Time Signatures

I'm in a deathgrind band that has a sludgey groove to it. It's hard to believe, the 3 other members in the band play in a sludge rock band called Man Down. So I'm the only one with death metal and grindcore influences. They're heavy into time signatures and such. I write alot of music not even bringing that into mind. When I showed them some of my songs they said they weren't in any time signature. Does anyone know what I should or can do about this?

I mean I didn't realize grindcore bands used time signatures for a 30 second songs. But who knows?

Well, they have to be in some kind of time, even if the time sig. changes every measure. I would start by making sure that everyone has a good understaning of time signatures.

... "deathgrind with a sludgey groove... sludge rock... grindcore".

27 must be old because I have no idea what you are talking about!!!!

To answer your question, if you are not aware of time signatures you may be writing everything in 4/4 time or maybe 12/8 if it is fast. You just need to learn what time signatures mean and then you can make use of them.

The top number tells you how many beats there are in a measure.

The bottom number tells you what value/length note each beat is... just put a "1" over the number- so if the bottom number is a 4 the note value per each beat is a quarter note (1/4).

For example, 3/4 time has 3 beats per measure and each beat is a quarter note.

12/8 is 12 beats per measure with each one being an eighth note.

So one measure of 12/8 could have 12 8th notes, or if you played twice as fast: 24 16ths notes, or if you doubled the length of each note (or tied each pair of 8th notes together): 6 quarter notes per measure. Mix and match all types of notes (and rests) together- the possibilities are endless.

You can do all kinds of neat things.

There is a really cool Rush song called "Cygnus X1" where one measure is something like 12/8 and the following measure is 11/8 or something (I'm not totally sure) and it gives the music a very unpredictable lopsided feel. Of course this is extreme use of time signatures and is almost impossible to play live in a band (unless you are Rush)... most songs stay in one time signature the whole time.

Fast guitar shredding stuff is probably often in 12/8, pop songs are often in 4/4.

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Of course this is extreme use of time signatures and is almost impossible to play live in a band (unless you are Rush)... most songs stay in one time signature the whole time.

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I was once playing in a street band, and we had to play a piece in I think it was 13/16 time - but that, predictably, dissolved into 6/8 in practice.

More appositely, I once heard a record on a Jazz radio programme which was executed much more solidly in 33/16 time. This, we listeners were assured by the presenter, was taken from an album on which most tracks were first takes! This bunch of jazzers had walked in, played from sheet music the incredibly difficult compositions - and that was a take! Whew!!

I'm sure Rush are very good - for a rock band - but there are higher things. Nonetheless, alternating odd time signatures is tricky stuff and all credit to them. But it can become very difficult to listen to some of that sort of stuff, because it's hard to find something to anchor one's ears to.

An interesting song for alternating time signatures is the Bacharach/David composition Anyone Who Had A Heart. This alternates (can't remember what between) for the first few bars of the verse, but though it feels faltering, which reflects the lyric, it still has a groove one can feel.

But I guess if you're into Slime, Sponge or Scrunch or whatever those obscure genres were, you're not likely to listen to Bacharach tunes.

Time signatures other than 4/4 essentially don't happen in popular music. But just because you aren't playing in 4/4 doesn't mean that it's going to sound off-kilter unless that's the way that the part is written and performed. Believe it or not, Rush isn't that technical or a rock/prog band by anymeans. If you know what you are playing and are able to cleanly play the parts then you should be able to play nearly any time signature. It's just a matter of practice. Let's say that I give you a sequence of seven 8th notes. If you play that cycle properly, as 8th notes, and then repeat the cycle you are now playing in 7/8 time. The trick is really to make sure that the drummer knows what he is doing with the time sig. Most rock based drummers don't learn how to subdivide a measure, they just know the up beat and the down beat of a 4/4 groove. Once they learn how to stop thinking in terms of: 1-2-3-4, or "Thud, CRASH!, Thud, CRASH!" and start thinking: 1-a-2-a-3-a-4-a (8th note feel and subdivision of a 4/4 bar) then all things are possible.

My band is very technical, being prog-metal, but by no means are we the most over-the-top band out there. We rarely play in 4/4. Putting time sig's against time sigs' is an essential part of our sound and writing style.

In one of our longer songs, most of them are around 6 1/2 minutes, there is a 2 part clean jazzy intro. The first part consists of: four bars of 4/4, one bar of 5/4 and two bars of 7/8 which repeats twice. The second part consists of: two bars of 11/8 and one bar of 9/8 and that cycle repeats four times. Then it goes to the verse, which is much faster and very metal, in 7/8. The chorus is in alternating bars of 6/8 and 7/8. It goes on like that with a number of movements all in various time signatures. Yes we play this kind of stuff live, yes it's tight and yes people like it. One of our most popular, and requested tunes, is a dark jazzy ballad - the kind of song that most people would write as a simple 4 chord strummer. People go nuts over this one and it has: 18 chords, 3 keys and 6 time signatures , including 13/16, all in the space of 5 1/2 minutes.

So in the end, it can be done and it can be done well. I write 90% of the music and I don't worry about time sig when I write - I just write the parts and after I'm happy with them do I go back and figure out what is going on within them. Let's the music flow then worry about it's structure.