On Negative Time Signatures (A Response To Adam Neely)
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- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
- What's a negative time signature? Well, it's not really a thing... yet. But Adam Neely made a video about the possibility and what it could mean to write music in -4/4 time, which got me thinking about other possible answers, and I think I've come up with something I really like so I thought I'd share. Plus, a little youtube drama never hurt anyone, so why not start a fight with Adam?
Seriously, though, his answer was good too. But still. Fight!
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Neat idea! I do like your approach, although honestly, I think the whole thing is...not super useful in any serious way, because there are already other ways to think about the subjects we offered for a "negative time signature." That said, feuding and meme theory gets the clicks, so lets fight!!!!!
Yeah, in the end I don't think there's ever going to be a serious answer that actually needs negative numbers in order to work, for basically the reasons you stated in your video. Still, though, looking at weird questions is a great way to find unusual parts of music to explore, and I'm glad I went down this rabbit hole 'cause it got me thinking about systematized backmasking, which I'd never really considered before, so thanks for the inspiration!
Man, I'm really good at fights, I should get into them more often.
Thank goodness time is 1-dimensional, otherwise we'd have to think about imaginary time signatures as well... That would be a total mind-exploding thing on its own...
What weight do you two walk around at? Let's set this thing up....
Dueling banjos at dawn, good sirs
I’m thinking we need a musical decathlon (a la Billy Madison) between y’all.
12tone: "Since it's a well known thing in the UA-cam community, that the best way to get clicks is to start a fight [...]."
Also 12tone: "I think Adam's answer was pretty good!"
Way to start a fight LOL. This cracked me up, you're so nice!
NihilisticEntropy Excuse you?
Reminds me of Papyrus.
If you write half of your song in 4/4 and the other half in -4/4, does it cancel out and leave no song?
Well you'd be reversing the -4/4 which would make it positive, so actually you'd end up with the song being twice as long.
It's how they wrote 4'33"
Basically you write one song that's twice as long, but the other half's basically just the first half but in reverse, I think.
Big brain
Music is not observed as a finished product. Let me use a number line as an analogy. Technically, yes, youd be going forward 4, then backwards 4, ending on zero, leaving you with no change. But music isn't just looking at the dot on the zero. Music is watching the dot moving from the zero, to the four, and back to the zero. It's watching change over time, even if that change just gets you back to where you started.
Oh no, the lick. Adam Neely is secretly taking over the channel.
Next video: "12tone analyzes The Lick for 5 hours."
+Warped rider you deserve more likes
The Lick, the world's first musical virus.
+Warped Rider HAHAHAHA
Warped Rider
OH DEAR GOD WHYYYYYYY???
What matters isn’t “what is a negative time signature” but rather: what cool musical ideas can that phrase inspire. I think your answers are both pretty good in that respect
Negative 4/4 is the rhythm that happens before the composition begins, such as a metronome, clearing your throat, blowing your nose, reaching for some tissues.
My favorite kind of UA-cam fight.
Wouldn't a reversed recording be negative tempo, not negative time signature? That seems more natural to me.
Simon The Human well, the notation says that every black note equals some positive rythmic unit, so
Negative time sig*Postive rythm=Negative play speed
Positive time sig*Negative rythm=Negative play speed
So yeah, i think both work? Lmao
Have to agree. Neither idea of what a negative time signature is is very satisfying to me, though I think Neely's is more accurate as a reversal of the measure's impulse and not the whole composition.
In the end, I don't think the concept is very useful either way. And I can't come up with a way it would be useful unless it had exotic contextual meaning similar to how symbols in math can mean things that have nothing to do with how they are traditionally used - they are just stolen and re-purposed.
Both are extremely closely linked, but I could imagine a system in which they have different functions which are similar but slightly altered
Good point! I was mainly thinking of it, though, as a polymetric device, to be used for individual parts within a larger, positive composition, in which case I think it's better viewed as a change in rhythm than a change in tempo. Not sure, though!
Bone Machine by The Pixies sounds to me like the drums are in -4/4 while the vocals are in 4/4. I hear Adam Neely's 'reverse of the accent pattern'-or rather a differing accent pattern-between the drums and vocals. The drums accent beats 1&3 while the vocals accent beats 2&4. To me the verse is in -4/4, the refrain combines -4/4 rhythm section with 4/4 vocals, and chorus is in 4/4. Whadyu think? ua-cam.com/video/yJM576_1UX4/v-deo.html
Jeez... Just binge watched all content on your channel and just applied to resume my studies in musical theory. You just kicked me out of a five year (+) depression!
