polyrhythm

[Danielsun]

HI guitarland.

How s life treating ya???

I wanna know anything about the polyrhythm but I can t find a book that really deals with this theme. Do you have any advices for me. That would be really cool.

I find this theme really fascinating how bout you.

THIS IS DANIELSUN FROM GERMANY LOGGING OUT HAHAHA

PEACE

[EricV]

Originally posted by Danielsun
HI guitarland.

How s life treating ya???

I wanna know anything about the polyrhythm but I can t find a book that really deals with this theme. Do you have any advices for me. That would be really cool.

I find this theme really fascinating how bout you.

THIS IS DANIELSUN FROM GERMANY LOGGING OUT HAHAHA

PEACE

Hi Daniel,

I don´t really have a book-recommendations as of now ( I will see what I can find though ). but just for starters:
At Steve Vai´s website, there is a nice article by him about polyrhythms, to be found at http://www.vai.com
Just go to "Little Black Dots" and look for the article. It´s a cool thing to start with.
Other than that, I am sure that some of the other members will have some cool recommendations for ya.
Warm regards
EV

[Guni]

I've been looking for good info on polyrhythms for ages and, as far as I know, there are none.

I studied polyrhythms with Bret Willmott at Berklee and I know that he was working on such a book - but I don't think he's finished it yet. I will contact him and ask whether he'd be interested in writing some material for us.

Yeah, time for us to dig out some rare stuff !! :D

[EricV]

I also think I remember that Steve Vai had said that he got interested in and learned about polyrhythms mainly by listening to Zappa and transcribing and learning those tunes.
I think he once recommended a book of Zappa-transcriptions that he had made. That book was AFAIK published in the early 80´s and is out of print, but can occasionally be found on Ebay.
I´d think that actually getting some transcriptions with poly-rhythms, and getting used to them by playing those songs, is a very musical and hands-on-approach...
So if you won´t find any actual instructional book about the topic, maybe you wanna try to get your hands on those transcriptions...
Warm regards
Eric

[Guni]

yep I agree Eric - the best way is always to go, listen, transcribe....

With polyrhythms it's sometimes especially hard to see a pattern when it's used for just 1 meassure. I think a certain theoretical knowledge is necessary to even realise when ya come across a polyrhythm and to be able to take it apart, practice it and to add it to your playing.

[Alan]

Hey, Danielson

I've got one for you:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0793521238/alanhorvaacousro

Hope that helps!
:o)

[chrisb]

You might want to check out the drum lessons at mxtabs.
They have a lot of polyrhythm exercises there.

[EricV]

Chris,
that´s a very good suggestion... there are a lot of drum exercises that are interesting for guitar players too... you can practise straight rhythm like that, or add some actual notes and play...
Warm regards
Eric

[Guni]

So you are talking about this one:

http://www.mxtabs.net

Guni

[EricV]

Guni,

you dropped a good hint there...
OK, here is the direct link to the Polyrhthm-article by Steve Vai...

Tempo-Mental (http://www.vai.com/LittleBlackDots/tempomental.html)

Warm regards
Eric

[Guni]

Originally posted by EricV
OK, here is the direct link to the Polyrhthm-article by Steve Vai...
Tempo-Mental (http://www.vai.com/LittleBlackDots/tempomental.html)
Whoa, nice article and some quite complex stuff .... :D

Guni

[EricV]

Yeah, the book he mentions ( The Zappa- Guitar Book ) can be found on Ebay occasionally... I once had a chnce to take a look at it, it´s absolutely weird stuff...
Zappa had a lot of great polyrhythm-stuff in his music, and he used that "Guitar doubles speech"-trick with Vai quite a bit, as in "Jazz DIscharge Party Hats"...
Warm regards
Eric

NP: Lee Ritenour- Feel The Night

[Guni]

I just realised that Bret Willmott has released his polythythm book. It's entitled "Time for the Future - Polyrhythm in Harmony".

FYI: http://www.melbay.com/product.asp?ProductID=97884&pageheader=&category=&author=120&mode=author

Guni

[chrisb]

You could also just grab a snare drum study book, it will help with timing and coordination

[Danielsun]

HI there...

First of all thank you for all your great advices and hints you gave me the past months.
iBreathmusic rules hahahah

I did a lot of transcriptions which I find is a good exercise and it makes really fun, too. I found the zappa book (mindblowing) hahahahah (Thanks EricV for ebay you know). A good book for this kind of stuff is `The Art of Rhythm´written by Peter Giger.
You can learn anything from 5 over 4, 7 over 5 or 3 and he shows how to use 2 metronoms to find out the beat for these kind of rhythms and to build a feeling for it, too...another theme is the polyrhythm shuffle (Shuffle of 5 or 7) sounds good hahaha. I found a drum teacher who wrote a piece in 22 over 13 and he will show me some of this rhythm stuff, too.

So again thank you
Stay happy hahaha