Most of what you produce will be in 4/4. Knowing what lies outside it makes your 4/4 more interesting - and opens up feels that a straight grid cannot give you.
Simple and compound time
- Simple time divides each beat into two: 2/4, 3/4, 4/4.
- Compound time divides each beat into three: 6/8 (two beats of three), 9/8 (three of three), 12/8 (four of three).
6/8 and 3/4 both contain six 8th notes, but they feel completely different. 3/4 groups them in pairs - one-and-two-and-three-and. 6/8 groups them in threes - one-two-three-four-five-six. 3/4 waltzes; 6/8 rolls.
12/8 is the slow blues, the doo-wop ballad and a great deal of gospel and soul: four big beats, each with a triplet inside it. It is closely related to the shuffle.
Mongo Santamaría's "Afro Blue" plays three against two over a 6/8 feel, and Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" floats in a triple meter - both worth hearing for how a three-based feel changes a groove.
The tresillo
Divide a bar into eight 8th notes and play the 1st, 4th and 7th: 3+3+2. That is the tresillo, a rhythm with roots in African and Cuban music that runs through almost every style since - New Orleans rhythm and blues, reggaeton, dancehall, and countless pop basslines and synth riffs.
It works because it is uneven. The ear expects even groupings and gets 3+3+2, which creates momentum towards the next bar.
Clave: the rhythmic key
Clave means "key" in Spanish. In Afro-Cuban music it is a short pattern of accented hits that the whole groove is organised around - sometimes called a key pattern, a guide pattern, or an asymmetrical timeline.
Son clave extends the tresillo across two bars: three hits in one bar, two in the other. Played 3-2 or 2-3, it tells every other instrument where the strong points of the phrase are.
Clave-type rhythms appear across popular music, often unnoticed:
- The Bo Diddley beat, from New Orleans rhythm and blues.
- Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy", built straight on it.
- George Michael's "Faith" - the guitar strum.
- Coldplay's "Clocks" - the piano figure.
- Adele's "Hello" and Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot" use clave-like accents in their grooves.
Find the key pattern in a groove and you know where everything else should sit.
Offsets and displacement
You can create the illusion of a different meter without changing the time signature by placing a pattern so it starts in an unexpected place. A chord that lasts a dotted quarter repeated over 4/4 drifts across the bar line, landing in a different place each time. The opening of Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place" plays with exactly this kind of ambiguity - its long, offset chords make the listener unsure where the bar begins, and the bar length itself is famously debated.
Odd time signatures
"Odd" here means rare, not just odd numbers.
- 5/4 - five beats, usually felt as 3+2 or 2+3. Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" is the classic.
- 7/4 - seven beats, often 4+3. Pink Floyd's "Money" is the best-known example; plenty of electronic producers use 7/4 or 7/8 to make a loop feel off-balance in an appealing way.
- 6/4 - six beats, sometimes felt as two bars of 3/4, sometimes as 4+2.
- Mixed meter - bars of different lengths in sequence, such as a bar of 4/4 followed by a bar of 3/4.
In a DAW, set a time-signature change at the right bar and the grid will follow. Program odd meters by counting the groupings, not the beats: 7/8 as 2+2+3 is much easier to feel than seven separate pulses.
Polyrhythm and free meter
- Polyrhythm is two rhythms with different groupings at once - three against two, four against three. A triplet hi-hat over a straight kick is the simplest version. It is common in West African music, jazz and much electronic music.
- Polymeter is two loops of different lengths cycling against each other - a three-beat synth pattern over a four-beat drum loop. They line up again every twelve beats. Most DAWs make this easy: set clips to different lengths and let them run.
- Free meter has no regular pulse at all - ambient music, film scoring, rubato introductions. Turn off the click and record to feel.
Do this now
- Program the tresillo as a bassline over a straight four-on-the-floor kick.
- Extend it into son clave over two bars and program it on a clave sample; then try 2-3 instead of 3-2 and hear how the groove changes.
- Set a project to 7/8 and build a drum loop counted 2+2+3.
- Create a polymeter: a three-beat arpeggio clip and a four-beat drum clip looping together.