We all know this is because of what he said on your analysis of Africa! Let the fighting begin!
I happened to transcribe reversed pieces of music (such as Metallica's Damage Inc and Blackened intros, or my Gone Too Far's outro), and it was a tricky thing to do. Simply writing them forward and leaving a note "play it in reverse" didn't satisfy me. Perhaps, 12tone's interpretation of negative time signature could make that more accurate in a way. Anyway, I may not judge you guys, since I suck at music theory)))
KoolAid same man lol when 12Tone was talking about reversing harmonies and melodies my brain just screamed "Blackened!" haha.
Awesome video 12tone.
My objection to the scheme proposed by Adam is that it doesn't follow arithmetic rules. Namely, a bar of 4/4 followed by a bar of 2/4 could be notated as a single bar of 6/4. But a bar of 4/4 followed by one bar of -2/4 does not equal a bar of 2/4.
Like any of the worst critics, I raise this objection without having a constructive response of my own. The only vauge thought I had was the idea of inverting a waveform and playing it at the same time as the non-inverted waveform so that they cancel out. But even this isn't subtracting time in the way that I think negative time signatures ought to do.
That's a great point, and it's one my solution doesn't really address either! There's not really a clean way in my system for a part to switch from a positive to a negative time at all, so it doesn't directly create those sorts of contradictions like Adam's does, but there's no real equivalence to the arithmetic relationships that real positive and negative numbers have. Although...
If I had a part written in, say, 4/4, and I inserted a bar of -2/4 at some point, it would make sense to, in editing, take that section and reverse it back through the bar before it, so that it ended on beat 3 of the previous bar. That creates some problems with the next forwards component, which would then overlap the original, but you could use that to create layering, like an ensemble produced out of one voice that snakes back and forth through time... Neat!
But arithmetically speaking a negative sign simply means the opposite of. The opposite of having one thing isn't not having a thing, it's owing a thing, right?
So, mathematics would say that your example of 4/4 followed by - 2/4 would indeed be felt as 2/4.
The reason why that's nonsensical is that time signature doesn't work like math. 4/4 followed by 2/4 could feel like any number of subdivisions of six pulses divided into quarters.
Man I don't feel like that's clear, but my break is over.
On the other hand, a bar of 2/4 followed by a bar of 6/8 might not feel like a bar of 10/8; it might instead feel like a bar of 4/4 but subdivided as triplets in the latter half (it depends on if there's the "♩ = ♩." marking or not). And in general something like 3/4 does not feel the same as 6/8 even though they're the same fraction. Heck, 6/8 doesn't even feel like six beats; it feels like two. So there are already some oddities about time signatures.
Good point, then we should answer first what is a 0 (zero) time signature in a musical context.
4/4 bar = 1 = a whole note
-4/4 bar = -1= a negative whole note (?)
Then 4/4 - 4/4 = 0 bar ... does it have any meaning to you?
Ale Lloveras see that's where I got stuck on at first. But the negative sign doesn't change the number, per se, it changes the concept attached. That's when I started thinking that - 4/4 would mean change the rule from four pulses and a quarter note to anything but that.
Now do imaginary or complex time signatures! Or quaternion or octonion time signatures! /s
For imaginary time signatures, take the Fourier transform as your waveform.
My major concern with imaginary time signatures is that there is no way of multiplying time signatures. You can add them, and multiply by scalars, but time signatures are not scalars. You can't multiply 2/4 by 4/4. At least there is no clear way to do this. I disagree with the solution in the video because it doesn't comply by time signature arithmetic 4/4-2/4 is not 2/4 by this definition.
Wait if that's the case then i know what a negative time signature is!!! It just means play every beat Except for 4/4 or whatever shows the time signature following the negative sign is
Must be played by a cylindrical speaker
My favourite one is 7.6π/-i to be honest
"Ma Fin Est Mon Commencement" composed by Guillaume de Machaut is an earlier example of reversible music from the 14th century. It is 3 lines of vocal music. The second line is the retrograde of the first line, and the third line is the retrograde of itself. Just an extra factoid about music in reverse. Great video.
