How to Play ANY Polyrhythm

[Garfield_]

Wow that definitely made stuff simpler, thanks!

[leonerdlikestoreference]

I dig ur content and ive been trying to replicate other polyrhthms u show by feel instead of this. How would i do a 5 against 7 for instance, using this method?

Also can i encourage u create longer videos to practise along to? The longer the better tbh but 10 minutes is a decent length. An hour is ideal. This is really mind-expanding stuff here

[TonOfClayy]

Why was the one on the right playing 4 beats and the one on the left playing 3 at the end?

[.Tapestry]

if you can play these two, you can play almost any song that'll ever be thrown at you. all that 8/11 stuff is just for showing off and impressing the nerds who even know what it is - and most that barely even sounds good

[nummnutz]

Bro forget the drums that ship has sailed you got it im not even gonna bother. I was just thinking after messing around with bass and guitar “well there’s no complex finger movements it’s just rhythm how bad could it be”

[Ghajlalalala]

NOW I GET IT WHAT. I have never heard a single good explanation bro thank you 😂

[sammysplatoon]

That’s cool, I’ve never thought of that!

[metalphobos]

This is the video where you explain it! I didn't know you finally made it.

[zupergurkan]

0:37 am I stupid or did he switch the 2 and the 3?

[D.S.Borromeo]

Why does it aound like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring?

[Th.Kin]

DONT PULL THESE MAGICAL SHENANIGANS HOW DO YOU JUST DROP IT I’ve been playing forever and can’t even keep a beat and you just say oh yeah btw drop it

[brianhull]

In my experience, dividing into powers of two (particular on 2s or on 4s) or into 3rds is pretty trivial, so 2:3, 3:2, 2:4, 4:2, 3:4, and 4:3 are all pretty intuitive. 6ths and, to a lesser extent, 9ths and 12ths can also be done reasonably easy. Where it gets hard is where one or both have prime factors other than 2 or 3, particularly if one isn’t a divisor for the other and neither of them is 2. Think 4:5, 10:3, or 5:7. Generally, if one of them is 2, 3, or 4, it’s easier to do it if that is the second (so 5:4 is easier than 4:5). Our brains just aren’t as good at subdividing by anything other than 2 or 3, but we can repeat that, especially for 2, and we can combine them, so subdividing by 3, powers of 2, or 3 times powers of 2 (as well as, to a lesser extent, powers of 3 or products of powers of 2 with powers of 3) is generally intuitive, but mix in any primes other than 2 or 3 and it gets a lot harder. That said, the main beat could still be just about any number we can easily count to without losing track; the problem comes when subdividing the individual beats into quintuplets, septuplets, decuplets, or groups of 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, etc. rather than eighth notes, triplets, sixteenth notes, or, to a lesser extent, sextuplets, thirty-second notes, nonuplets, groups of 12, or sixty-fourth notes, (It also tends to fall off for larger numbers as it becomes harder to keep track of them. Generally, we are really only fully intuitive subdividing beats into eighth notes, triplets, and sixteenth notes; larger numbers whose only prime factors are 2 and/or 3 end up with divisions so fine that it’s hard for our brains to distinguish between, say, the 5th and the 6th notes of each group.)

Obviously, with enough training, you can surpass these limits on our intuition, but it’s nowhere near as easy for us. Plus, generally, there are few instances where you need to precisely subdivide a beat by anything other than a power of 2 between 2 and 8, 3, 6, or maybe 9, 12, or 16, with 2, 3, and 4 being by far the most common subdivisions followed by 6 and 8. Most other cases you subdivide by other numbers, it’s basically just a scale to a particular note, so getting the beat precisely right there isn’t usually necessary. Any other time where you’re doing a polyrhythm that involves something with prime factors other than 2 or 3, you can have that be the main beat and then subdivide _that_ based on something that only has the prime factors 2 and/or 3, most commonly 2, 3, or 4.