Rhythms in Meshuggah's "Electric Red" Explained with the Indian Rhythmic System
I recently got a question from a student about how I'd use the Indian Rhythmic System to solve some rhythmic mysteries in Meshuggah's “Electric Red”.
Here's my answer! Questions or comments? Leave them below or contact me!
TRANSCRIPT
So last week I did a presentation for our convocation class at VCU, which is a class that's comprised of all the freshmen and sophomore music majors, and it's a weekly class where there are performances, sometimes there are lectures or demonstrations or workshops. And I was asked to do one on how I use the Indian rhythmic system and how I think it's a great system for learning how to sing rhythms, to sing poly rhythms or polymeters in a way that's musical, and that allows students to really feel what these complex rhythms, or even simple rhythms, what it feels like to play those as opposed to just counting them.
So after the presentation, I got a number of questions from students about how to use this system in a practical way, and one student asked me if I could help them figure out a rhythm or a certain section from a song by shuga called Electric Red. So the section that the student wanted to figure out what was happening sounds like this. I'm going to play this for my computer.
So pretty complicated rhythmically. A lot of sort shifting groupings of what I'm hearing is just 16th notes, honestly. But a lot of shifting groupings and something that doesn't necessarily, upon listening to it a few times doesn't sound like it repeats, but it actually does in a couple of ways. It took me about seven minutes or so, and I came up with this little system of numbers that gives me the rhythmic groupings that are happening. And then the notes in the parentheses are the number of 16th notes that are in between phrases. So you can see it looks like it's an odd grouping of sixteenths, but so if I try to count this over the top of that, this lets me understand what's happening rhythmically really quickly, using Ta-ki-ta for the threes and ta-ka-di-mi for the fours, and then a combination of those for the rest. And it sounds like this, if I do it with the recording…
[demo]
So that's one quick way that I use this system to help simplify what seemed like or what are, in many cases, complex rhythms, this case in a heavy metal song. But this works for really any type of music that has interesting or odd groupings, as well as just regular music in four, four or six, eight really helps us feel the phrase, sing the phrase, and get to know the rhythm in a more deeper embodied level. So hope you enjoyed.