Translation; My End Is My Beginning. Just thought that was cool :)
The real question is: since Marty McFly travelled back in time from 1985 to 1955 and played Johnny B. Good. was that an example of negative time signature or simply disproved time travels in only one direction, and thus destroyed both your theories, or was he a tachion? But most of all... how many sheets of music paper do you use per video?:))
I have no idea what a negative time signature should be, but I enjoy and appreciate both of your attempts to describe what it might be! ♥
2:32 “This completely random lick...” Well done to both you and Adam.
Additionally, the bit on backmasking reminded me of the intro to the Electric Light Orchestra’s “Fire On High” from their Face the Music album. There’s a backmasked message where Bev Bevan says, “The music is reversible, but time... is not. Turn back! Turn back!...” It’s an interesting message, especially in the context of this video.
♫♫♩♫‿◦ ¡ʞɔıן ǝɥʇ
HOW THE
I DONT EVEN
Another less-famous musical palindrome (something that is the same backward and forward) is the minuet of Haydn's 47th Symphony in G major:
ua-cam.com/video/yeB_Ohpsm64/v-deo.htmlm45s
Richard Atkinson The one I knew first! Cool piece indeed.
Richard Atkinson I seem to remember hearing that Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings was also palindromic in some way. But I would have to look it up to confirm.
Didn’t you write palindrome variations?
I wrote a short metal track that plays forwards and backwards, called it 'Mirror Song', this video made me want to revisit it!
Dinos4urFour link?
here you go, quickly bounced out of GuitarPro 5 so hope you can stand the audio haha soundcloud.com/user-272978224/mirror-song
Hmm... interesting! I think it kinda sounds like game(?) music
Dinos4urFour I like it too actually. Was it all instrument, or guitar and all midi?
Dinos4urFour Reminds me of BtBaM 😀
I like the subtlety at 5:00 when you say "multiplied by -1" and you draw e^{\pi i}!
Adenosine Breakdown/Adenosine Buildup, two tracks by Blotted Science that are the same composition played backwards. It's some of the nuttiest stuff Ive ever heard.
YES!
Up, Jarzombek should be cited in this subject for sure!
Many thanks for introducing me to a new band! :D My mind has been truly frazzled for many days!
This is great! What’s really cool about it in my opinion is that this style of composition could be used in a lot of modern genres... Rather I’m actually surprised it hasn’t been used as much.
Great video!
2:20 OH SHIT I'M FEELING IT
"[I figured I'd try] to start a a fight. (...) So first of all, I think Adam's answer was pretty good." You might want to work on your fight-starting skills there.
Anyway, I definitely do think your response is a better more accurate way of having a negative time signature than Adam's. His is not "really" negative in any sense. Consider, for example, a regular 6/8 beat. You have / ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘ with two offbeats. Which offbeat would you make the new downbeat in the chords? You have two options, ˘ / ˘ ˘ / ˘ and ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘ /. That's not very negative-like though; -1 * -1 = 1, not some third thing. We want some sort of operation like multiplying by -1, except that you can do it three times before you cycle instead of just two, where / ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘ leads to ˘ / ˘ ˘ / ˘ leads to ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘ / leads back to / ˘ ˘ / ˘ ˘.
But you know what does act like that, giving three different "states" when you multiply it? e^(120° i). That's a scary way of writing "120° around the unit circle in the complex plane" which is in turn a scary way of writing "a 120° rotation, expressed as a complex number." We get three numbers out of this rotation: 1, e^(120° i), and e^(240° i) (which replaces the 1 and -1 in the duple rhythm case); we can then multiply it by the normal positive time signatures 6/8 to get three related time signatures: 6/8, e^(120° i)*6/8, and e^(240° i)*6/8. So if we take Adam's definition of negative time signatures, then we can actually extend this idea into the complex plane in this way.
But anyway, that tangent aside, I'm not sure if I entirely buy that definition to begin with. It doesn't really seem to map out any sort of real time, which I feel like is what the time signature is saying. And besides, why are there only two markers of accents? There are probably other characteristics of accents that can be separated out (loudness, pitch, chord changes, intensity of vibrato, and probably other weird ones we don't even think about as we perform); why don't we separate out these other aspects? Instead, directly manipulating time seems like a better way to interpret messing with that top number of the time signature. Reversing recordings is really the only way we have as universely beings to do so, so I think it's a fair way to work with that.
Also, what happens if we mess with the bottom number of the time signature? In math, the fractions (-4)/4 and 4/(-4) are the same thing, but in music, the "numerator" and "denominator" have very different roles. Playing -4 beats, with each beat being a quarter note long, isn't necessarily the same thing as playing +4 beats, each beat being a "negative quarter note" long... depending on how we define a "negative quarter note."
