Everytime I try to play a meshuggah song,(its usually Stengah or Spam) I always tend to get off time somehow. I cant tell if they do any 4/4 beats because every time I listen to them I get confused. Does anyone know what time signatures they use?

__________________

you always will get off time when you play along, its normal, just keep doing it and itll go by

__________________

Meshuggah's tricky because Tomas will play in two signatures at the same time, so it's not surprising you'd get confused. The only thing for it's to do as the Doctor says, practice over and over again until it comes right. At least so far as I know.

__________________

I read an interview with Frederick Thordendal and Martin Hagstrom (they both can drum) and they maintain that the vast majority of Meshuggah songs are in standard 4/4 timing. This was a good few years back so this will hold up to and including Chaosphere - anything after that is open to speculation.

__________________

Yes, in a lot of the stuff the cymbal and snare is working in 4/4 while the bass drum follows the 23/16 or whatever the guitars are doing. Having the 4/4 probably helps them to play together in time with all the fucked rhythms they do.

__________________

Thanks

__________________

true, but in a song like New Millenium Cyanide Christ, you can see (in powertab), or hear that they have those 4/4 sigs broken into riffs that are less than 4/4, but all add up to 4/4 or a multiple of it.
ex: 3/8 + 7/8 + 5/8 + 1/8 = 2 measures of 4/4.
(that's a not a real riff from them, just an example)
Their riffs carry over into the next measure, so if you look at it riffwise, each riff isn't in 4/4, but all of them added together is.
still complicated to keep in time, and remember the riff, if you don't know the time sigs.

And even when the drummer is playing 4/4, the bass drums and guitarists will play in complex rhythmic groupings, like quintuplets and septuplets.....sometimes they add rests in those groupings, which makes it even more confusing to figure out the rhythm

__________________

Thomas Haake is fucking sick!!

I can just pull of the intro to corrider of chameleons and that is it.

but if you listen close ALOT of his stuff is kept in time by the cymbals, often they are the one constant in the songs, the hi hat and his china, listen to those if you can and that will help you heaps.

It's all about the counting. Complex rhytmic groupings and lenghts are not that hard to get really, what you do is you get the metronome and instead of counting 1 e and a or whatever between the beats you count whatever the number of notes you want to put between the beats, such as fifth notes or seventh notes etc. Same principle applies to our old friends triplets - 1 e a 2 e a 3 e a... When I have to teach someone about triplets (which I did on a couple of occasions as many people I know don't have any idea about music theory) I tell them that they feel like the word "pineapple". At times it can be hard to switch between playng "straight" notes and triplets, but with a metronome and a bit of practice one gets used to the feel of it, so it can be done with any other grouping, of course the counting will be difficult, especially if the note is on it's own, such as a seventh note in between two fifth notes, so to make counting possible you will have to find a number which can be devided by both seventh and fifth notes, such as 35, and so that would mean that you'd count 35 times in a 4/4 bar or equivalent with a fifth note taking up 7 counts and a seventh note taking five. Allocate the required ammount of bits to each note and rest, play it slowly, get used to the feel and get up to speed. This is an example, you can do that with any lenght or lenghts, find the number that is devidable by all of the numbers, split a 4/4 bar equivalent, allocate and so on...

Sounds hard hey? This would work especially well if you had the sheet music or a good tab for the song, listening to the song many many times is an absolute requirement, of course.

__________________

Yeah, I think I posted something to this effect (although not explained as fully) in another thread. As an example, I think the intro to Gods Of Rapture is in 4/4 but the underlying guitar riff is in 15/16. However, the riff resolves to 4/4 timing after 16 repeptitions. Or something.

__________________

I think he's onto something.

__________________

wow, this thread is almost as confusing as a meshuggah song

__________________

Atif and Broken Crimson explained things pretty well.

__________________

I'm just confused as to how I ever got this all to work without a metronome.

__________________

Maybe you're just a good drummer!

__________________

Guitar. I'm a shitty, shitty, shitty drummer.

__________________

that sucks

__________________

It would suck more if I practiced a lot, really tried to make it as a drummer, and still sucked. Which I would; I don't have the kind of coordination to go beyond something really simple. Just a very good internal metronome.

__________________

Heh, I never had the hands for guitar so...

__________________

The world needs more drummers and less guitarists, anyway. Especially ones who can simplify complex rhythms better than anyone I've had explain it to me except my high school music teacher, who also used the 'pineapple' example for triplets. I think he regretted it later, though, when I handed in music theory compositions he had to play on the piano consisting of a grab bag of every rhythmic and music theory trick I knew, and I knew a lot. More than I'd ever throw into a song I had to write for myself.

What was the thread about?

__________________

Eh....Tomas Haake I think.

__________________