 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, we are going to look at odd time signatures. It's a much requested for lesson on our YouTube channel. Almost everyone says, you know, how did you count this? Because inevitably a lot of the riffs which I create, which are daily riffs as a lot of you regular followers would know over the past two years or so, I've worked with two or three amazing students. And we've cataloged all of our riffs on our website called riffs.jasonzachmusic.com. And while doing it, we realized that the time signatures are just never normal. Sometimes it'll be 4-4, but accented in all sorts of weird ways or in some cases, there would be 17 beats in a cycle, there would be 13 beats in a cycle. They may sometimes be 29 beats in a cycle and to me, at the time of making it, there was never a need to make it that complex. That's exactly the tune or the riff or the bass line or the chord arpeggio pattern which was in my head, it was just flowing in my head that way. Hence, I don't think there's anything odd about odd time except for the fact that the number may be an odd number, you know. But musically speaking, there's odd time signatures used in a lot of music out there. Like you will have maybe Kerala folk music which is very much on 7, you know. A lot of folk music in India is on 7, 9 is very common, 13 is very common in a lot of the Nordic countries or the Celtic music you'd find, 17 is very common. And we all know that drummers want to explore rhythm and have a lot of fun doing so. So drummers are not going to be happy with just 4 by 4, you know. And genres like progressive rock or progressive music in general, if you take prog rock, prog metal, symphonic prog, anything with the word prog or progressive in them, they want to go beyond the normal. So you will find a lot of the progressive bands like Rush which composes a lot in 7, Dream Theater will do polymeter in their songs. So they would go, they'll go maybe a 5 in 1 bar and then they'll do a 9 in the next bar. So they are like odd in another odd and then another different odd. Then they'll come back to 4-4, then they'll go out of 4-4 in the same phrase. And the commonality with all these artists you will find is they're making music for just normal people. They are not making music for mathematicians or for other musicians. Most of us musicians make music for non-musicians or music lovers in general. So a lot of the cases as we get better and better with timing, with meter, with tempo and with command over the subdivisions and accents and dotted notes and polyrhythms, we tend to explore or get ourselves acquainted or we just dive into the deep end. So to speak of meter, which are these odd rhythms or odd time signatures. I'm just going to tell you in simple words, when you listen to a piece of music, how are you going to count the odd time signature if it is odd or even if it's even, you know, just a general way on counting it. Now, we've thought about how to do this lesson for actually a couple of years now because you can't play songs on YouTube. Otherwise, the video is just going to be taken off the radar, I guess, or they're going to strike our channel, which we don't really want. So we took a few drum loops. So I figured a good way to count time is listen to drums and count with the drummer. And the drums not only help you stay in time and count the timing well, they also give you a very inspiring piece of music to rely on while you play your principal instrument, be it the piano or the guitar. So we've chosen a few interesting drum loops, which you can find on a website called yeartrock.com. Yeartrock is where we got some of these loops. And I highly recommend it. It's a very inspiring collection of drum loops made by some of the best drummers on planet Earth. And one of the packs we were very fascinated with in our studio was the odd time pack. So we link up the website in the description. You can consider getting yourselves a copy. It'll be very useful for you. So the first groove I have for you is on a seven by eight signature. And if you listen to this before you even try counting it, just try and see what your body does periodically with this groove and at least try and move to the tempo so you could move your head this way. Or you could try and move your head slower. Anyway, but just start by moving your body. So after you move your body, just figure out where the one is. Just listening to it a few times. Usually the kick drum starts the groove. OK, there we go. There we go. Kick, kick, kick and snare are the groove makers. OK, that's a B section of the same groove. Again, we are not losing the kick. Kick, kick, kick, kick. So kick is your one, two, five. And now you go periodically. Five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five. You can also kind of cheat a bit by looking at the waveform. You could see where the kicks are three, four, five, six, seven, one. Now there are two ways to count this. One, two, three. You can count it fast. One, two, three, four, five. Or one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two. This is the slow five, six, seven. What I like about counting it this way in the slow version is it aligns with our body's head movement. Otherwise, your head will move a bit faster. So try to count it in the most natural way