s so simple to make a presentation. Is there an equivalent for animated graphics?
The dots on the shapes look like they're going at different speed, but really, the dots are going at equal speed on the circles in which the shapes are inscribed. Many-sided shapes seeming more and more like circles isn't so much a problem. You could simply change the shapes for circles with notches, it could be pretty intuitive.
Alternatively, have all the shapes concentric and scaled/rotated so their first vertex is shared. Then you can either use a radial “dial” marker sweep across them at a constant *angular* velocity or draw their shared circumcircle and have the marker point ride that, playing when it hits the vertices, which by definition will be the only points touching said circumcircle.
And for larger shapes you can either replace with points along the circumcircle, as you suggest OR exaggerate the non-circle-ness of the shapes by making the edges steadily less of a true line and more of a concave arc as the shapes get bigger. Or replace them with star polygons of the same number of vertices. lots of ways to make more distinct shapes with same number of points.
Brilliant, easy (kinda), well done; i subscribed; thanks.
Yo 2:3:4:5:6 really slaps. It sounds like there are just Two separate rhythms happening at the same time and it's great. I hear it almost as 2:5:6 and 2:3:4 It's honestly really fucking cool.
The 1-5 poly sounded like a tango rhythm with an extra quarter note and that felt really dancy~
We are gonna get there
6:50 feels like when the house is so quiet you can hear the sink in the bathroom dripping while also listening in on the clock ticking on the wall
When stacking several poly rhythms, it started to feel at 4/5 that non-prime subdivisions were over-representing their factors pattern in the overall rhythm. I wonder if sticking to the subset 2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19... would lead to more reliably "nice" patterns and avoid near overlaps that clash?
you can make the point on the shapes travel the same speed for that you would need to scale the shapes differently
The last rhythm makes me unreasonably happy
This was awesome.
I rather enjoyed the shapes for simple polys.
Very good lesson. could you do a lesson on
the regular note value whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note with the same visual as you did with polyrhythm
Good stuff. I'm trying to play two of Danny Carey's songs, have been for a while now, so MAYBE this will help. It's pretty cool that, for me, I get the feeling of a circle (or another shape) when I listen to some of Tool's songs. This may have something to do with it! Too bad you can't tag Danny Carey on this. He many find this interesting.
If you slightly resize the polygons to have the same perimeter length, then the dot should travel at a constant speed, neutralizing that problem. If you overlay the two polygons over each other it would further strengthen the visual aid.
Very very interesting!
Hi, great work ! Can we know what software you use for make this video ? Thanks
This is very useful
Glad you did 6:5:4:3:2 its Jacob Collier's favourite polyrhythm, and its also a major chord
I'd love to see some of the later examples but with a differing drum sample assigned to each row - say, a bass on the 4, snare on the 5, hi-hat on 6 etc. I think that would help my ear differentiate which beats happened to coincide and therefore "cancel" each other when they are the same click sound.
Just play some Tool tracks, Danny Carey is the master of poly-everything.
This is a genius idea. I don't teach music. But if I did, I'd use this video.
Spot on!
...GREAT VIDEO , THANK YOU VERY MUCH...
if you made sure that the perimeter of all the shapes are the same you could visualize the polyrhythms while the markers do move in a constant speed. this would just change the size of some of the shapes but i feel it would improve the visualizations as there would be only one speed on the screen represents singular timeline.
You can also, for a polyrhythm N:M, make an N x M rectangle and shoot a dot diagonally in it, DVD logo style.
The 1 vs 2 vs 3 vs 4 vs 5 has and African flavor to my ear. Congrats.
Thanks! I have written some music that is 7 v 4 but I had no idea this had a name.
With your shapes examples, you might find it more intuitive to change the sizes of the shapes such that they share a perimeter, thus each node would travel the same distance over the course of one whole note (with the same speed / tempo)
5 over 4 over 3 was pretty cool. Not too busy with a maximum amount of syncopation