swing – NYU Music Experience Design Lab

The Groove Pizzeria

For his NYU music technology masters thesis, Tyler Bisson created a web app called Groove Pizzeria, a polyrhythmic/polymetric extension of the Groove Pizza. Click the image to try it for yourself.

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Groove Pizzeria

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Note that the Groove Pizzeria is still a prototype, and it doesn’t yet have the full feature set that the Groove Pizza does. As of this writing, there are no presets, no saving, no exporting of audio or MIDI, and no changing drum kits. You can record the Groove Pizzeria’s output using Audio Hijack, however.

Like the Groove Pizza, the Groove Pizzeria is based on the idea of the rhythm necklace, a circular representation of musical rhythm. The Groove Pizza is a set of three concentric rhythm necklaces, each of which controls one drum sound, e.g. kick, snare and hi-hat. The Groove Pizzeria gives you two sets of concentric rhythm necklaces, each of which can have its own time duration and subdivisions. This means that you can use the Groove Pizzeria to make polyrhythm and polymeter.

The words “polyrhythm” and “polymeter” are frequently used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Tyler’s thesis contains the clearest definition of the terms that I know of, which I paraphrase here.

Polyrhythm is two or more concurrent loops of equal duration. Each loop consists of a set of evenly-spaced subdivisions or rhythmic onsets. The loops contain different numbers of onsets, meaning that the subdivisions of each loop are not same length. Finally, the ratio of the number of onsets in each loop is not a whole number (otherwise one loop would just be an even subdivision of the other). When people talk about 4:3 or 5:2 polyrhythm, this is what they mean. In Western music, polyrhythms usually only occur for short time spans in the form of tuplets, but in West African drumming, polyrhythms are a core structural feature.
Polymeter is two or more concurrent loops of different duration. The onsets in each loop have the same duration, but each loop has a different number of onsets. This is much more common in Western music than polyrhythm. In Western music, you mostly see polymeter over short time spans in the form of hemiola or syncopation.

With these two definitions in mind, let’s take a look at the Groove Pizzeria interface. For each loop, you can control both the number of subdivisions (the number of onsets) in each loop and the length (duration) of each subdivision. The basic time unit in the Groove Pizzeria is one sixteenth note. Each of the “teeth” on the outer radius of each circle represents the duration of one sixteenth note. If you change the Time Units setting, you make the sixteenth notes shorter, and the radius of the circle gets smaller to preserve the cumulative distances between each tooth of the loop. The easiest way to understand the difference is just to draw some rhythm patterns on the grid, play with the sliders, and see what happens. Notice that the Groove Pizzeria visualizes the compound pattern formed by the two loops in the top left corner of the screen.

Here’s a 5:4 polyrhythm created by taking two loops that are the same length and dividing them into five and four steps respectively:

If you want a 5:4 polymeter rather than a polyrhythm, then you will need to adjust the number of time units in each loop as well. (The patterns aren’t perfectly symmetric so you can hear where they start and end.)

Here’s a less exotic sound, a 4:3 polymeter, also known as hemiola. On the left is a 4/4 hip-hop pattern. On the right, I made a 12-beat-long pattern that repeats four times in the same amount of time as it takes the hip-hip pattern to repeat three times.

Here’s a less familiar sound, an 11:5 polyrhythm. On the left, I made the closest thing to a hip-hop pattern that’s possible in 11/8 time, and on the right I made a simple quintuplet pattern. This will probably sound weird to you at first, but if you listen to it for a while, it will eventually start to make a wonky kind of sense.

How about some real-world examples? Genuine polyrhythm is unusual in popular music, but it’s not unheard of. James Blake uses a quintuplet hi-hat pattern in his song “Unluck.”

Here’s my Groove Pizzeria representation of this beat. On the left is the kick and snare playing a straight quarter note pattern in 4/4, and on the right is the hi-hat pattern (though it’s not playing back on a hi-hat sound.)

Hip-hop producers sometimes use polyrhythms to create specific varieties of swing. On drum machines, swing (sometimes called shuffle) shortens and lengthens each alternate beat. At zero swing, also known as 1:1 swing, the beats within each pair are the same length. At maximum swing, the first beat in each pair will be twice as long as the second beat in the pair. This is known as 2:1 swing, sometimes called “triplet swing” because it’s as if the first beat is two triplets long, while the second is one triplet long. In real life, you usually want your swing setting somewhere between these two extremes. (Click here for a more detailed explanation of swing.)