and then slow it down or speed it up. You could even speed it up like this. Four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. If you are having an issue saying seven so, so much because seven is a big number, right? You could go 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, break it down as 2 small numbers or 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1 and by breaking it down into smaller numbers you will get a vibe of the accented patterns as well. This feels like 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 feels like a 4 meets 3 or that grouping. So feel your accents by counting it in smaller fragments and you could also look at the meter either slowly than normally how your head works or go double this way 3, 4, 5, 6, 1 or slowly 5, 6, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, be one with the drummer even though you can't drum perhaps just try to kind of act like a drummer it helps 3, 4, 5, 6, and when you're counting be as animated as possible don't say 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, don't say it you know like a boring person 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, say it musically and you need to kind of act like a rather crazy person then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, change the pitch of the numbers 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ok so I'm just gonna try and jam along with this on the piano and try and count just for you to absorb the flavor I'll just be playing some random stuff 6, 7, 6, 7, 1, 2 so you get the idea I hope so 7 by 8 is a great time signature and the next one I have for you is a 5 by 4 now the by it's 7 beats in a cycle or 5 beats in a cycle but when you divide it it says 7 by 8 so that actually means 7 eighth notes in a bar so the top number in a time signature will denote the number of beats in a cycle so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, recycle 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 again cycle 3, 4 like that the bottom number will denote how the beats are being notated and also how you have to perceive the cycle so 5 by 4 versus a 5 by 8 the by 8 is usually quavers or eighth notes so your head is going to not align with a 5 by 8 you're not going to do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 otherwise you'll get a headache so 5 by 4 the by 4 or the quarter note movement of the head is usually why they call it 5 by 4 so in this drum groove which I play for you which is 5 by 4 your pulse is going to be aligned with the head movement unlike a 7 by 8 which we saw earlier which is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 where the head may not move naturally to a 7 it may 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1 so the head will thus take 2 cycles to go back to the 1 or to be on the beats of what you're hearing so let's try and listen to a 5 by 4 as you can see the head tends to move like this naturally and you hear that nice cymbal there making it very obvious every 4 bars of 5 or so 1, 2, 3, 4 and cymbal there 3, 4, 4 is 2, 3, 4, 5 kick again starts off proceedings in the loop 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 now again the practice could be to count it faster 3 in a 5 by 8 form now 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2 or slower 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 trying to go faster now 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in India we have a few cymbals like tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk so it's easy on the tongue and the mind because you're dividing it into units so 5 becomes tuk tuk tuk it 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 so when you're dividing or when you're saying 5 by 8 then instead of saying 2, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 you can do tuk it tuk tuk it tuk tuk tuk it tuk tuk while if you're counting by 4, 3, 4, 5 it's good to say the numbers 3, 4, 5 because that'll allow you to align what you're going to play better 1, 2, 3 you can even do 5, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3 or 5, tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk the faster 5 by 16 and so on. 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. Stop for me to say it without breathing but you get the idea. here. Let's try and jam a bit on the piano. And guys, so that was five by four. Hope you enjoyed the signature. So moving forward, we've looked at fives, we've looked at sevens. Let's continue our odd number adventure. And now let's look at nine. I'm going to play you some drums on nine and let's see how it goes. Quite obvious, very machine like. This is a bit faster because of the tempo. I think it's on a hundred and something. One, one, three to be exact, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, one, two. It's a bit tricky to count it as nine four because it's a lot of numbers at least for me to remember. Okay, again, look out for that kick. One, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four. Whatever grouping feels more natural. It's getting a bit trickier. You have to remember the cycle a lot more. So a tip I would always have for students would be to try and play the music with the drummer. First of all, which we are doing right now successfully. Well, but before