On Polymeters

Yes, let's cross meters. In short, polymeters can be described as two or more meters played simultaneously. For example, a melody in six eight juxtaposed with another melody in eleven eight. The idea is beautifuly simple, but a little hard to cognate.
 The problem being, we are used to hearing one discernable melody at a time. This is not to say as an audience the population cannot enjoy polyphony, only that the mind is tweaked to 'focus' our ears on one particular line at a time. It is the same as trying to listen to two conversations at once. Now, when a melody is harmonised with a countermelody in the same time, the mind recognises both, but either focuses on one or creates a combination of the two. This is similar to homophony, the mind recognises and follows the harmonic structure, but only notices the subtleties in one part at a time. With polymeters, the mind tends to either listen to one melody at a time and ignore the other or create a framework around points at which the meters match up. In our example above, six and eleven eight, every six bars of eleven, the two parts will match up again.
 Why, other than simply to experiment, would we use this? The answer is all texture and interest. In popular music we are so used to hearing what we expect in music, when something out of the ordinary comes along our auditory circuits are very excited:


In the above example, the guitar line is in 9/4 while the drum and bass parts are in 4/4. Philip Glass experiments with polymeters, although is better known for incremantation of meter between sections.
 Anyway, there's some food for thought. Try writing two parts, one in 5/4, the other in 13/8 and make it sound delish.

Bayartai

On SunriseInTheSea

I really like Time Columns, proving the math of the east coast of the States hasn't quite dried up. They have a wonderful mix of post-rock beauty and math-rock technical ability. This EP, which was released on digital download last year (and available free, see below) is a bit of a masterpiece debut. The Baltimore duo create polyphony using a Gibson Echoplex looper (win). There are plenty of complex melodies and the odd chordal passage. The tracks are named after the seasons, excluding track three. I reccomend listening to Fall first. The track has an almost Glassian feel, with a colourful loop lacking any discernable melody overdubbed withsome quick arpeggio work and plenty of clean guitar. The drums are also most pronounced on this track. The drums are actually mad in the mid-section which is a delight. Very breaky.
 I'm not sure this EP will recieve the commercial success it deserves, but it is very good. In terms of critical success, I think for this brand of math-rock, although I enjoy listening to it enormously, perhaps they have missed the boat. Nonetheless, I am hopeful they will tour England and I am sure as their sound develops we will be blessed with a very interesting animal.
I think, all things considered (and perhaps a little generously):

2:1

You can download SunriseInTheSea here: http://timecolumns.bandcamp.com/

Viso Gero

On Phase Shifting

Without Reich, Math-Rock would have evolved into something somewhat duller. Extend this generic intro for your own pleasure if you like, but let’s write phasing. Phase shifting, in it’s simplest form, consists of two identical lines of music played at steady but very slightly varying tempos. Over time the lines will appear to fall out of time with each other. If the lines are looped, which they generally are in phasing, the music will appear, after a while, to fall back into time. This effect is very easy to achieve with, for example, two different tape players from Reich’s era playing identical tapes (tape players very rarely played cassettes at the same speed, although the variation was very subtle), but performing phasing live introduces a few difficulties.
 To begin with, it is very, very hard to ignore what is happening sonically around you. This becomes exponentially harder when you are trying to play the same looped line as the Korg SV1 88 Note ‘Stage Vintage’ Keyboard next to you, but at a slightly varied tempo. Furthermore, if you can ignore the sound around you, it would be incredibly difficult to create a tempo only so slightly varied as to allow the music an extended amount of time to evolve. A system, therefore, was created to overcome this.
 Phase shifting live, is very much the same as a round. The difference being once a line starts in a round it continues to the end and finishes or loops indefinitely at a defined interval to the other lines. Phasing allows the line freedom to move in time. It can be achieved by adding notes. So the first line loops indefinitely. The second line loops at first in phase with the first line, but at a determined moment the last semi-quaver in the line is shifted to the beginning of the bar, thus moving the line a sixteenth note out of time with the initial line. This practise can then be continued. Furthermore, rather than performing the melodies in time to begin with, introduce a few layers of the same melody, note-by-note, layer-by-layer, until a harmonically static texture is created of out-of-sync identical lines.
 The technique is as simple as that, and although it may not be a common mode of composition in math rock, texturally the influence is huge (just listen to Don Caballero 3 from What Burns Never Returns). Maybe I’ll explore polymeters next.
For now, a man playing Piano Phase on two pianos, little treat.

Head aega