Re: [microsound] sgnidroceR esreveR

[Martin Slawig <martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tony,
Now it is more clear for me what you mean and i agree to that.
When i started playing in togo years ago i had at first hard times to
understand this way of learning and playing (and dancing to that stuff
although it's in 4/4 or 6/8, but hard to discover the basic)

Best
martin


Am 07.09.2006 22:05 Uhr schrieb "tony higgins" unter
<tony.higgins2@xxxxxxxxx>:

> Hi Martin,
> 
> I don't dispute for a second what you're saying. I didn't say there's
> no such thing as structure, just time signatures. It's all in my
> thesis too!! What the author of that book proposes is that the
> patterns do come together, and can be layered in multiple
> "time-signatures", because of a basic underlying pulse which unites
> them all. (The other structural aspect which he also acknowledges,
> which you mention, is that the patterns are learned in relation to one
> another - one pattern defines another. Also that many musicians find
> it hard to play one pattern without having someone play the other one
> too).What you say about a pattern that every drummer knows and that
> holds it together, even if it's not being played, is exactly the idea
> of the "Metronomic sense", that the musician requires a subjective
> pattern or pulse underlying the ones that are actually played. To link
> all of the last few posts beautifully together, Ligeti writes in the
> foreword of that very book I'm referencing now that the overall
> pattern is not actually played by any one individual musician - it is
> the combinations that give a subjective super-pattern from the
> components.
> 
> 
> What I'm talking about, I suppose, is the impression that many early
> ethnomusicologists got that they perceived that each individual part
> had its own time signature, and that all of the time signatures were
> happening at the same time. Which they couldn't understand. The
> answer, I hope you'll agree, is not multiple time signatures, but
> actually a combination of the subjective pulse which I mentioned above
> and the understanding of the relationships of patterns to one another
> that you mention, which I left out last time!
> 
> One of the other authors who had studied for many years in Ghana
> before writing his book made the very good point that most African
> music is, as you say, in 4/4 or 6/8, because 7 is hard to dance to! ;)
> 
> Tony
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/7/06, Martin Slawig <martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Am 07.09.2006 19:51 Uhr schrieb "tony higgins" unter
>> <tony.higgins2@xxxxxxxxx>:
>> 
>> 
>>> But... on those two quotes above: "combining completely different
>>> track"[with different "meters"] is exactly how the majority of African
>>> music works, from what I've discovered during my research. The ability
>>> to do this arises out of the fact that there's no such thing as time
>>> signatures or meters in traditional African music - all that matters
>>> is the pulse.
>> 
>> Hi Tony and sorry, but I cannot agree to that!
>> From my experiences as a percussionist playing west african and afro cuban
>> rhythms (which came originaly mostly from yoruba people/ nigeria, benin,
>> congo) i say that there is a really strong feeling of time structure in west
>> african music ( and I would say in most of african music). It is different
>> from our european based structure, and it is a lot more than only pulse.
>> Every rhythm i know to play and i listened to is structured by a basic
>> pattern, which can often be heared as a bell pattern or pattern of a
>> supporting drum, sometime nobody is playing it but every drummer nows where
>> it is.
>> Most common and well known is this
>> +--+--+---+-+--- in 4/4 or
>> +-+-+--+-+-- in 6/8 rhythms.
>> Every drummer is orientating on this timeline with his own pattern which do
>> not start on our '1' but on a fixed point at this basic pattern. You don't
>> play so much whith the beat but more with phrases connected to the basic
>> pattern, but take care, if you start your phrase on a different point you
>> will be cicked out of the band emediately.
>> 
>> Best
>> Martin
>> 
>> 
>> 
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