ever wondered why some people seem to have a gift for music have you ever
wished that you could play by ear sing in tune improvise and jam you're in the
right place time to turn those wishes into reality
welcome to the musicality podcast with your host Christopher Sutton have you
heard of Polyrhythms I have to admit that until recently there was something
that I had heard of and knew basically what the definition was but I really
didn't know much more than that today I'm joined on the show by Anastasia
Voitinskaia from the musical you team Anastasia works with Andrew on the
publishing side of things and she helps put together the great articles and
tutorials you see coming out on our website each week as well as putting
together the show notes for this podcast we recently tasked Anastasia with taking
an old and simple article we had on the topic of Polyrhythms and turning into
something much more comprehensive and useful so I thought I'd invite her onto
the show to share with you what she learned Anastasia
thanks for joining us on the podcast thank you for having me I'm really
excited to be here so before we dive into Polyrhythms maybe you can just
give a quick bio and intro to yourself and your musical life so people have an
idea who you are sure so I work at musical you as an assistant content
editor which again means I work on the editorial team researching writing
creating content such as this remaster of the polyrhythm article I'm about to
talk about formatting text and images and essentially wrangling raw content
into the finished articles that you see on the musical u blog as for my
personal music life I began playing the piano at the age of three at the request
or actually well my mom basically made me start a lesson however I'm very glad
she did because that piano lessons those piano lessons then turned into me
picking up more and more instruments later in my life starting guitar at
about 10 or 11 years of age and then picking up the bass guitar more recently
and the synthesizer in more recent years I've taken the
focus away from piano and more towards guitar and bass and since as I began to
play in bands and I currently play the bass guitar in a band and have a solo
kind of experimental electronic project that I'm working on very cool and as
part of all of that music learning did you know very much about poly rhythms so
here's the funny thing I really didn't because in classical piano training you
don't really come across them very much they are definitely there but really
polyrhythms prevail in genres such as jazz and traditional African music and
some metal and some experimental music like for example Nine Inch Nails makes a
lot of use of them however in Bach and Beethoven not so much so actually when
it came time for me to research this article and put together a cohesive
piece on polyrhythms there was a lot of work to do cool and what did you learn
about where they do come up if it's not Bach and Beethoven you mentioned a
couple of genres there is there a particular source of polyrhythms why
are they a big topic that you might come across if they're not part of the kind
of classical history so they originated in African music and traditional African
music because you'll notice that when they drum it's really it's not in 4/4
time it's like a complicated cross rhythm with a lot of overlap and these
kind of like rolling almost like conflicting rhythms which sound really
cool but it's just like not something that you'll hear so much in western
music at first glance however you then realized that traditional African music
has influenced so much of Western music you know like rock and roll like folk
music like jazz especially blues for sure
so you kind of will find these pastiches and pali rhythms in these genres and
something that i learned that really struck me because I listen to so much
dance music but I'd never considered poly rhythms in dance music before is
just you know how much things like house will contain polyrhythms because again
this dance music this partially influenced by African
music interesting and we've kind of I guess teased a little bit there in some
of what you've described but what is a polyrhythm
for anyone listening who's only heard the word or maybe not even that
what is the polyrhythm in music so a polyrhythm
is essentially two rhythms played simultaneously one on top of the other
giving a feeling of conflict kind of they're defined as one number over the
other and these two numbers represent the two rhythms that are being played
simultaneously and they're not always rhythms being played simultaneously in
music quiet why isn't every bit of music a polyrhythm the thing that makes pali
rhythms or the thing that sets poly rhythms apart from regular rhythms is
kind of like the cross for them or like the conflict that occurs it's basically
for example just to give really simple example there's something called the 3 / 2
polyrhythm where 3 beats are played against two so it's almost kind of like
playing in two different time signatures however it happens at the same time so
it's a very different feel from something that's like in 4/4 where you
have like two beats against four beats for example it sounds completely
