30/8 time signature?

[bous666]

so my friend/guitar player wrote this riff that has a 6/8 feel, with the note accents being on 3 and 6. so like :

1 2 3 4 5 6 - 1 2 3 4 5 6


this 6/8 feel gets played 5 times before the riff starts over and gets repeated. the note changes every other accent and then scale with the last 4 accents.(sorry i dont really know how to transcribe using typing skills) keep in mind that the 1/8th notes for the 6/8 are getting played at about 240bpms. so its kind of a fast 6/8 swing feel. my question is, does this make this a 30/8 time signature? and if thats the case, does it make it 15/4 if i count i it in quarter notes?

this is merely for my own curiosity, not a question of what i should play over it or anything. since dudeman boggled my mind a bit with this riff, im just curios about the time signature. i understand no one will probably respond to this, since you cant actually here the riff, which makes it difficult to understand what im even typing about, so no worries.

[matt949]

usaully riffs that you would consider to be such a large number can easier be broken down into smaller increments makign them easier to grasp. i dunno how your really explaining how the song goes but just take 15/4 could easier (potentially not always) be seen as something like 2 groups of 4/4 and 1 of 7/4. maybe 1 thing of 6/4 and one of 9/4 or 4/4 + 4/4 + 4/4 + 3/4

changing up the groupings liek this can give a cool unusual yet cool groove.

[edit] rereading it (sorry if any of this is just gobbledygook or doesnt follow what you said... admittedly ive had a few) if it 5 time of a 6/8 feel ... it could just be 6/8 .... 5 times

[bous666]

actually what you said at first makes total sense. i understand about breakingthings up like that, it makes way easier to count, and easier to comprehend the passsage itself, thus making it easier to formulate a beat over it.

its really hard to explain a riff when i cant really emit any sound on here,ha. but like i said about the accents. with them being on the 3 and 6. the down beat can easily get lost in there when it gets repeated over and over tricking you into think the 3 and 6 are the actually quater note downbeats. giving it a triplet feel. but it really isnt a conventional 6/8 rhythm, which is why i didnt really think it was 6/8 5 times. i just figured out that counting in increments of 6 made it easier to figure out how many beats were in the whole riff itself. we had to this so i could figure out where the riff started and stopped. the note changes is what makes it sound unconventional. im probably totally wrong though, since i am not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to music theory. its a really weird riff none the less and sorry if this is all gibberish. but i love how this stuff racks the brain, haha. actually one of the things i've done with this riff is using a quarter not count with hi hat chicks, thus giving it a syncopated feel, since the hi hat chicks would be on the 1, 3, and 5 of the measure., while the not accents being on the 3 and 6.

if it helps any this riff is similar to one of the riffs in tool's song third eye, the riff after the lyrical break, "prying open my third eye" at abput the 10 minute mark to be exact. excpet the notes are different and change differently. still the same general guitar rhythm.

[zambizzi]

That's 6/8, regardless. If the phrase took 4 measures to complete then the time signature would change....but only if the beat changes - not the key of the melody.

If you're playing 8th notes then it would be counted in 3/4 time.

[aydee]

Zam's right. Its when a rhythmic pattern repeats itself. So ya, 6/8 played 5 times ( regardless of accent shifts )

In Indian rhythms, there actually are patterns that repeat after 30 notes... so there.

[bous666]

cool thanks guys. that makes sense. i guess it depends on how and what i play over it. which kind of brings me back to my 2nd question. if i count it in quarter notes, and play a quarter note based beat over it, does that make it 15/4? i guess it could be considered 5/4 3 times, but i really dont play a 5/4 beat over it. i cant really explain the beat i play over it(it change it a few times actually, going from a quarter note feel to a 6/8 feel), but its pretty syncopated from what the guitar is doing. and it takes 15 quarter notes to complete the phrase. im not sure if that makes any sense, but it sounds kind of cool, hehe.