One way to get a swing ratio in between 1:1 and 2:1 is to use a quintuplet grid. If you think of the first three quintuplets in each group as being one “beat” in a pair and the last two as being the “beat” in the pair, you get the equivalent of 5:3 swing. Slynk explains how to set this up in Ableton:

Here’s a neo soul groove I made using pentuplet swing:

For an even narrower swing ratio, you can use septuplet swing. It’s the same idea, except now you’re grouping together the first four septuplets into one “beat” in the pair, and the last three septuplets into the other “beat”. This gives you a 4:3 swing ratio. This is pretty close to no swing at all, but it’s noticeably “off,” in a way that gives you a nice J Dilla “drunken drummer” feel. Slynk explains again:

Here’s a neo soul groove I made using septuplet swing:

Beyond complex rhythms, the Groove Pizzeria can teach another useful musical concept called event fusion. When a rhythm gets fast enough, you stop hearing individual beats and start to hear a continuous thrum. The transition happens at around twenty beats per second. If you play the rhythm even faster, the thrum becomes a steady pitch, and the higher the tempo, the faster the pitch. Here’s how you can experiment with event fusion yourself. First, put a clap on every sixteenth note. Next, reduce the number of time units to a small number (5 is fine) and set the tempo to 300 bpm. Now reduce the number of steps. Listen for the point when the claps fuse into a single tone. You can control the pitch of this tone by changing the number of steps.

If you think of more interesting music learning or creation applications for the Groove Pizzeria, please let me know. Happy drumming!

Deconstructing the bassline in Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon”

If you have even a passing interest in funk, you will want to familiarize yourself with Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon.” And if you are preoccupied and dedicated to the preservation of the movement of the hips, then the bassline needs to be a cornerstone of your practice.

Here’s a transcription I did in Noteflight – huge props to them for recently introducing sixteenth note swing.

And here’s how it looks in the MIDI piano roll:

The “Chameleon” bassline packs an incredible amount of music into just two bars. To understand how it’s put together, it’s helpful to take a look at the scale that Herbie built the tune around, the B-flat Dorian mode. Click the image below to play it on the aQWERTYon. I recommend doing some jamming with it over the song before you move on.

Fun fact: this scale contains the same pitches as A-flat major. If you find that fact confusing, then feel free to ignore it. You can learn more about scales and modes in my Soundfly course.

The chord progression

The opening section of “Chameleon” is an endless loop of two chords, B♭-7 and E♭7. You build both of them using the notes in B-flat Dorian. To make B♭-7, start on the root of the scale, B-flat. Skip over the second scale degree to land on the third, D-flat. Skip over the fourth scale degree to land on the fifth, F. Then skip over the sixth to land on the seventh, A-flat. If you want to add extensions to the chord, just keep skipping scale degrees, like so:

To make E♭7, you’re going to use the same seven pitches in the same order, but you’re going to treat E-flat as home base rather than B-flat. You could think of this new scale as being E-flat Mixolydian, or B-flat Dorian starting on E-flat; they’re perfectly interchangeable. Click to play E-flat Mixolydian on the aQWERTYon. You build your E♭7 chord like so:

Once you’ve got the sound of B♭-7 and E♭7 in your head, let’s try an extremely simplified version of the bassline.

Chord roots only

At the most basic level, the “Chameleon” bassline exists to spell out the chord progression in a rhythmically interesting way. (This is what all basslines do.) Here’s a version of the bassline that removes all of the notes except the ones on the first beat of each bar. They play the roots of the chords, B-flat and E-flat.

That’s boring, but effective. You can never go wrong playing chord roots on the downbeat.

Simple arpeggios

Next, we’ll hear a bassline that plays all of the notes in B♭-7 and E♭7 one at a time. When you play chords in this way, they’re called arpeggios.

The actual arpeggios

The real “Chameleon” bassline plays partial arpeggios–they don’t have all of the notes from each chord. Also, the rhythm is a complicated and interesting one.

Below, you can explore the rhythm in the Groove Pizza. The orange triangle shows the rhythm of the arpeggio notes, played on the snare. The yellow quadrilateral shows the rhythm of the walkups, played on the kick–we’ll get to those below.

The snare rhythm has a hit every three sixteenth notes. It’s a figure known in Afro-Latin music as tresillo, which you hear absolutely everywhere in all styles of American popular and vernacular music. Tresillo also forms the front half of the equally ubiquitous son clave. (By the way, you can also use the Groove Pizza to experiment with the “Chameleon” drum pattern.)

As for the pitches: Instead of going root-third-fifth-seventh, the bassline plays partial arpeggios. The figure over B♭-7 is just the root, seventh and root again, while the one over E♭7 is the root, fifth and seventh.

Adding the walkups

Now let’s forget about the arpeggios for a minute and go back to just playing the chord roots on the downbeats. The bassline walks up to each of these notes via the chromatic scale, that is, every pitch on the piano keyboard.

Chromatic walkups are a great way to introduce some hip dissonance into your basslines, because they can include notes that aren’t in the underlying scale. In “Chameleon” the walkups include A natural and D natural. Both of these notes sound really weird if you sustain them over B-flat Dorian, but in the context of the walkup they sound perfectly fine.

Putting it all together

The full bassline consists of the broken arpeggios anticipated by the walkups.