Though "messing with time" is reminiscent of special relativity (and general relativity, but that's even weirder). Reversing recordings is actually not our only way of messing with time (though it's probably our only way of reversing it); we can also travel super quickly (or near black holes, but again, let's ignore general relativity). How would we talk about a piece of music wherein one musician is on a spaceship traveling at half the speed of light relative to another, and both are moving relative to the audience? Would that change our time signature? That'd be an interesting exercise in polytonality, since the musicians both think they're playing in the same tempo and same time signature, but experience the other's playing as stretched out in time. ...Relativity is weird.
Though come to think of it (though this is no longer about time signatures), even if the musicians are moving at a more reasonable speed, say on a train, and we're on the ground, we would hear their pitch shifting thanks to the Doppler effect. What if there's a long line of musicians on that train, each of whom suddenly drops in pitch as he/she passes us. Then the way the music sounds to an audience member depends on both what the musicians are playing and where along the tracks that particular audience member is, since the different musicians pass us at different times and therefore jump in pitch at different times. And what if every musician is on a different train? What if the train accelerates and decelerates repeatedly? In fact, the musicians could each be on a different train, and they all play the same note for the whole concert, and depend purely on the train's speed and the Doppler effect to change the pitch. That'd make for an interesting concert environment, if nothing else. (Also as a practical matter we might not hear anything other than the screeching of the train wheels.)
...Uh, I should probably stop thinking about this now.
This was beautiful
2:32
I see what you did there.
Nice.
Can anyone explain what he did there?
Reşat Yıldırım its one of the most famous licks among the jazz community
more importantly, it's the most famous lick among adam's community
It’s literally called “the lick”
It was on Adam's T-shirt (in the same key) in the original 'negative time signatures' video.
@12tone
what if you played it like an extreme dynamic flip? so since like if you pluck a guitar string, the noise is mostly on the front end of the sound, you could achieve the backwards sound using a synth effect with most on the back end. then it would be practically playing backward music.
this wouldn't work with guitar or bass or drums (unless you had a hecking good drummer who can roll pp
Takyon? You say Takyon?!
OH SHIT, I'M FEELING IT!!!
If you haven't heard it, Miracle Musical's "The Mind Electric" is a song that's played backwards first, then forwards, lyrics and all. It's interesting because while you're listening to the first part you get a sense of this musical theme that's going on, as well as a theme in the lyrics - then those themes resolve when it switches to playing forwards. It's really good.
Did your last line suggest that I shouldn't continue to rock, or that I've always been rockin' and you are retroactively its source? Cheers.
I had an idea (inspired by physics) about negative time signature, and it generalizes to complex time signatures as well. I posted this on Adam's video as well.
I think we might be able to make sense of negative time by considering complex number time signatures (which someone mentioned in the comments). Complex numbers only make sense when you have both an amplitude and a phase, so they would only make sense with more than one time signature played at once, like a linear combination between times. In this way, a time of (1 + i)/2 and a time of (1 - i)/2 would both be 2/2 time, but they would be "out of phase" with each other. The only sensible interpretation would be that of a time-delay between the beats of one time signature and the beats of another.
If you write the complex number as r*exp(i theta)/N, then r would be the number of beats per measure (with the Nth note getting a beat) and theta would be the offset of beat 1. So a theta of 0 would be no offset, and a non-zero theta would be offset by N*theta/(2*Pi) beats. Thus, if you had 2/2 and 2*exp(i Pi/2)/2 = 2i/2, the first beat of the second time signature would be played 2*Pi/2*1/(2 Pi) = 1/2 beat later than the first beat of 2/2.
From this, we see that a positive imaginary signature gets a quarter-measure delay, so a negative time signature would simply represent a half-measure delay relative to a positive time signature. Note, this only makes sense when played against another time signature. -4/4 against 4/4 would be played 2 beats later than 4/4.
If negative numbers aren't real then explain my bank account
I think that back masking filling in the weak accents is a really cool idea that I'm definitely going to mess around with after hearing your dual piano piece. That was sick!
That gear system you drew at the end can't move, and that's really the main problem with your thesis.
(kidding, kidding. But it still bugs me)
That was intentional! It was an example of something pointless, to go along with the narration.
I knew it!
I assumed it was intentional. It fit too well.
this reminded me of those violin duets where the two players stand facing each other and the piece is placed between them so one of them is reading it upside down, from the bottom. cool video!!
