so for the last 3 days i've had this playing in my head, i came up with the guitar riff and i could hear where i wanted to bass and kick to highlight the riff, the only thing is that when i went to record it for some reason it was sooo confusing for me.The drums were specially confusing for me.. I'm not sure if it's in 4/4 or not or if it is in 4/4 why was my brain frying in the making lol. Anyways, is there anyone that could answer my quesiton about the timing or what this kind of riff is called.. or does it even have a name? i'm not sure lol any clarifications would reallyyyy help cause this took me so long just for the little sound clip, ignore the end where the diminished part comes in that's my next part to join if i can even get past the headaches.. thanks

https://soundcloud.com/marcoescalante/question

Hi Enlo.... the link doesn't works for me......

try it now, sorry about that i think i put it as private by accident

It's 7/8 It's pretty close to our popular music - count 1,2,1,2,1,2,3,1,2,1,2,1,2,3and so on

Let me know if you can feel the pulse, ok?

nice chops Enlo!
thanks Cosmin for the answer!

I got it now my question is how do you find those things out? also, should I set my tempo/time signature to that on my daw?

Well, it's an exercised ear for such stuff - I had the big, big luck to have a drummer friend who taught me how to listen to pulses and learn how to count, while playing with him, by using the accents and small increments of 2 and 3 most of the times. These are the smallest units in which a groove can be broken down.

So as an exercise - try to build up odd rhythms using this sort of approach:

7/8 could be equal to 2 + 2 + 3 or 3 + 2 + 2 or 4 + 3 for instance
5/4 = 2 + 3 or 3 + 2 or 4 + 1 - for instance, the 4 +1 can be heard in this song



If you want to work with rhythmic displacement, try to write a 7/8 phrase over a 4/4 groove and see the number of cycles necessary in order to hit beat 1 with the first cycle of the phrase again. By that, I mean that you need to see how many tiimes does your phrase have to repeat in order to start on beat 1 again. If you want to work with the odd meter, just set the metronome to 7/8 and that's how your bar will look like, beat one will always fall on the first note of the phrase Let me know if it's clear, ok?

thanks cosmin, I think i get it just gotta apply it more. I was watching a video a bit back and the drummer said just like you said the whole you can count 1 2,1 2, 123 and split things up. I think it's interesting and makes it a bit more interesting. Idk if it's the right way but sometimes i just feel the beat(as corny as that might sound) and it helps instead of counting. It depends on the situation

It doesn't sound corny at all, man! You have to feel the beat and the formula you are using, in order to give life to that riff I always feel it forst and then the countdown comes up by itself somehow - in some situations though, the counting comes before the actual feeling. For instance, when my bandmate taught me the riff I'm about to show you, below, I had to learn how to count it first:

1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,3,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,3,1,2,1,2,12123 - I don't know if it makes sense - try to count too min 03:07