[ace76543]

Originally Posted by bous666

cool thanks guys. that makes sense. i guess it depends on how and what i play over it. which kind of brings me back to my 2nd question. if i count it in quarter notes, and play a quarter note based beat over it, does that make it 15/4? i guess it could be considered 5/4 3 times, but i really dont play a 5/4 beat over it. i cant really explain the beat i play over it(it change it a few times actually, going from a quarter note feel to a 6/8 feel), but its pretty syncopated from what the guitar is doing. and it takes 15 quarter notes to complete the phrase. im not sure if that makes any sense, but it sounds kind of cool, hehe.

i'm pretty sure 5/4 3 times is 5/4 3 times. you're kind of missing the gist of odd times. i could take a 4/4 song in which the phrase repeats after 3 bars and say "OMG I CAN PLAY IN 12/4", but that would be stupid. i'm playing 3 bars of 4/4, not 1 bar of 12/4. if you wanted a 15/4 beat it would probably just be made up of weird groupings.
i.e 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

just my two cents though, i may be wrong. i'm not the greatest at odd times

[zambizzi]

Originally Posted by bous666

cool thanks guys. that makes sense. i guess it depends on how and what i play over it. which kind of brings me back to my 2nd question. if i count it in quarter notes, and play a quarter note based beat over it, does that make it 15/4? i guess it could be considered 5/4 3 times, but i really dont play a 5/4 beat over it. i cant really explain the beat i play over it(it change it a few times actually, going from a quarter note feel to a 6/8 feel), but its pretty syncopated from what the guitar is doing. and it takes 15 quarter notes to complete the phrase. im not sure if that makes any sense, but it sounds kind of cool, hehe.

No, try to play in 15 and you'll see the difference. Count your quarter notes until you get to 15 and start the beat over again. Write it out...sing it. You'll see the difference.

Three measures of 5 is not 15....Three measures of 6 is not 18, etc. Everything depends on where the beat turns around not how many you count before there's a change in the song...say, in the melody.

ace did a good job explaining odd time. You can play two measures back-to-back, one in 7/4 and one in 4/4 and call it 11/4, for example. If you play three measures of of 7/4 it doesn't mean you're counting in 21...it just means you're playing three measures of 7.

Why don't you post a short clip of the groove you're talking about and we can better understand what you're trying to say?

[diosdude]

Time sigs should be used to simplify, not to complicate. Odd time signatures should be broken down into increments of 2's and 3's or appropriate multiples thereof. So in your example, it's natural to count that phrase as a 6/8 since the accents are recurring on the same beats of a 6/8 measure. Are you really willing to count to fifteen every phrase to make sure you're in time and in place? No. You're going to listen for the accents in 6/8 and you'll know your're on the last bar when your guitarist plays a specific note or progression within the context of the 6/8 phasing.

[jonescrusher]

Just to stick my oar in - time sigs adhere by that rule of fractions in maths; divide it down into as small a fraction as appropriate. So, 30/8 is obviously incorrect as you're merely multiplying the top number by the number of bars in the phrase. It is also incorrect to divide the bottom number in this case, as that changes the type of beat that the time sig prescribes. The groove you described has a dotted quarter note feel, so must involve a compound /8 time sig.

[Christ-Hammer]

Just because the sound of the note changes on each accent doesn't mean the sig changes. The only time sigs come to outrageous numbers like that is if you add a beat to every other measure and keep changing the amount of beats, now that was a confusing statement so here is an example.
6/8+7/8+6/8+8/8=27/8
If you do
6/8+6/8+6/8+6/8+6/8 it turns out to just be 6/8 because there is no extra beats that throw the time sig off
now if you did
6/8+5/8+6/8+6/8+5/8+5/8+6/8 it would be 39/8

and like dio said you can break them down like
2/8+3/8+6/8+3/8+3/8+2/8+3/8+2/8 to equal 24/8
Accents are what usually signals that the beat is changing measures so think
XxxXxxXxxXxx
Would that be considered 3/8 pr 12/8?
The only time this usually doesn't occur is when you are doing a polyrhythm