Hip Hop Beats in time signatures other than 4/4???

ok, here's something i'm pretty sure of but i may be wrong:

"spaceship" and "champions" produced by kanye west are in 6/8, not 3/4, along with the majority of hip hop songs that aren't in 4/4

3/4 means the accented snare is on the 3rd hit out of 4 (1,2,snare,1,2,snare)

6/8 means the accented snare is on the 4th hit out of 6 (1,2,3,snare,5,6)

also, the majority of older east coast hip hop songs are actually in 6/8 and not 4/4 (dead presidents by jay z)

they sound like they are 4/4 because the majority of the rhythm is just 1,2,3,4 but within these hits they are all triplets...the one thing that reveals the 6/8 timing are the double kick drums (usually a kick drum coming right before the main one on the 1st or 3rd beats) which sound like they are a 1/16 note apart but are actually within a triplet
 
GOD BLESS FP!!! THANX YA"LL FOR ALL THAT GOOD INPUT I'MA MAKE A 3/4 or 6/8 banger tonite,lol.
 
Thomas Haake of Meshuggah, a death metal groove band, plays 4/4 with his hands and kicks with the bass guitar sometimes in 6/8. or plays the first part bar in 5/4 then the next in 3/4. it sounds like the beats been coughed up but in end make sense. the rhythm is understood after two bars instead of the usual one bar. i know its death metal, but the drums are so closely related to jazz and roots reggae. Also, any coltrane has the drums in various types of time sigs.
 
ameliablack said:
ok, here's something i'm pretty sure of but i may be wrong:

"spaceship" and "champions" produced by kanye west are in 6/8, not 3/4, along with the majority of hip hop songs that aren't in 4/4

3/4 means the accented snare is on the 3rd hit out of 4 (1,2,snare,1,2,snare)

6/8 means the accented snare is on the 4th hit out of 6 (1,2,3,snare,5,6)

also, the majority of older east coast hip hop songs are actually in 6/8 and not 4/4 (dead presidents by jay z)

they sound like they are 4/4 because the majority of the rhythm is just 1,2,3,4 but within these hits they are all triplets...the one thing that reveals the 6/8 timing are the double kick drums (usually a kick drum coming right before the main one on the 1st or 3rd beats) which sound like they are a 1/16 note apart but are actually within a triplet
Click to expand...

Sounds good i'll test that, real soon. thanks
 
isn't that 6/8 time my friend?

you guys have it all wrong
3/4 means 3 beats in a measure quarter note = 1 beat used in classical for waltzes
6/8 means there are 6 beats in a measure and and eighth note gets the value of one beat. 6/8 time is to 3/4 time as 4/4 time is to 2/2 time.
However, 99% of the time songs written in 6/8 time are played quickly and the quarter note essentially becomes what would be triplet in 4/4 or 2/2 time.

they sound like they are 4/4 because the majority of the rhythm is just 1 said:
Time signatures are just ways to write music
You can write triplets in 8/8 4/4 2/4 2/2
If you write quarter notes in 6/8 time 99% they are played as triplets
The sound is the same it's just a different way to write the music.

Also, the 'double kick drums' that sound as if they are 1/16 note apart would be an example of syncopation

Triplets by definition are 1/3 of a beat.
Look at your clock and at the beginning of every second hum a note
Do this 3 times in a row and double or triple the speed of it. That is a triplet
Click to expand...
 
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Jay-Z - Hovi Baby. Some of the beat is in 4/4 and the rest of it is in a different time signature, I don't know which.
 
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I find it odd noone mentioned "Morris Brown" seeing as how its probably the most recent. It's in 3/4 time (or 6/8, the difference is superficial at best anyway.)
 
Way to visualize this shit...

Okay, I`m opening a Reason rack with rex loop player loading standard 4/4 loop...

Then I`m making the time signature of the sequencer 6/8 and set the loop dividers to two bars.

When I start the 4/4 loop it restarts at some point based on the new 6/8 time signature, achieving somewhat nice effect.

I spit a standard 4/4 rap line (8 chops with a hand long).

You need to spit it 3 times before it aligns back with the beginning of the loop.
 