all that counted and at the end of it all, don't just rely on being able to say to yourself, Hey, I've been able to count on nine by eight and say the numbers or in a very studious way, you kind of have notated it and clapped some stuff. Trust me, that's not going to help you. The real world scenario is there's a drummer playing that signature nine, eight, you need to compose something on that because they're not going to be too many nine by eight covers out there, right? You'll have to make one. You'll have to compose one of your own. Don't leave the time signature until you've made some music on it. It could be a small finger exercise. And even if you take, let's say something as simple as this, you can even take a finger drill and just look four notes, five notes, four notes, five notes, arpeggio, finger, five notes, or you could maybe take an arpeggio pattern over the nine, eight. Let's see how that goes. Start your piano journey, I guess with counting of these arpeggios and counting of short finger drills and not counting nine, maybe counting it as four and five. So, let's speed through the rest guys. We have, I wanted to just quickly introduce you to other time signatures, 11, 13, 15, and 17. And then we'll pack up the lesson. And let's just see how far we can go through as we keep going forward. And if it's a bit tricky for you, you can always download these drum grooves and practice for yourself. It's always nice to have the drum groove so you can even import it into a recording software like Reaper or Pro Tools or Logic or GarageBand and slow it down. These loops can be slowed down and then even counted on a metronome. So, you have that opportunity with any good drum loop out there. So, let's play the 11 by 8 loop. Let's see how it sounds first of all and get used to the groove or the vibe or the pulse. Next! Also try to, I'll play it again also try to, Since 11 is a huge number figure out how you're going to simplify 11. Are you going to do it as 6 meets 5? Are you going to do 5 meets 6? You want to do 4 meets 4 meets 3? You want to basically you need to go back to a third or fifth grade mathematics class. I think that would help you first of all write down a few number combinations and see how it can latch on to 11 eventually. So the slow 11 will help you to get the pulse. The fast 11 will allow you to phrase and the phrasings will help you to make interesting music. So will the pulse. So always try and do the pulse, the slow pulse, as well as the fast pulse. So let's see how that goes. So I made a mistake there. I did 4, 3, 3 which adds up to 10 which is wrong. So 5, let's plan this now. I'll do 4 meets 3 meets 4. That's what I want to do. Let's see how that goes. Start over again. Somehow enjoying the 5 more. So let's do it with 5. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I think I'll do 5, 4, 2. Let's see how that goes. 1 2 3 4 yeah 1 2 3 4 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 one 2 one 2 bind out and 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 1 2 34 and so on 1 2 3 4 five Now you can always go back to counting 11 slowly, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 1, but it's not so inspiring. I think it's better for these longer time signatures to break it down faster in your mind. So let's wait for the next part. 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1. So I'm trying my best to keep the accents going so that I don't lose sight of the 11. 11 is a big number for me and it's going to get only bigger. So let's get a glimpse of 13 by 8. So this one I'm going to do without the drums. I'm just going to try and figure it out on the piano itself. Now 13, big odd prime number. So how do we figure this out? You can't simplify it. If it was 14, you could say 2 cycles of 7. If it was 16, you could say 4 cycles of 4. But if it's 13, well, it's an odd number and an odd prime number. That makes it even more weirder. So how do we divide it? Maybe 5 meets 5 meets 3. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3. Wait a minute. Is that 13? 5 plus 5, 10, 10 plus 3, 13. Yes, that's approved. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3. So 13 by 8, I think you can just get your pulse eventually if you hear the drums. But if you don't have drums, I don't think you can go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. You don't want to go all the way slowly to 13. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. That's going to be very tricky. So I would divide it as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3. So now make a tune which is 5 meets 5 meets 3. I'm just going to take 5 consecutive notes maybe on B or maybe D is nice. Just to visualize it also on my fingers, it will help. