Are you buying the right strings for you?

I was browsing through YouTube the other night, when I came across the following video from Phillip McKnight, entitled "Are you buying the right strings for you?"

Now, I'm pretty passionate about strings, so having watched a bunch of this dude's videos in the past and developed a respect for him, I thought I'd see what he had to say.

He's right, but - in my opinion - for the wrong reasons.

Video!

Well, after trying to sort out just what in the hell is wrong with OpenShot, I'm still no closer to getting an answer. For the first couple of renderings, the background audio just decided to skip for no reason at all.

I finally got it to work, but the audio is clipping in places for no reason that I can tell (I mastered each track to be fairly far below 0dB in Reaper...), but I really can't be bothered fixing it, since OpenShot is such a pain in the proverbial on my PC.

...which is bizarre, because my PC is otherwise a complete beast!

Anyway, I created a Youtube playlist. An introductory video, and a clip of me performing The Oath of Narcissus on each of my guitars. No fancy time signature stuff, just some riffing and soloing to demonstrate the differences between the guitars.


 To break it down, I do use all the guitars for their own purpose:

JLV7: Stage
RGA7: Jamming at home
RG7321: Recording

Time Signatures, part 3

Miss Jane, as it's currently entitled is possibly the most complex song I've written. It changes time signatures frequently, which seems to confront everybody I show it to. However, there's a basic, constant pulse to the riffs, regardless of the strange timings.

More time signature nonsense

Yesterday, I covered how I approach certain compound time signatures. However, the ones covered were not all that rare. 10/8 is used in occasional Tool songs (The Patient, and Vicarious come to mind), and 8/8 is also rather common - although I can't readily think of any songs in that time.

Ultimately, I believe compound time signatures can be thought of as a kind of Waltz; a stress on certain beat divisions, followed by unstressed units.

Today, I'd like to cover another, much less common time signature.

7/4

How To Play Complex Time Signatures

I have a reputation for writing guitar/rock music in odd time signatures, and being able to play it and change between such times without skipping a beat.
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?