I have another mathematical music topic to philosophize about. If we have additive meter (i.e. 3+2+3/8), could we also have subtractive meter? (3+2-3)/8 would be the same that 2/8? Just wondering
i personally said back on adam's video that i would use it to notate that we need to read that part backwards in studio so that we reverse the section post prod, and then, once on stage, we read it from left to right. glad you kinda shared this idea.
If 1 + -1 gives us 0, then a whole note in 4/4 followed by a whole note in -4/4 should give us no sound.
What two notes give us no sound?
Phase reversed notes!
So negative signatures could just be a "flip phase" indicator
on recordings only, though
phase flipping doesn't get you silence in meatspace
Mezurashii5 But I didn't think time signatures were mathematical. That's why 6/8 isn't the same as 3/4.
@@martinkrauser4029 Except it does work irl. It's literally how noise cancelling headphones work!
Wonderful, to see the gentlemen of two of my favourite UA-cam channels together!
Wel Adam, your turn again ;)
To be honest, two different views on the subject gives me way more information (and thus inspiration). I think there is no better answer just more information to use to come up with new music.
Thanks 12Tone! Bach's Crab cannon was my first comment to Adam's video, but it got buried in the comments. Glad you thought along the same lines :D
This method doesn't actually change the time signature though, which seems like a massive flaw for obvious reasons. A "negative time signature" should be something that expresses rhythm differently but here the rhythm is identical, all you've changed is the nature of the voice performing it. How is that functionally different from having the same line played with a trumpet or with a different synth setting? It isn't, which tells us that it's not useful as a concept.
For what it's worth I don't think negative time signatures can be useful concepts. My version of the idea back in high school was to "start the bar" earlier by the indicated amount, if a time signature tells you the duration of a measure then a negative time signature should also tell you the duration just in the opposite direction. So if we have a passage that goes 15/16, -3/4, 7/8 the "measure of -3/4" would actually be performed starting on the 'a' of beat 1 in the measure of 15/16 in effect performing a brief polymeter. I think this is still the best answer I've heard to the question but obviously it's also completely useless since there's nothing stopping us from just writing the notes of the -3/4 in the 15/16 where they would end up anyway and ditching the superfluous notation entirely. So that's both my explanation of how it could work and also my explanation of why the concept is dumb and will probably never be useful.
Fascinating thought experiment! I personally like your interpretation a lot, though I think Adam's is more letter-of-the-law, while you seemed to approach it almost as a flight of fancy. I'm not well-versed in music theory, but I understand your videos pretty well, and if you consider your interpretation rigorous, I'll have to take your word for it. It seemed wonderfully creative to me.
2:21
*_I'M FEELIN' IT_*
One of my favorite things is to observe or participate in a friendly conversation where people have different points of view and we all learn something. (Yeah, I have been watching a lot of Jordan Peterson, but this is how I've always felt.) Adam Neely and Mr. 12tone are amazing guys, and the only thing better than them having an exchange like this would be for them to make a video TOGETHER.
Completely random lick 😉
There is one example that I could think of when (at least part) of a piece, when played backwards, was actually another song. The theme song for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, has a part that, when played backwards, was actually another piece, "Zelda's Lullaby". While this wasn't exactly an entire song, it does remind me of the concept that was covered here.
My favorite time signature: π/4
It would just sound like 3/4 but with mistakes.
“Like Spinning Plates” and “I will” by Radiohead
Does that mean that the Ballad of the Goddess from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is Zelda's Lullaby in -4/4?
My favorite use of backmasking is the opening flute in Jethro Tull's "With You There to Help Me", which sounds like some strange, exotic bird. Since Ian Anderson can't play backwards live for the reasons given, he just performs the bit normally in concerts - with his back to the audience!
If you owe three elephants you have negative three elephants :/
but is the "negative elephant" corporeal? is that even a requirement?
Good thing there are -3 people in the world who owe 3 elephants
If you have the elephants to pay back they add to the total, meaning you'd have more than negative 3
The crucial yet puzzlingly obscure musical concept of negative elephants is finally being acknowledged. About time.
(Actually, this video is about time, isn't it? See what I did there?)
I'd say if you have -3 elephants, you are missing three elephants, or you have three elephants missing, or you are three elephants short. The point is: You can count negative elephants.