If you’re a guitarist or bassist, you can play this without even shifting position. Use your index on the third fret, your middle on the fourth fret, your ring on the fifth fret, and your pinkie on the sixth fret.

              .          . .
G|----------.-3----------3-6--|
D|----------6-----------------|
A|---------------3-4-5-6------|
E|--3-4-5-6-------------------|

If you’ve got this under your fingers, maybe you’d like to figure out the various keyboard and horn parts. They aren’t difficult, but you’ll need one more scale, the B-flat blues scale. Click the image to jam with it over the song and experience how great it sounds.

There you have it, one of the cornerstones of funk. Good luck getting it out of your head!

Seeing classic beats with the Groove Pizza

We created the Groove Pizza to make it easier to both see and hear rhythms. The next step is to create learning experiences around it. In this post, I’ll use the Pizza to explain the structure of some quintessential funk and hip-hop beats. You can click each one in the Groove Pizza, where you can customize or alter it as you see fit. I’ve also included Noteflight transcriptions of the beats.

The Backbeat Cross

View in Noteflight

This simple pattern is the basis of just about all rock and roll: kicks on beats one and three (north and south), and snares on beats two and four (east and west.) It’s boring, but it’s a solid foundation that you can build more musical-sounding grooves on top of.

The Big Beat

View in Noteflight

This Billy Squier classic is Number nine on WhoSampled’s list of Top Ten Most Sampled Breakbeats. There are only two embellishments to the backbeat cross: the snare drum hit to the east is anticipated by a kick a sixteenth note (one slice) earlier, and the kick drum to the south is anticipated by a kick an eighth note (two slices) earlier. It isn’t much, but together with some light swing, it’s enough to make for a compelling rhythm. The groove is interestingly close to being symmetrical on the right side of the circle, and there’s an antisymmetry with the kick-free left side. That balance between symmetry and asymmetry is what makes for satisfying music.

Planet Funk (eighth notes)

View in Noteflight

This pattern reminds me of Saturn viewed edge-on. The hi-hats are the planet itself, the snares are the rings, and the lone kick drum at the top is a moon. To make the simplest funk beats, all you need to do is add more moons into the kick drum orbit.

It’s A New Day

View in Noteflight

The Skull Snaps song isn’t too well known, but the break that kicks it off is number five on the WhoSampled list. The Planet Funk template has some extra kick drums embellishing particular beats. The kick on the downbeat (the topmost slice) has a kick anticipating it a sixteenth note (one slice) earlier, and another following it an eighth note (two slices) later. The snare drum hit to the west is anticipated by two more kicks. All that activity is balanced by the southeast half of the pizza, which is totally kick-free. Like “The Big Beat,” “It’s A New Day” is close to being symmetrical, with just enough variation to keep it interesting.

When The Levee Breaks

View in Noteflight

This Led Zeppelin classic embodies the a wesome majesty of rock. Rhythmically, though, it has more in common with funk. The crucial difference is beat three, the southernmost point on the pizza. In rock, you usually have a kick there. In funk, you usually don’t. The Levee break has a kick a sixteenth note before beat three, which is quite a surprise. Try moving that kick a slice later, and you’ll hear the groove lose its tension and interest. Like “It’s A New Day,” the Levee break sets up the second snare hit with two kicks. There’s another interesting wrinkle, too, a kick that immediately follows the first one. The result is another symmetrically asymmetrical drum pattern.

Planet Funk (sixteenth notes)

View in Noteflight

If you put a hi-hat on every slice of the pizza, you get a busier version of the basic funk groove. With twice as many hi-hats, you can slow the tempo down and still have an energetic feel.

So Fresh, So Clean

View in Noteflight

This OutKast banger has a fascinating drum machine pattern. The snare and hi-hat stick to the Planet Funk pattern above, but against all this predictable symmetry, the kick drum is all over the place. To understand what’s going on here, you need to know something about the concept of strong and weak beats. Strong beats are where you expect drum hits to fall, and weak beats are where you don’t expect them. The more times you have to divide the circle in half to get to a given beat, the weaker it is. The weakest beats are the even-numbered pizza slices. In the first bar, pictured above, every single even-numbered slice has a kick on it. This is, to put it mildly, not typical. Usually the base of your beat is stable and predictable, and the higher-pitched ornaments are more unpredictable. That’s what makes “So Fresh, So Clean” so cool.

Nas Is Like

View in Noteflight

While this track is best known for its samples, and deservedly so, the underlying drum machine rhythm is pretty remarkable too. Like the OutKast song above, the snares and hi-hats are mostly stable, with most of the variation in the kick. I won’t verbally analyze all four bars of the pattern, but if you play with it, you’ll see the idea of balanced symmetry and asymmetry at work.

Amen Break

View in Noteflight

The Amen break is the most complex rhythm here, and it’s a post unto itself to really explain the whole thing. The important thing is to compare the simplicity of the hi-hatsadditional sound, an open hi-hat in the last bar. Displacement!