Gavin Harrison at PASIC 2008: Overriding odd meters to smooth out the groove
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2025
- Vic Firth presents Gavin Harrison at PASIC 2008: Overriding odd meters to smooth out the groove.
Gavin has performed with:
05Ric
Alice
Artful Dodger
B.J. Cole
Bananarama
Black
Camouflage
Claudio Baglioni
Dave Stewart
Dizrhythmia
Donna Gardier
Ed Poole
Eddie and The Tide
Eros Ramazzotti
Eugenio Finardi
Fiorella Mannoia
Froon
Gail Ann Dorsey
Geno Washington
Go West
Icognito
Iggy Pop
Kevin Ayers
King Crimson
Lene Lovich
Level 42
Lewis Taylor
Lisa Stansfield
Manfred Mann
Mick Karn
Mieko Shimizu
Paul Young
Peter Blegvad
Porcupine Tree
Renaissance
Sam Brown
Sarah Jane Morris
The Kings Of Oblivion
Tom Robinson
Yasuaki Shimizu
Zerra One
As a guitarist, I love this guy. It's not all about technicality for him. He's a musician, not a mathematician,
This guy always opens up new ideas for me...that dotted 8th override he showed is a lot like something I would just play without really thinking about what it was...very helpful in expanding the way I think about the music.
This guy is pure poetry in motion. I could watch him for hours. Beautiful co-ordination!
"I don't want to do this stuff just to say I'm clever. I want people to enjoy it."
@@gilbertgilberto2832 As Gavin himself pointed out, most of the audience were born in an era of 4/4. Any odd time signature will feel odd. Hence the term "odd-time".
i totally agree!!! I never really listened to porcupine tree before, but I think i'm gonna after watching this guy!!
Thanks Gavin, I could never figure what you were playing on the ride cymbal in that part of "What happens now"- it sounds so damn cool.
yah he explained that concept very well. To me the best bands can do odd meters without people even knowing. My last show people said they loved one section and i was like, that was in 5/4 and they didn't even notice...made my whole night!
the reason why this overriding works is because usually when we hear a beat, we automatically base our tempo and pulse off of the snare and bass drum. when gavin does his overriding, he focuses our tempo off of the bass and snare drum and focuses it on something with a more steady beat, like the hihat, which is doing steady eighths on the 7/4 groove.
If you look at the first example in this video, he plays a 7/8 beat with straight 8th notes on the hihat, and it sounds very stiff as he says. But when he accents the quarter notes, it starts to sound really smooth and almost dancable.
The accented quarter notes kind of overrides the beat beneath it. In the first bar the accents are on the beat and in the second bar they are off the beat. That's probably where the term "overriding" comes from.
good luck man, this stuff is haaard. I'll try it out too. Lets rock!
This first "overriding" example is just playing over the bar line in an odd time signatures. So the first measure the hi hat is on 1,3,5,7 second bar in 2,4,6 then landing back on 1 to create a two bar phrase rather than feeling the odd meter in one bar phrases.
3/16 with 7/8 makes my head hurt.
Yea i think you have it.
The hi-hat starts out as quarter notes on the downbeat, but actually moves to the upbeat every other measure.
The illusion is that it always feels like it is on the downbeat and everything else is reversed, which is what makes it sound so cool.
Wow, at the end when he's talking about singing or the humming the song or bass line, I freaked out because ever since I began drumming I have had great timing. Other drummers I know ask me if I count and I say "no, I hum" and they are confused. To me, it's much easier to find the timing or create odd times by just playing along to a tune I make up in my head or remember from a song.
@beatcrazy14 He is just moving from playing 1/4 notes to playing playing 1/8 notes . Overriding is basically accenting the 1/4 note and remaining on the 1/4 note while the pattern changes around it. For example if you play to a click track and take your hat hand out of the pattern and just play the snare and bass drum. You will hear the 1/4 note click track move from on the beat to off the beat or you will hear your snare move from on the click to behind it.
@Ollievarium it's just playing quarter notes over whatever odd time your playing to keep a groove the listener could follow. Then he talks about playing a 3/16 ostinato override on the ride cymbal while playing in 7.
for me its like the most important thing in a drummer after all the basics
at 1:20 somebody said "nice" xD love it!
clever, i should keep this info in mind
3/16 override....I can just see myself seizing up in a fit of uncontrollable muscle spasm.
