5 against 4 (Quintuplet?)

rcaz

I've been getting a bit obsessed with time in my music lately. Listening to lots of Neu!, Autechre and Stravinsky.

I remember from looking at some of my friend's piano music seeing a few notes bracketed with a 5 above the stave, which I guess is a quintuplet. So everyone can do a triplet, Nice Cup-Of-Tea and all. What about 5 against 4?

I'm studying music at the moment, got a decent knowledge of theory behind me, but never encountered this in my own study or playing.

18AD

I think you are talking about polyrhythm.

It depends how exactly you're doing it. I think, typically, if you are playing it over a quarter note duration it would be called a quintuplet.

So a triplet over a quarter note is a triplet. But a triplet over two quarter notes would be 3:2, 3 over 2. And a triplet over four quarter notes would be 3:4, 3 over 4.

So with five, you have 5 over 2 or 5 over 4.

You can theoretically have any number over any other number, but obviously it gets more difficult the further you push it.

Again, like a lot of music lingo there is a lot of variation and different terminology for the same thing.

There is a good article by Steve Vai here: http://www.vai.com/LittleBlackDots/tempomental.html
This is handy as it explains how you can create any polyrhythm you want.

5 over 4 is explained and demonstrated well here: http://www.youtube.com/user/jazzer4#p/u/18/31zinw39KIc

That last guy, Ronan Guilfoyle has a good book on polyrhythm and polymetre available through his website.

Hope that helps.
AD

damonjewel

El Pr0n wrote: »

I've been getting a bit obsessed with time in my music lately. Listening to lots of Neu!

Sorry to drag this slight off topic El Pron, but as a Neu! fan I can't think of any extraordinary timings other than their straight up Motorik 4/4. I don't think Klaus Dinger deviated too much from it. I would be interested to learn more

cheers

Damo

rcaz

damonjewel wrote: »

Sorry to drag this slight off topic El Pron, but as a Neu! fan I can't think of any extraordinary timings other than their straight up Motorik 4/4. I don't think Klaus Dinger deviated too much from it. I would be interested to learn more

cheers

Damo

When I mentioned Neu! I was specifically thinking of the really syncopated guitar part in Fur Immer. Nothing wrong with holding a Motorik 4/4 rhythm section though, it's still all about the rhythm, no matter how uniform.

damonjewel

El Pr0n wrote: »

When I mentioned Neu! I was specifically thinking of the really syncopated guitar part in Fur Immer. Nothing wrong with holding a Motorik 4/4 rhythm section though, it's still all about the rhythm, no matter how uniform.

Thats what I thought you'd be referring too (i.e. The use of rhythm in music) just thought I was missing something. If you like Neu! then in a similar vein to Neu! check out La Dusseldorf, Harmonia, and Can (especially Yoo Doo right and Halleluhwah).

Cheers

Damo

rcaz

damonjewel wrote: »

Thats what I thought you'd be referring too (i.e. The use of rhythm in music) just thought I was missing something. If you like Neu! then in a similar vein to Neu! check out La Dusseldorf, Harmonia, and Can (especially Yoo Doo right and Halleluhwah).

Cheers

Damo

I'm big into Can but I haven't checked out the other two. Cheers

kawaii

Can you recall which composer the piece was by? Scriabin often has rhythms like these notated in his piano music, but his music is meant to be played very rubato allowing for some imprecision. It makes for a really dense, billowing texture. The trick is just to make sure the hands sync up at the beat, and then the intermittant notes will generally line up once you have the piece under your hands.

Here's an example of his cross rhythms (including 5 over 4 on the second crotchet of bar 3, among several other places) and their effect!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA3TzzsrmWw

Other composers use tuplets like these as a means of squashing a desired set of notes into a time value which can't accomodate all of the notes in even note values. These usually just consist of short, rapid scalar runs in one of the voices between a starting and destination note (eg the melody line in the opening bars of Beethoven's set of 32 variations in C minor).

Hope this helps.

Dan

rcaz

kawaii wrote: »

Can you recall which composer the piece was by? Scriabin often has rhythms like these notated in his piano music, but his music is meant to be played very rubato allowing for some imprecision. It makes for a really dense, billowing texture. The trick is just to make sure the hands sync up at the beat, and then the intermittant notes will generally line up once you have the piece under your hands.

Here's an example of his cross rhythms (including 5 over 4 on the second crotchet of bar 3, among several other places) and their effect!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA3TzzsrmWw

Other composers use tuplets like these as a means of squashing a desired set of notes into a time value which can't accomodate all of the notes in even note values. These usually just consist of short, rapid scalar runs in one of the voices between a starting and destination note (eg the melody line in the opening bars of Beethoven's set of 32 variations in C minor).

Hope this helps.

Dan

Nice one Dan!

That Scriabin piece is class. I'll be following him up more (heard the name mentioned a lot, studied Vers La Flame in college last year).

I can't remember the piece I was talking about. It was something romantic, might have been Chopin or Debussy, quite rubato-y as well. I know stuff like that is supposed to have a very free feeling, but I like the really complex structured sound of these kinds of things when they're metronomic too. That walking bass video in 18AD's post is exactly the kind of stuff I was after when I first thought of posting this thread.