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Hi all.
I just joined this forum! This is my first reply, and I have to tell you - reading the first page of this post made me laugh quite a bit (no disrespect). I think most of you (who don't already know) should really learn more about time signatures, key signatures, chords, and theory behind MUSIC in general. It takes a year to three to really understand the "beat making" computer/software/hardware side of music, but what takes even longer I think is understanding how music actually WORKS.

To answer your question, PND's song "muse" is in 3/4 youtube.com/watch?v=0tOa5YodIjE (can't post link yet). (i think he's still considered hiphop, he does rap in a lot of songs)

But i can't remember who it was by unfortunately.

Using different time signatures other then 4/4 is what me and my friend have been trying to do for a while. It can really be a way separate your music from everyone else's (don't over do it ! )
I'll be uploading one of my records (you may know this as "beats") on my site later this week in 3/4 if you wan't to take a look at it. My website is yovirecords.com

If I come up with anymore hiphop songs in 3/4 I'll post them here!
-Yovi
 
Dudes-- I can't _believe_ BC has let this go on so long without schooling you, but almost every one of you is displaying signs of _major confusion_ over the differences between straight and odd time (2/4 and 4/4 vs. everything else), syncopation, 12/8, 6/8, and 3/4 time. There is very little hip-hop or any other pop music (and _no_ hip-hop in the Billboard top 100, ever, as far as I know) that is not in 4/4. I don't have time to respond to every post in this thread; maybe Coach is preparing a long post (or would just direct you to reading something from the stickies), but I would suggest (seriously, not trying to be a @$*%#) some serious study in the areas of time signature, tempo, straight versus swing/shuffle, and syncopation. While you can read a lot about this stuff, the best place to get it and have it make _sense_, is to take some drum lessons. Your rhythmic vocabulary, understanding of concepts, and your overall productions will improve exponentially. Just be careful dropping the bad information, you're going to get more folks more confused!

GJ
 
given that post 48 was in 2007, post 49 was in 2013 and then a few posts in the last few days, there was not much point in schooling anyone, most of the guys who did post are long gone

as for the rest, will consider it a challenge to address in the next few hours
 
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So some initial responses to the wrong stuff: I guess for clarity it needs to be done:

Rhapzode said:
Nah, it would give a 4/3 feel. Cuz 3/4 is 3 bars/ measure with 4 beats in each bar. so the hats would still be doin quarter notes/ eight notes/ sixteenths.

A 4/3 would be 4 bars/ measure and 3 beats/ bar. So THAT would have the hats doin triplets.
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a 4/3 feel is a nonsense - there is no duration that is represented by the 3 on its own in spite of the bastardry practiced by FL and much earlier versions of Steinbergs MIDI sequencers. For those that want to argue, the 3 designation represents the triplet half note in both canons of use, a note that does not exist without alteration of more simpler durations

But with 4 bars in a measure you can switch between 4/3 n 4/4 in the same song easily, n it wouldn't disrupt nothin.
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there are not 4 bars in a measure unless you are using a very different meaning for the word measure
- measure = bar = a grouping according to the time signature

a time signature (for the sake of completeness) consists of two parts
1) a number of beats per measure/bar as the top number (this can be any number) and
2) the type of beat used for the bottom number (best thought of as the fractional part of the time signature) as it is a direct cognate statement of the duration type in American note names most cases:
1/1 (semibreve), 1/2 (minim), 1/4 (crotchet), 1/8 (quaver), etc.....

There are three basic time signatures:
1) Duple,
2) Triple and
3) Quadruple

These time signatures can represent the Simple division of the beat (divide each beat and subsequent divisions into two equal parts) or the Compound division of the beat (the beat is initially divided into three equal parts and then subsequently divided into two equal parts).

Using our above standard time signature namings we then get the following potential time signatures:

Duple2/8
2/4
2/2		6/16
6/8
6/4
Triple3/8
3/4
3/2		9/16
9/8
9/4
Quadruple4/8
4/4
4/2		12/16
12/8
12/4

Compound time signatures always seem stranger as they seem to say way too much:

you read them by dividing the top by 3 to get the number of beats and multiplying the bottom number by 3 to get the actual duration of the beat

e.g. 12/16 means 4 dotted 8th notes per bars (3 x 16th = a dotted 8th (an 8th and a half))

9/8 means 3 dotted quarter notes per bar

6/4 means 2 dotted half notes per bar

Also, 2/4 and 4/4 is really the same thing, cuz hip hop is rarely ever written down n it would sound the same, ain't no way to differentiate.
Really, if a song is based on real short loops n real simple drums, it would sound more 2/4, but it's all the same.
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nonsense

If it has a 2 feel then it is likely to be 2/2 not 2/4 and whilst 2/2 is almost the same as 4/4 (from a mathematical perspective they say the same thing a whole note per bar), they tell us to divide the bar differently

Resinate said:
You can still have a 3/4 song with the snare on two an four.