1:40 to 1:52 was a low blow to Dream Theater lol
Ladies and Gentlemen; the master of actually making odd-meters sound smooth.
Haha the last one is what happens now. So incredible.
Thanks for that; I couldn't place it.
That's your view on music and i'm with you on the feel and enjoyment of it but some people enjoy music cause of the technical aspects and the counting and odd times.
@Jaythedrummerman ah i see thanks
i think bobcr means that GH counts it in the video at 1:09, but on stage GH feels the rhythm
@Ollievarium , from my understanding, overriding is synonymous with a polyrhythm.
First example: Sound of Muzak FTW!!!
meshuggah does that all the time. Thomas Haake is incredibly skilled. Plenty of their songs are all about odd meters like 23/16, and it doesn't sound weird or unnatural like some Dream Theater songs. Haake, Harrison, and Carey are all very good at making odd meters smooth.
Vinnie colaiuta did this "overriding" a lot of time ago....an example above all is "Seven days"...but also "love's stronger than justice" ecc... ec...
.
OK, now i see. I looked closely, but next time I'll look more closely :) Thanks.
Yeah, this overriding thing is crucial imo when you're hittin up odd time signatures. Portnoy does something like that in the Count of Tuscany, making 7/4 sound a bit more logical by making the quarter note be on the "on" beat the first measure and "off" the second. Has a groove AND sounds really cool.
wonder why no headset mic . ? then again he could play with just one hand all the time and still be awesome...
3:09..
I'm 95% sure that's from "What Happens Now"
woohoo
No, with overriding Gavin does not mean syncopation. Syncopation is basically just rhythm displacement. For example you can displace a beat to a different position in standard 4/4 beats to give it a different feel. Gavin explains rhythm displacing in his educational DVDs.
Overriding is used on polyrhythms or odd time signatures to give the listener a steady pulse to relate to while listening, instead of a choppy and jerky polyrhythm which the listener might have a hard time following.
Guy's a wizard.
Gavin: the best! :-)
"[M]usic should be absorbed by feel, not by counting." Exactly. You cannot deny that Tool's music has much more feel to it than Dream Theater's. You cannot deny that.
genio!
an imtelligent and skilled musician =D
@ExEurasian Ahhhh okay I missunderstood one point, I thought he changed something in between the two bars and therefore I was kinda confused^^ Thanks for your help ;)
He's totally true
i can really relate to what he says about relating to the beat, cus metal these days is always trying to be progressive
and wen it comes to the band playing live, people cant really like he said "hold on" to the rhythm wen they play these extreme meters.
And if i were playin live id like to see people enjoyin the song and like "dancin" to the beat =P
so ye, he's actually inspired me =]
Well put. As you say, overriding can be seen as a subset of syncopation. I think your're right, technically. But I view overriding (as defined by Gavin) as kind of the opposite of the typical, garden-variety syncopation. With syncopation, you're typically taking a common time signature and moving the accents to make it sound more interesting, less "straight". With overriding, you're taking and odd signature and smoothing it out so it there's more of a steady pulse (more straight time).
It's actually true. Danny will do interesting stuff in the fills and elsewhere, but I'd say about half the tool songs don't have many unusual rhythms or patterns. That's not a bad thing, it's not like if you don't use unusual rhythms that you're not original or something. Tool uses those rhythms when they make sense and play straightforward where it makes sense. This thing Gavin plays reminds me of that part in Eulogy.
If I understand correctly, the concept of overriding should be used in odd time signatures.
Overriding can give a complex polyrhythmic beat a steady pulse to follow. Basically a simpler beat overrides a complex beat, so that the simpler beat is accented on top and it stands out. Just look at the examples in this video.
I think technically overriding is just a synonym for a polyrhythm, but when specified, overriding is a polyrhythmic concept for smoothing out the beats.
@KackeEgal Check out Soul Burn. Haake definitely has feel.
hey im guna buy them one or both of them dvds,s which one would you recomend?
oww... the last two overriding example are in "19 Days"
fair enough
I can't figure out the override at 3:00
Apart from Gavin, Thomas Haake is one of my all time fave drummers.
