These Rhythms Break Your Brain…But They’re Just 4/4

Something interesting happens when seemingly complex rhythms gradually reveal themselves to you the longer you listen. Recently, I came across a track shared inside the community, and its rhythms left me utterly astounded.

Imagine this: you're listening to a song and, initially, the time feel seems difficult to pinpoint. But then, slowly, it begins to reveal itself. Except, it’s completely different than you thought it was.

That's exactly the experience I had with this INSANE track from II-L and amelie xoxo. Take a listen to the first 30 seconds or so below.

Ok…I’m lost.

When the song starts, my mind initially hears a 7/4 time signature with a slow and deliberate feel. But then…the back beat comes in

What??

Ok, so it’s not 7/4 at all. It’s definitely some kind of complex arrangement of subdivisions, maybe similar to a quintuplet grouping. But what I thought this thing was clearly wasn’t even close.

Let’s dive deeper.

Ok, so once the back beat comes in, it’s pretty clear to hear that the rhythmic figure fits within a 4/4 measure, but here’s the thing. The melody that we heard right from the beginning? The one that sounded like 7/4?

How on the earth does it fit into this 4/4 back beat??? (Get it? The Earth? Whatever, I thought it was clever.)

We can start to figure out what’s going on here if we take each quarter note and divide it into subdivisions of 5.

With each quarter note subdivided into five equal parts, we can start to see the opportunities arise to turn a simple 4/4 into something even cooler. When we listen closer, we can start to hear just how they did it.

Once we’ve divided an entire measure of quarter notes into subdivisions of 5, we can, theoretically, do whatever we want with those 20 total subdivisions.

In the case of THE EARTH, they broke these subdivisions into 2 groups of 4, then 4 groups of 3.

Let’s do some music math-
In a 4/4 measure we know we have those 20 total subdivisions to work with. And wouldn’t you know it,

4+4+3+3+3+3=20

It looks like this:

My mind is officially boggled.

It’s almost like the beauty of rhythmically complex music is in the ways that the music tries to break your brain even if it’s actually something relatively simple, like 4/4. It becomes a puzzle. You’re listening to it, furrowed brow and all, trying to figure out WHAT is going on??

But as soon as you start to break down what’s actually happening within these insanely cool grooves, you start to realize that these rhythms are not as complex as you thought they were.

Well, maybe they're actually very complex.

You've just come up with ways to make sense of them.

And once you make sense of them, you unlock the groove. Because now, you don't hear it as some awkward thing that nobody could dance to or tap a foot to.

You hear it how it's laid out inside of something that you can tap a foot to.

And that's what makes it that much more fun to listen to.

This is one of the things I love about the “Share Music You’re Listening To” space inside the Better Piano community.

This was a recommendation that someone posted. Through that, I discovered a new artists and a whole new genre, even! We’ve started curating a playlist of insane rhythmic mind-breakers for you to check out. Take a listen below!