Can someone clear up poly-rhythms for me please.
My theory isn't great and I don't find the videos available on youtube very clear.

I think it's something in could find useful in trying to create music similar to slower tracks from A perfect circle, tool, or dorje.

I think with say 3:4 polyrhythm it consists of either :
Playing 4:4 quarter or 16th notes, but putting emphasis on or only playing every 3rd note, meaning it would take 4 repetitions of these groups of 3 before resolving the emphasis of both parts.

or is it

Taking a bar which lasts an absolute amount of time and having one player divide this in to quarters and the other divide it in to thirds?

oh.. I think I may have answered my own question using this:
http://f.unkster.tripod.com/polyrhythm.html

Urumiko wrote:Can someone clear up poly-rhythms for me please.

Slap a high pass filter on at 500hz ;)

blinddrew wrote:Slap a high pass filter on at 500hz ;)

*badum tsch* :beamup:

Urumiko wrote:Can someone clear up poly-rhythms for me please.


I think with say 3:4 polyrhythm it consists of either :
Playing 4:4 quarter or 16th notes, but putting emphasis on or only playing every 3rd note, meaning it would take 4 repetitions of these groups of 3 before resolving the emphasis of both parts.

I think you'll find that both approaches are identical...

X o o o X o o o X o o o
X o o X o o X o o X o o

I still have an ancient Billotti tri-nome
It's a mechanical metronome with gears inside that lets one choose up to 3 sounds at once playing any number of beats against the other two. For example it could play 3 against 4 against 7 at the same time. Plus any variations combining 1 up to 8 beats. It really messed with my head at first but It taught me a lot about polyrhythm fun. I still can play 3 against 4 or 2 against 3 as those were the easiest to memorize.
I studied a bit of Ghanaian (sp?) drumming whose time base for some tunes was 12. Lots of great polyrhythms there.

If you want to get more into it I would suggest checking out apps for the portable devices. Some allow you to create polyrhythms easily. I found polyrhythms great for opening up new possibilities for writing music and sometimes understanding what somebody had just played.