different interesting okay so it's almost like having two time signatures
going at the same time mm-hmm and so why should anyone care about polyrhythms
they sound a bit weird they might sound a bit weird when you're
simply talking about them and saying oh it's two rhythms played at the same time
but actually they're very natural sounding when you do hear them in music
because speech almost can like mimic they're sorry polyrhythms can almost
mimic speech because it's kind of just like a non robotic like more organic
like rolling kind of rhythm which is cool because part of its origin is like
in African drumming of course which people sang along too and spoke along
too so it wouldn't have like this 4/4 meter it would kind of like mimic speech
which is polyrhythmic probably if you were to
really listen to it and record it maybe that's interesting yeah it
definitely jumped out at me reading the article and learning more
about polyrhythms myself that they're one of these topics in music that if you
approach it from one angle seem super obscure and complex and mathematical and
theoretical but if you approach it from another angle it's kind of just natural
and and what happens if you do something fairly simple in music so you mentioned
that the three over two there can you just describe you know in in terms of
notation or in terms of what people might be thinking looking at 2 3 against
2 polyrhythm what is going on there so we'll have a link in the show notes to
an article that kind of visualizes this for you but a 3 over 2 polyrhythm would
for example be 3 notes played and then 2 notes kind of superimposed on top of
that so one cycle of the polyrhythm would involve 3 notes being played or 3
beats being played in one of the rhythms concurrently with two notes or two beats
played on the other rhythm however the three notes will be played faster so
that they can take up the same amount of time as the two beats then the cycle
repeats so kind of beat one would be where both rhythms align and actually
previously when I mentioned that polyrhythms mimic speech a lot of the time
or that speech makes polyrhythms you can kind of assign a phrase to this 3
over 2 polyrhythm and that phrases hot cup of tea so actually it would sound a
bit like this I'm going to tap on my desk it would be like and so with the
phrase so the kind of three of the polyrhythm has the words hot cup and tea
and the two of the polyrhythm has the words hot and of so you can kind
of speak along to it and count it out like that just by clapping or tapping or
whatever gotcha okay so I mean three notes in the space of two notes is
triplets right we're kind of talking about a triplet part against the street
two plates yeah and I guess with triplets they're not
normally that confusing because you don't have them at the same time as the
equivalent to notes whereas with a polyrhythm we're talking about those two
things actually happening out loud at the same time precisely which can make
it a bit tricky to understand if you are used to kind of like for example full
reverse just to where perhaps one hand is playing do plaits and the other is
playing - no - it notes per duplet I think any musician hearing about Poli
rhythms is going to instinctively want to try out and I know that for me anyway
when I read about them and I was like okay so five against seven or three
against two I'll just you know I'll tap five times with one hand and seven times
with the other and I'll do it at the same time it's incredibly difficult and
you know this is something that drummers get pretty good at and particularly if
they're in the jazz or world music and they're really getting it rhythms but
for your average musician where we're used to thinking about a simple beat and
subdividing that beat into equal parts and that kind of being our grid for
rhythm as something we've talked about on this show before it's really hard to
kind of get two timelines going in your head at the same time and so I really
literally what you just described with a hot cup of tea it's really elegant
because you can try that immediately just and take what Anastasia says so hot
and of is one of your parts you're just happening on the hot and of and your
other one is hot cup tea and it's very easy if you're listening to this podcast
just get your hands and first of all just tap the hot cup of tea hot cup of
tea but then try and allocate your hands like that
and you'll find that it's actually fairly easy to get your hands to do what
they're meant to and then the kind of mental gymnastics is to work back from
that to thinking okay so this one is just doing the two beat so this one is
managing to fit in the three and you can kind of I don't know retrofit those two
timelines on to what you've managed to make yourself - so is this something
that works for any polyrhythm is there always a nice wordy way to figure it out
I wish is the short answer I wish because that would make it quite
easy to tap any polyrhythm and then translate it to
your playing however that's not always the case there are definitely a few that
worked for simpler polyrhythms for example there's a phrase for the for
over three polyrhythm that is saying what atrocious weather over and over to