My favorite band, Unlucky Morpheus just released a single called Cadaver/Revadac wich has two songs, one bring the mirror image of another and I love it because I feel is not something commonly used in popular music and took me by surprise
Stone Roses have a song that’s just another reversed
Maybe I'm just dumb, but 4/4 actually means 4 beats per measure with the quarter note getting the beat. So a -4/4 time would just be negative 4 beats in a measure with the quarter still getting the beat, so like the music starts being played backwards, although this couldn't be used at the start of a composition.
I think an awesome way to maybe use this would be to have a regular piece of music at first, but it then starts playing the same thing, but backwards. Like a repeat sign, but instead of going back to a point, it just plays it backwards to another point set before hand (maybe +4/4). The musician would then skip over the -4/4 like they would a repeat sign after they've already repeated once.
Ex:
You might even be able to add a Coda or something at +4/4 to skip to after the -4/4 after playing the -4/4 music, so you don't play the +4/4 section twice.
But what about complex signatures?
4i
4
anyone?
6/8^2=6/64 Have fun.
4:51 Is where I think I lost it. To see euler's identity in a music video was 2 worlds colliding violently.
Yeah yeah but TONEWOOD
Negative numbers are a construct that we came up with to try and explain the world around us. In reality you can't represent a negative number, you can never show a negative number of something. Negative time simply makes no sense. Kind of like negative temperatures, just a construct to help us understand our reality but there is no such thing in nature as heat only moves in one direction, just like time.
Personally I think that it was a question that somebody asked before they thought about it and tried to come up with an answer... I too, often get these ideas where for a brief moment I feel like I'm on the verge of blowing my own mind but then I think about it and realize that I was simply either asking a stupid question or asking it in a stupid way. For me thinking about it for a couple of minutes is usually enough to get over the "mind blowing concept" and keep myself grounded.
Please analyze Hey Brother by Avicii.
R. I. P.
Not much to analize, RIP but the song is shit
So he's a dead communist? Best kind of communist.
This is the most prestigious and high quality fight I have ever seen on UA-cam.
Rip Avicii
One example of this backmasking, that immediately came to my mind is a song used in soome Vsauce videos; 145 (Poodles) by Jake Chudnow. Its base melody is the reverse melody played on a piano, recorded, and played in reverse. Essentially playing that piano melody in -4/4.
Ayyy
BLACKENED INTRO BY METALLICA! the absolute most legendary -4/4 music piece
Charlie Brown's Parents by Dishwalla instantly comes to mind for me with a 9-8-7-6-5-4-3 guitar riff leading into the chorus
This is exactly what I first thought of when I heard the question. Bach's crab canon (and the entire Offering in general) was genius!
I appreciate the kaon decay diagram to show that time only flows in one direction!!!
Radiohead's "I Will" and "Like Spinning Plates" is an example of reversible composition! I love it!
Thank you for the Feynman diagram there is only a few ways of illustrating the physical need of a time dimension with a preferred direction, and this is one of them.
ps. if someone is interested, look for spontaneous symmetry breaking
Absolutely great. The practicality of an answer is a temporal judgement - just because no one can figure out the utility of something now doesn't mean they won't in the future (history of: contact lenses, solar cells, etc). Plus 'out-rigoring' Adam is good for him - gives him a reason to raise his (already formidable) game. ;-) I never would have thought I'd enjoy music theory so much - thanks to you and the whole UA-cam MT posse. :-)
I'm just really enjoying the exercise of thinking about this. Two (or more) people proposing solutions will help further the concept
Nice one! Can't believe you didn't mention Stone Roses' Waterfall/ Don't Stop though
A peculiar student orchestra I played in for a short while has a piece that starts off as if the entire orchestra put the notes for a Bach piece upside down on the stands. So not only playing in a kind of reverse, but also with the staff-lines reversed. The orchestra would then get confused after a few bars, rotate all the sheet music, and continue as "normal".
Thank you this is exactly what I was thinking the whole time watching Adam's video
I think another answer may lie in considering what happens when accenting is placed both regularly and against the beat, such as with extended lines of dotted quarters that don't resolve with a number of final quarter notes, such as in the 3-3-2 and 3-3-3-3-2-2 rhythms.
By treating this type of phenomenon as the 'borrowing' from the time signature 6:(8/3), { that is, 6 notes of length [three eighths of a whole], (remember that the number on the bottom is the reciprocal of it's proportion of a whole note) }, while staying in the 'true' time signature of 4:4, we now have a framework in which we can construct negative time in normal time signatures.