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, or maybe 1, 2, 3, an arpeggio there. Okay, that's one way you can do it. The other thing is you don't have to play every single division. You don't have to do... You can do that if it's an arpeggio. You can do that if it's a nice linear lick or a phrase. But you can also play maybe on few of the beats like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3. The 1, 2, 3 I'm going to do with 3 notes. So like I said, try to make it as rememberable for yourself as possible. That's the only way you're going to get these rather tricky time signatures. You'll be surprised how the chords changing itself will help you shift better. So, right, so this is going to be a bit scary. Let's give 15 by 8 a listen. That's where it just took us off, at least me. There we go. The cymbal helps me a lot. Oh man, this is weird. Ah, the cymbal. Just love that cymbal. So, again, look at the, slowly but surely, once you get past the weirdness of the groove, you'll realize you can move your head quite well. And now the drummers decided to have fun over the 15 by 8, but you need to keep your head going somehow, to the pulse. So, you'll realize you can now simplify 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So, 8 plus 7 seems to equal to 15. So, I'm simplifying the numbers. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Possibly, that's what this drummer is also thinking in his head. I can't imagine what's going on through this drummer's head. This is phenomenal stuff, very inspiring. So, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, totaling to 15. 4, 5, 6. So, let's try and jam with this drummer and see if it's even possible. Keep the 8 going, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, doing the first two hits. So that was 15 by 8, I have one more time signature before we pack up the lesson, 17 by 8, let's give it a go, I think we definitely need the drums for this one, maybe the drums will scare us even further, but again, 17 by 8, big number, so start with small numbers, I don't think we are going to be able to go to 17 by just counting, who's going to remember so much, so divide 17 into smaller fragments, move your head to the pulse, get aligned with the music naturally, organically, let's see how it goes, 17 by 8 coming up, let me just break down what's going on in my head at least at this current moment, I'm trying to now think of it, I don't know whether I should do 5 meets 3 or 3 meets 5 because the drummer is already playing music, so I have to match him or her, whoever drummed in some organic way possible, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, maybe mathematically right, but it may not work with the existing loop, so that's what I'm trying to figure out, so again, 17 is our end goal, you can phrase it as maybe 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, so I'll do 5, 3, 4, 5, it may help to write this down, I haven't but let's see how it goes, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, let's see how that goes with the drums, it's working and you can start with simpler stuff, things which you can catch on to, like the cymbal, that's the cymbal, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, end of the day this feels like a maths class, but hopefully a fun maths class, so I hope you guys have found this lesson useful, I hope I've given you an introduction into counting odd meter or any meter which is not 4 by 4 really or this or any number which is quite big and then you package it into cycles, so in a nutshell whatever you hear try to form the groove with the drummer, try to be aligned with the drummer, the best way to do that is to play along with the pulse, count your pulse really well and then see where it goes, if you don't get to the pulse of the song either the slower pulse, the faster pulse or the very fast pulse as I showed you for 7 and 5s, you're not going to be able to play much on anything, so count the pulse, be one with the drummer, be one with the groove or the time signature and then only can you move forward with anything you're supposed to play, so even if you have to latch on to the song don't play, don't learn, don't even read the sheet notation or the staff notation until you've wired your brain or your head to the pulse of the song and hopefully you also saw in this lesson it's not easy even for me, so I had to listen to the drums a few times, try and count it, I couldn't count all the way up to bigger numbers like 13, 15, 17 and whatnot, so the only option is to simplify it into smaller groupings like 5, 3, 4, 5 which enabled me to do the 17 very well if you remember from the last one and yeah, try and get yourself the drum loops, it may help you to definitely complement the lesson better and again this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music, you can support us on Patreon that will help us make more lessons like this, do consider giving the video a like, a share and leave us a comment with something you'd like to learn, what you thought about the lesson and lastly head over to my Riff website which is riffs.jasonzachmusic.com where you can just go over there, filter by time signature, so you could start with a 7 or a 5 or whatever we did today, a lot of the recent riffs in fact have drums which we've programmed, which we've played with other, we've used other drummers as well, we've used some MIDI loops and a bunch of other things, so there's a full-on arrangement of our recent riffs as some of you may know, so head over to the Riff website, you can filter to the time signatures you desire to learn be it 11 by 8, be it weird accents which I've ended up doing over the years of making these you know thousands of riffs and let us know what you think and have fun and hope it improves your learning process and makes you a better musician at the end of it all. Cheers, catch you in the next one.