the beat of the polyrhythm you can hear a sound example of that in our article
on polyrhythms which we'll have a link to in the show notes
however polyrhythms can get really really complicated as you'll hear in music
there can be as Christopher just mentioned 5 over 7 or 2 over 7 or 3 over
4 if you would want to play such a thing I don't know it can get very bad
so there are in the same way that we kind of learn according to a grid some
simpler patterns for example the most basic rock beat which is kind of a kick
snare or kick hi-hat snare hi-hat we can put that in a grid and understand it
visually in that same way we can put pretty much any polyrhythm into a grid
even even the more complex ones and count it out like that and this
definitely involves starting quite slow as you figure out when exactly to place
each hit but again with enough practice you start to internalize the polyrhythm
and understand it so if you're already a drummer this will of course be easier
for you if you're not it'll be a bit of a steeper learning curve but it's
definitely possible as I learned to internalize them with enough practice
even if you're practicing with just a metronome to get started or if you're
having more difficulty try a polyrhythm metronome which kind of like casts out
each beat of each polyrhythm which I actually found really helpful for
understanding the more difficult ones that's great advice and I have to say I
loved the visual representations in the article you put together they definitely
make it easier to get your head around what is going on and how the two rhythms
coexist I have to admit like I'm very comfortable with traditional notation
but it can be quite tricky to look at that and figure out the relative timings
of the different whereas when you put a grid where they
have some kind of common time element to them I found that alone a lot easier to
fit in so really terrific so you gave some tips there for how people can go
away and practice some polyrhythms we talked about speaking them out or
looking at visualizations and you mentioned working with a metronome or a
polyrhythm metronome is a good way to do it and we'll have links in the show
notes for more on loads what why would someone bother I'm hoping that people
listening to this have found it interesting but they might still be
wondering you know what does this have to offer me if I'm not gonna go and join
it say an African drums that are cool well you should absolutely be going to
join an African drum circle look like the most fun anyone could ever have to
be honest however other than that it's basically like polyrhythms are what I
would describe to be like a pleasant surprise to the ear and I think making
music is all about kind of pleasantly surprising your listeners and a big way
to do that is obviously through rhythms so even though writing a rock song in
4/4 is going to be pleasant and familiar imagine how you can mix things
up by maybe occasionally throwing a polyrhythm there maybe during the bridge
or something like that in things like dance music which is kind of repetitive
again you can really add a lot of interest just by throwing a polyrhythm
in there maybe make the song based on a polyrhythm
like for example so many african songs are and again this whole really I think
make your music stand out from kind of the traditional Western 4/4 time because
everyone does tend to write in that so basically it's really just a tool to set
your music apart from the masses in my opinion like for example I definitely
notice if a song has a poly rhythm in it like you can always tell when a song has
interesting structure because you're kind of like oh what's that that's
that's interesting you know it really like makes your ear perk up it makes you
listen definitely we're so used to everything kind of slotting in together
perfectly and repetitively I think when one part of the music kind of goes off
on its own tempo as it were like a different rhythm
grid that does really stand out to us cool so songwriters definitely there's a
lot there we can learn and I think music fans just to open your ears a bit to
what's possible and to be honest for myself it's maybe a geeky angle on it
but I just find the mental challenge of trying to track what's going on when you
listen to one of these polyrhythms is actually just really fun in itself so if
any of those things appeal to you I definitely encourage going to the link
in the show notes for this episode of musicality podcast com where you will
find that the show notes for this episode that Anastasia has lovingly put
together which will link to the article that she is also behind thank you very
much for joining us on the show today Anastasia to talk a little bit about
polyrhythms thank you for having me I think I learned even a bit more actually
through doing this so that's great also I'd like to bring up that I'll make a
little playlist of songs that contain polyrhythms and you can try counting
along with them and spotting which ones have which rhythms thank you for having
me thank you for listening to the
musicality podcast this episode has ended but your musical journey continues
head over to musicalitypodcast.com where you will find the links and
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