When picking odd groupings such as 7, 10, 11, 5. Ive always been confused on this. Do you play 7 notes per beat, or do you play 7 notes like 16th note triplets, only you accent differently? Does that make sense?



Completely off subject here. I tried changing my email for logging in. Kept on giving me incorrect password. . .

Odd groupings would be like: 7 notes in the time of 4, 10 notes in the time of 8, 11 notes in the time of 8, 5 notes in the time of 4, etc.

So...x number in the time of n-number of notes.

Alright cool.. Cool, I wasn't completely for sure on how it works to well. Thanks for clearing it up.

Sorry, it was kind of a brief explanation, I was on my way to get something to eat.

In the world of numbers, you've got even and odd numbers.

Even numbers would be 2,4,6,8,10,12 and so on.
Examples of odd numbers are 1,3,5,7,9,11,13 etc etc.

When talking about music, there is usually referred to the number of notes per beat.
For most people, even numbers are a lot easier to get used to, for example when you play 2(eight notes),4(sixteenth notes) or 6(sixteenth triplets) notes per beat. This is because the music we grew up with is based around this concept.
Odd numbers of groupings consist out of and odd(not even) number of notes per beat. This includes 5 (quintuplets), 7(septuplets) or 9 (nintuplets) notes per beat. Our ears are not used to hearing this type of note groupings.

So in order to get your ears used to hearing this, I recommend practicing slowly with the metronome, and playing 5 notes on each beat, or 3, or 7 or 9. Once you know in your head how these note groups sound, set the metronome to a higher speed!

PS: in addition to your post above, 10 notes is not an odd number of notes.

i can also just be fx. a 7 16th notes in 4/4 pattern repeated, to cause different accents on the notes

What I meant by odd, is just different groupings. Like 5, or 10 which isn't normal...
Frederik.. So both ways I mentioned are just different way so of doing it then? You can either play 7 notes per beat.. Or just accent them like that, but still 4 notes per beat?

Just to add to the explanation provided, when someone mentioneds quintuplets, it's not necesarily 5 notes per beat. It could be that those were quarternote quintuplets, which would be 5 quarter notes played in the time of 4 quarter notes (Spastic Ink does this occasionally)

Ryan, you can either subdivide a beat (or more) into odd groupings, then you have those triplets, quintuplets, 7'tublets, etc.

or you can make a lick consisting which last for an odd number of beat (eg. 5 16th-notes or 7 8th-notes) and then repeat it in an even time signature, most common: 4/4. Then you'll get a rythmical displacement, or differently accented notes, as the strong beats will occur on different notes

i dont know if this clears it out, it might not be well explained
-Frederik

Quintuplets can be counted inside the quarter with some given time. If you have a quarter in any kind of time signature and need to play 5-tuplets, 7-tuplets or anything like that, just play that much within the quarter duration. I hope it was clear explanation..

Well, I don't find that completely clear, as one could also speak of quarter-note quintuplets, 8th-note quintuplets, 8th-note 7-tuplets etc. So it's all relative...

I think I had this all right in my head from the beginning.. I guess I just needed someone to confirm it. Thanks a bunch guys. This helped a lot.

You are asking about picking...in my experience I would pick alternatively in almost any situation, it doesn't depend on the time signature, I guess you would modify the accent accordingly

You have to make some kind of the pattern. Grouping. You play 7 notes, right. What about 2 2 3 grouping. or 3 2 2, or 2 3 2. Also, elementary thing is the backing track, or drums. What is the drum part. Where is the focus, on 1st, 3rd, 5th. Listen to kick drum and snare, and try to figure it out.