Doing this, however forces us to rewrite many pieces written in 12:8 more wisely as 4:(8/3). This reflects the nature of the time signature where the triplets are within the beat. A rhythm using those triplets doesn't use them use them as a part of the beat, but as divisions of the beat.
This is, of coarse, only the case if it is the case. Using 12:8 to combine half-notes and dotted quarter notes, for example, is the use of a time signature to reflect divisions whose difference is one eighth note, or compounds to one eighth note, for time signatures like 15:16. That kind of use of a time signature reflects a polyrhythmic section, not mixed rhythm within a section.
However, this doesn't get to the root of the problem. The interpretation of the top number must be taken carefully. In mathematics, we often try to abstract definitions to make accurate statements about broader ideas, and we are careful to consider what properties are most important to the original definition.
That time moves forwards is important. Time signature and synthesizers/recording software should be considered different aspects. If negative note lengths exist, they must be performable to be useful. That a measure takes the same length of time no matter its contents within a certain time signature is also important to improvised soloing, forbidding the arithmetic notion of subtraction by addition of a negative if we don't allow for time travel.
I have to leave this there, but some one idea is 'time travel' by the musician, but that doesn't involve chords.
In order to test the validity of whatever notion of time signature is given, you must be able to borrow from it, in some kind of 'distinct' way, and borrow from other time signatures into it.
Also: complex time signatures. (The square of a time signature is surprisingly easy to define. The square root function is the inverse of the square function. Good luck with going in that other time direction, though.)
I love technicalities like this. Very inspiring as a designer rather than a musician
Please analyze Joe Satriani's "Thinking of You" and why it evokes so much emotion. Another track from him is "Bells of Lal part 2" where the whole song has a chaotic and unnerving feeling, I wonder if that was planned ahead or pure chance.
I have 3 IDEAS.
4/4 is a time signature. It consists of 2 numbers.
First defines how many beats are in a bar.
Second defines which notes is a beat.
4 - quarter note; 2 - half note (is "slower"); 1 - whole note.
Following this pattern there would be 0 note which would mean 0 speed / infinite long beat / no direction in time and finaly -1 which would be whole note played in backwards. (or maybe the bpm should be negative...or either of those to make it reverse. and if both are negative it is positive)
Back at the First number value of the signature.
Normaly you count 4/4 like this: 1 2 3 4; 1 2 3 4; ... from the number 1 to the number representing how many beats there are (per bar).
that would mean:
3/4: 1 2 3; 1 2 3;
2/4: 1 2; 1 2;
1/4: 1; 1;
0/4: 1 0; 1 0;
-1/4: 1 0 -1; 1 0 -1;
-4/4: 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4; 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4; (from 1 to -4 ... that makes 6 beats)
But that is weird so we would count negative from -1:
0/4: ----
-1/4: -1; -1;
-4/4: -1 -2 -3 -4; -1 -2 -3 -4;
And my 3rd idea.
Negative means you count in reverse:
0/4: ----
-1/4: 1; 1;
-4/4: 4 3 2 1; 4 3 2 1;
That would reverse an order of the notes in every bar but all the bars would be arranged normally. You would play it in time running forward.
disclaimer: I just learned what time signature is so I am no good with music theory (so far)
Also puting that number in ableton or fl studio might answer your question xdd
I was seriously waiting for 12Tone to bring up the beginning of Serrana by Jason Becker when he was talking about reversible licks. We should get a full or partial analysis of a Jason Becker song for sure!
In 'like spinning plates' by Radiohead Thom wrote the vocal melody, learned it, recorded him singing the backwards melody then reversed that to get the effect of singing backwards forwards in a way. The whole thing is also over a reversed backing track from what would become 'i will'. Hopefully this provides some inspirational insight. Love these thought experiments!
I think your explanation stands up to the test better :D This came up a little while I was at school with John Tavener crab-canon-esque carol Little Lamb. A few folks in the program tried tackling similar stuff, and my attempt was based off Lewis Carroll's I Often Wondered When I Cursed, which is the same 'down' as it is 'across', which is also true for the piece. Not quite negative time, though.
Amazing video, as always!
12tone , first i really enjoy this chanel , and i've learned so much since i started watching your videos!
But i have a question , is it possible to use negative time signatures to notate sampled music? I thought about it because of what you said about reversed music.
thank you for all !