Well i've listened to plenty of Bruford playing with King Crimson, and some of that stuff is easily written off as random notes by anyone who doesn't appreciate that kind of music, but while I love KC's more unusual songs like Lark's Tongue in Aspic, I don't see DT songs as having the same depth as those songs.
i was lost after a minute and a half...
no dislike - how it should be
@Ollievarium dude you are just over-thinking it. Don't even think about syncopation.
Overriding is giving something in odd time a consistent beat as opposed to always making it sound choppy.
It smooths. If you can't get this then I don't know what to tell ya man.
Gavin explains it perfectly in the video and even gives examples.
What Happens Now? by Porcupine Tree.
It's still in 7 though, the listener just hears it as 7/4 instead of 7/8.
The listener hears 4 evenly spaced strokes on the ride bell that makes it feel more like 4
I feel kinda ashamed because I'm a drummer but I don't get his point from 1:00 min to 1:20 min......^^ it sounds exactly the same to me, with the hi-hat on or off the beat..... could somebody explain to me?
That's part of the distinction to me between the often compared Tool and Dream Theater. Danny Carey (drummer for Tool) is amazingly talented at making beats like a compound 5/7 or 7/8/9 sound sensical, while Dream Theater seems to play as complex times as possible with no regard to any musicality. It's impossible to follow Dream Theater songs without counting.
12 years later but i disagree
@LanceDirk King Crimson music is more complex than Dream Theater songs, bruford is fucking amazing!!!!
i choose to play what I want rather than what a so called FM radio conditioned listener would like me to play
Im having a difficult time finding a reason why certain people are comparing bands, saying one is "better" or has a "better feel"...lets debate orange soda and grape soda...oh yeah, orange is better, you cant deny that!
Zildjian 20" K ride.
i guess if thats what "floats their boat", than theres nothing wrong with it. i dont necessarily agree with it, but music is an art form. everyone has different motives, none are wrong or incorrect.
In which song does he use the last overriding?
@xSBxBBBdx Say you're playing the 'sound of muzak' beat and your playing 8th notes all at the same height and force. So you're playing the whole beat, going into every bar as normal, BUT like Gavin says that (though it may sound good) sounds quite forced or stiff. So what he does is accent every quarter beat, so you're still playing 8th notes but you're accenting the 1, 2, 3 etc LIKE how you would accent the bass drum (on beat 1/3) and snare drum (on beat 2/4) on a standard 4/4 beat
Overriding is no guarantee that your beat will flow and make sense. But rather than tell me the DT odd time songs don't sound like abrupt chunks of different bars pasted together with no flow or discernible rhythm, why don't you show me? Tell me a DT song, album, video, or anything that is in an odd time that proves me wrong and I will listen to it. In fact I'll be glad to, because I always like to listen to things that sound good.
What he means by that is people can't or have a hard time following an odd time signature, if there is nothing to relate to, like a steady pulse of a hihat accent.
While I'm not a big fan of those bands you mentioned, I'm sure that their odd times in songs are not made just for the sake of it or to sound clever, they sound musical and interesting. Odd times must sound musical, or otherwise it might turn many people away.
Use the same trick on this track to make it feel 4/4-ish while it's actually 13/8.
"flipbit03-its-on-bit" on Soundcloud.
i see where you are coming from, however what you view as music isnt what others view as music. i have no problem following dream songs after listening to them countless times.dreams music in general is much more complex than tools music, they are in different genres. the more progressive the music the more peoples heads it goes over as well.listen to brufords earthworks, while it is hard to count, its very hard to say its not musical. music should be absorbed by feel, not by counting.
he is counting. 1,2,3,4,1,2,3
In my opinion Meshuggah use this method the best way
@allmetaliswelcome no its what happens now..
What ride is that? Anybody?
its odd time sig.
Just had a Meshuggah moment.
ok gavin, but what happens if you only have one brain?!
Seriously though, awesome stuff. I have both DVD's. LOTS of practice needed!
3:01 is that futile?
those bands use and apply this same theory, ESPECIALLY tool.
I should add that I want to see an actual song, because the video you posted is my prime example that Portnoy plays odd times with no musicality.
That's bullshit.
And Portnoy does plenty of that "overriding" thingy, which in fact is just playing a larger meter over a smaller one. Watch this:
watch?v=no4luPP6t9c
Sticking to quarters notes on the cymbal in a 7/8 time, means you simply play a 7/4 over each two 7/8 bars.
seven days by sting.Vinnie does it on that track.Theif!!
What ride is that? Anybody?