To me, this does not seem like an unusual ability, but it seems to plague some of my fellow musicians who try to keep up with it.
Now, I am not claiming to be an especially great guitarist; not by any stretch of the imagination. I can't play a blues scale, and I can't solo to save my life. At least, nothing virtuosic such as the likes of Devin Townsend or Fredrik Thordendal. But I do seem to have a knack for these odd time signatures.
I think it comes down to how I think about the rhythms I'm playing. Let's take the time signature 10/8 for example. It's a complex time signature, compounded by the fact that it's not what it looks like.
10/8 looks just like 5/4 if you reduce it to the lowest common denominator, so it has five beats per bar, right?
Well, unfortunately, that's not right. 10/8 has four beats per bar, not five. Typically it's played as two "long" beats, followed by two "short" beats.
Make sense?
No, I didn't think so. I believe this is where my classical composition background comes into play, because I can visualise what's going on in notation, and count appropriately.
In the case of 10/8, instead of thinking "one.., two.., three, four!", I count on a much shorter timescale. My counting of 10/8 goes "ONE two three, ONE two three, ONE two, ONE two"
Does that make more sense?
Here, I'll show you an example of what I mean. This comes from the first Desmodus song, "13" (listen to it here - apologies for the poor recording!). The heavy-arsed ending consists of twelve bars in three rapidly-changing time signatures. Here's the 10/8 section:
I've simplified it a little here, as these days I actually play it with semiquaver low-Bs, but do you see what I mean? Instead of thinking "long, long, short, short", I'm counting off the beat groupings as I go.
The next bit is similar, only it's in 13/8. Now, that's a fraction that's already at the lowest common denominator, so it's impossible to mistakenly translate it into something like a "x/4" signature. It has five beats to the bar, and thirteen doesn't divide by five evenly. So, it has three long beats, and two short beats. There are, of course, other ways to interpret the order of the beats, but for the purposes of this particular song, I interpret it as three groups of three, followed by two groups of two:
Making sense now?
Well, the next and final section is 8/8. "Hallelujah!" I hear you say. "Forsooth, 'tis but a fancy way of saying 4/4! One can do this with one's eyes closed!".... Sorry. Not that simple.
The "/8" part of a time signature can certainly be used to denote the number of eighth-notes or quavers are in a given bar, so on the face of it, 8/8 is the same as 4/4. There's eight quavers per bar whichever way you look at it. That much makes sense, but the reality of the matter is much subtler. If the denominator is an 8, it invariably means that regardless of the value the upper number (the numerator), the number of actual beats in the bar will never evenly divide into the obvious fraction.
In 8/8 - as I've interpreted it for this song, we have three beats per bar. In this case, long, long, short; 3,3,2.
The trick with playing these time signatures rapidly, in time, and being able to change between them at will - regardless of instrument - is all down to how you count the beats out in your head. If you think of it the easy way, it'll be hard. If you think of it the hard way, it'll be much easier
I hope this makes sense.
In a future update, I will be covering how I can easily play other, even more obscure time signatures. Until then, rock on!
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