On the topic of backmasking, I do recall one particular song, where if the backmasked part is missing, the song loses what makes it sound interesting to my ears. That song is "Pushing Me Away" by Linkin Park. The backmasked part playing mixed in with the pre-chorus is Mike Shinoda rapping "Everything falls apart, even the people who never frown eventually break down. Everything has to end, we'll soon find we're out of time left to watch it all unwind." In the Reanimation-version of the song, they turned changed it from a hard rock song to a ballad, and let Mike's lines in the pre-chorus remain non-backmasked, that is, played as originally recorded, and honestly, it doesn't really have the same ominous effect. I recall hearing the Reanimation-version played live once, however, where the rap-part was kept backmasked, and suddenly, the entire song had an even darker, more ominous feel to it than it did originally. So in short, there are songs that have been written, even if unintentional, where backmasking is a big part of the sound and feel of the song
It makes sense in medleys. Negative time belongs to the other song but you can write it for the instruments that didn't play in the previous part so that they have less trouble starting playing on tempo.
Yeees. I had the same reaction when Adam said that about time.
Excellent dialectic music theory fight.
I'm a fan of the completely random lick 🤘Recording music backwards, then playing the backwards recording forwards is fun. I've done a few metal riffs like this (Gojira and Slayer). Really hard to record it backwards though because the the groove gets really weird backwards and very off beat and then when flipping it forwards the music sounds correct but slightly off because of the reversed transients. All fun stuff though!
Hmm... The Mind Electric is played backwards before forwards, and seems to have been composed with this in mind such that it doesn't sound terrible when played backwards, so perhaps it would count as an example of your form of negative time signature?
This has probably already been mentioned in the comments (though I can't see it) but the concept of a song that is playable and makes sense both forwards and backwards was also explored by Danish rock band Mew on the first track of their 2009 album "No More Stories...". The opening track "New Terrain" has an entire other composition backmasked through the whole recording called "Nervous" with a whole set of new lyrics!
Adam talks a lot and he's sometimes helpful but this was pure mathematics. Well done sir.
Waterfall and don't stop by the Stone roses are the same song played forwards and backwards (with some overdub on the backwards don't stop). Its close enough that you can tell which bits they changed in the final waterfall mix by listening to don't stop backwards (they used an early cut of the waterfall track).
They Might Be Giants had some fun with backmasking. John Linnell listened to their song "Thunderbird" backwards, wrote lyrics based on what he thought he heard, which became the song "On Earth My Nina"
I think Jimi Hendrix' Are You Experienced (the song) could be a very good example of this. The reversed elements of the song blend so well with the straightforward parts that it feels like you're going back and forth through time. The guitar solo is incredible, not to mention it's entirely backwards which seems hard to fathom.
4:33 there’s a song by Hüsker Dü, “Don’t Know Yet”, which is an instrumental with the guitar lead played backwards. There’s also some backwards hi-hats in there.
Break it down to definitions in group theory. -4/4 is what ever you have to add to 4/4 to get the additive identity. So before answering what -4/4 is, we need to find some way to "add" time signatures, and then we use that to figure out what the identity time signature would be.
My vote for defining time signature addition is composition, just playing one measure after the next, in which case a measure of -4/4 next to a measure of 4/4 would mean play no music. Or at least that no notes could exist in the combine measure. Which mean we need a sort of negative note. We could use destructive interference for this perhaps. Just some ideas.
My favorite example of layered back masking is Radiohead's "Like Spinning Plates"
I like them both. They're useful in that they stir up the creative juices. And those of us who work in electronic areas would like yours better and more acoustic composers would like Adam's better but I doubt anyone would bother using a negative time signature. You know except maybe students of John cage (the suggestion of played music as opposed to actually playing music). Once I recorded a drum track and then played the recording of the drum track in reverse to create the bridge. You'd be surprised how well it worked. I was doing this in Cakewalk so the effect was different than playing an analogue recording in reverse.
Playing recordings backwards can be really cool.
Just found out about a week ago that the intro of metallicas blackened is actually the reversed recording of what they played.
I think it has a cool sound to it, kinda like definitly an electric guitar, but not actually sounds the instrument could make on its own.
They Might Be Giants use backwards singing in their music a lot. Some include pretending to sing backwards like "Hide Away, Folk Family." Others include recorded music played back in reverse like "Which Describes How You're Feeling." And in "Dinner Bell" they actually sang the words backwards and played that in reverse, making them forwards again. TMBG has some super interesting music. I would love to see you make a video about those guys!
That's not a fight or feud, it's a dialectic conversation. Well done.