Kind of......:D

If I have the hi hats going on all 3 beats. (have 12 beats shown here)
kick goes onto 1. And the snare goes onto beat one of the next measure. You can then look at the whole pattern in 4.

x x x x x x x x x x x x
K......S......K......S.....
1......2.......3......4.....

Make Sense?
Click to expand...

the above is also nonsense: that is 4 bar grouping of 3/8 or something in 12/8

123456789101112
hatsxxxxxxxxxxxx
snarexx
kickxx

[mp3]http://www.bandcoach.org/fp/audio/timeSigs-01.mp3[/mp3]

tempo is 96bpm

now compare this with original and modern Hip-Hop lazy 16th hats

123456223456323456423456
triplet hatsxxxxxxxxxxxx
hip-hop lazy 16ths hatsxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
snarexx
kickxx

[mp3]http://www.bandcoach.org/fp/audio/timeSigs-02.mp3[/mp3]

tempo is 96bpm

the triplet division of the beat is played on a triangle so we can hear it as a distinct rhythmic line against the lazy 16th hats (aka 16ths with MPC66% swing)

we can see (and hear) that the beat is divided into two equal parts and then those divisions are divided into 3 equal parts, using only the 1st and 3rd divisions for time keeping

some other things in this thread are out there as well but these were the ones that struck me as really wrong
 
I didn't notice the dates of all of them, BC, but point taken. I guess mine would be __ "For posterity's sake," so thanks for the thorough correctional response. Only one comment/addition:

>>>>a 4/3 feel is a nonsense - there is no duration that is represented by the 3 on its own in spite of the bastardry practiced by FL and much earlier versions of Steinbergs MIDI sequencers. For those that want to argue, the 3 designation represents the triplet half note in both canons of use, a note that does not exist without alteration of more simpler durations<<<<

YES! Agreed, insomuch as you and I probably subscribe to what could be called "classical rhythm theory" (note the small "c," maybe "traditional" would be a better term). But educators and fancy-pants composers started to mess things up a bit in the 80's and 90's when they started taking license with time signatures by writing things with an odd compound signature like 4 over a dotted-quarter note. Sort of a "three 8th notes get the beat" cheat way of doing things. I guess it opened some interesting creative doors, if you're into math music, but I'm glad to have not seen much of this in quite some time. More trouble than it was worth, if you ask me.

One more comment-- in one of those earlier posts way back, someone mentioned "West Side Story" and "all of the music in 3/4." AFAIK, most/all of WSS was written in 12/8, as Bernstein's means of trying to get swing feeling across to classically-trained musicians that would be playing note-for-note renditions every night...

GJ
 
Agreed about things like number over actual note value
- it is useful when trying to illuminate an idea for those who do not normally read in such out there patterning,

but very few actually tried to render their works in 4/3 (only those who did not know and thought that the ability to do it in Pro 12/16/24 was cool)

- why you would use triplet half notes as your base duration is still a mystery to me as there is no easy way to do sub-divisions

I do however like the idea of (2+3+2+3+2+3)/8 as a good way of communicating underlying emphasis in complex time signatures much more instructive than 15/8 - I wrote a few pieces in this style of time signature most notably a piece that went (3+3+3+4)/8

and, yes, West Side Story itself was interesting for lots of reasons, but I think the quote referenced the tune America, which of course is a shifting meter piece moving from 6/8 to 3/4 every other bar whilst keeping the same quaver/8th note pulse

1-2-3-4-5-6-1-&-2-&-3-&- etc
 
Cool stuff BC.

Interesting tidbit about "America"-- Bernstein used a rhythm from Flamenco music called the Buleria, which has that alternating 123-123-1&2&3& pattern. Once you hear it, you can kind of pick it out in other songs and styles that have borrowed it, the same way you can hear permutations of the clave rhythm.

GJ
 
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