I LOVE music that does this, what are your favorite examples of bizarre and clever rhythmic illusions in music???

Self trained drummer here. 32 years experience. The only way I can explain this using words is that all time signatures can be infinitely divided in infinite combinations. As long as the measure resolves correctly according to the signature, you can do anything.

Everything is 4/4 if you're brave enough

Hi, I worked with II-L to compose/commission that first song for a rhythm game event. If anyone is into it, would strongly recommend looking at just about any of his other music which all features this same disorienting vibe, always in 4/4. They're pretty much all available on his youtube channel! Even more interestingly, II-L will often theme entire albums around the same baseline track, but modify it in increasingly crazy polyrhythmic ways. The stuff he makes is truly unique, really strongly recommend taking a look.

Fun fact: System - Brotherly was actually written by Jacob Collier’s bass player, Robin Mullarky. The album is insanely funky!

brain dissolves until the beat resolves

Animals as Leader's "Monomyth" has a 5+7+7+5+5+7 groove throughout which adds up to 36, and since 36 can be divided by both 3 and 4 you can hear many "regular" subdivisions played by the drums(specifically the cymbals).

You've covered Djent before, but Meshuggah built their whole career around this sort of thing, and inspired others to do the same. It's wonderful.

This math teacher LOVES what you're doing here. It's a great example of how our minds can be challenged when rhythms deviate from culturally entrained patterns. Thank you!

Leprous are masters of using 4/4 in a very syncopated way, making it sound like an odd-time signature

Holy shit, i never thought i would see Charles react to II-L

Call Adam Neely, we've got nested tuplets!

i got so excited when i saw The Grid in the thumbnail, and immediately lost my mind when i got jumpscared by II-L

What really helped me was to realize that musical notation is just that - a representation of the “true” thing. Often, there are multiple equivalent ways to notate the same piece of music. Sometimes there are conventions which restrict these, which also helps communication.

Progressive metal dude here. One of my favorite things to do when writing a thick djenty riff is to play around with snare placement. Everything else continues playing the exact same rhythm but the only thing that changes is the snare. Great for building tension and when you bring in the backbeat, you just can’t help but headbang and open the mosh pit in your living room. Periphery does this perfectly and it’s my biggest inspiration.

As a progrock fan, I love odd time signatures, but I didn't realize how weird rhythms can be in plain, old 4/4! Such interesting music. And yeah, a time signature like 6/4 can really fool you because it *seems* like 4/4 when it's not. I unintentionally wrote a verse in 6/4 just because it felt right, but I assumed I was still in 4/4 when I wrote and played it. But that wasn't so much a difficult rhythm as it was simply giving the chords the proper length to play out.

“We can come up with a way to think of this thing, that is so easy to hear “ - plays the most incomprehensible piece of music I’ve ever heard

My beloved THE EARTH by II-L, what an incredible artist! You should absolutely check out the work of Toromaru! Formless Canvas, Erinyes, Deorbit, all incredible pieces of music!

I remember hearing Pyramid Song by Radiohead for the first time as a teenager and being so confused and fascinated at the same time

A song that totally fits this bill is TOOL’s The Pot. It starts out with a syncopated bass riff that’s hard to follow, lays a guitar riff over it that is easier but still syncopated, and the vocals are syncopated differently as well. But when the drums kick in you realize it’s in 4/4 and it suddenly becomes super easy to bop your head to. Very fun on a first listen

Tigran Hamasyan’s “The Grid” is one of my favorite pieces ever, I love the 15-minute version with all its crazy metric modulations and the coolest breakdown ever

Meshuggah has so many songs that are in 4/4 but don’t feel like they are. Combustion is one of the weirdest 4/4 intros I have ever heard and it will always boggle me on how they count it properly

As soon as I saw the title my brain immediately went to Pyramid Song by Radiohead. At first listen, you think it’s alternating bars of 3/4 and 4/4, but it’s just 4/4 swung in a funny way and you can’t tell until the percussion comes in.

All music is in 4/4 if you don't count it like a nerd

We NEED a full breakdown of the Grid by Tigran, that stuff just hits different, the metric mods there, polyrhythms, harmony...they're just out of this world

what immediately comes to mind is a song called "Fall" by Chon. it sounds like insane things go on with the time signature, but one way I broke it down was 5/4 but every 5th 16th note is emphasized in one measure, and then every downbeat is emphasized in the next measure.

I always love hearing Polyrhythms/Polymeters in regular music, and I think these songs encapsulate that vibe. ❤

There is one song that completely broke my brain: Crime of the Century by Supertramp. The solo piano build up to the end is so misleading, and I love it for that. It makes you think the strong beats are so obviously placed, and then the rest of the band kicks in and suddenly you realize you had it wrong the whole time. I don’t know how else to describe it, but it absolutely tickles my brain when I heat that part. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times trying to force my brain to naturally count the time right, and I still have trouble!

Never thought I would see THE EARTH from II-L! I love the rhythm and the lyric plays into the beats as well. THE EARTH begins with a golden satellite investigating a planet like their own, with aliens who count their numbers in their uneven hands. The music they hear is nearly incomprehensible, noting how the aliens dance to the complex rhythm effortlessly as if they know it by their hearts. But the satellite, despite it being uncomfortable, finds the aliens way of counting fascinating. There's a wonderful hint at a twist toward the end where the lyric specifically say the aliens count in 5x2=10, which means the "alien" they were talking about is actually humans, the satellite's subject, now more obvious in hindsight, the Earth. Now, humans, at least in cultures I grew up in, find these rhythms as fascinating and confusing as them, which I think is the fun part. There's an irony of the "aliens" supposedly getting the rhythm even though a lot of us clearly don't. The song suggest at first to be a frustration towards how human society chose 5 x 2 = 10 to count. But as the lyric continues, it's clear that they find beauty in the counting, taking something that sounds complicated, and using it everyday as if it's very straightforward. I don't know if I explain that too well, but I wanted to say that the lyric plays into the whole confusing rhythm thing and I find that really cool! II-L's stuff is mind-bending throughout, I can't recommend it enough!!

That Brotherly band sounded awesome

Polyrhythmic grooves are the new Jazz baby!!!

No Signal by Chon is a great example of this. The main riff can be heard as 3 bars of 9/16 followed by one bar of 5/16 or just entirely in 4/4. They also cited Tigray Hamasyan as a big influence so

All of a sudden red became blue and my mind melted a bit around the edges. When you explained it then I heard it as clear as a bright sunny day. And now I can't unhear it.

ahh yes, Tigran Hamasayan yet again in the thumbnail for a video about time signatures.

One of my favourite examples of a brain-bending 4/4 is Bonnie The Cat by Porcupine Tree. It's ostensibly a straight-feel 4/4 but the way Gavin Harrison phrases the drum pattern against what the bass is doing makes it sound very 'odd-timey'. It's great.

Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park once released an instrumental for charity called "Issho Ni" that starts off with a melody with no percussion, and the melody has so many pauses in it that on first listen it's hard to figure out what the rhythm is, and then when percussion starts coming in it becomes clear that the beat is straightforward even though the melody sounded so odd.

One of my favorite “sounds odd but isn’t” is two bars of 12/8 time done in 7 + 7 + 7 + 3 groups. It feels like the weirdest odd time signature shift but keeps that even time total, and makes for a stark contrast going between that feel and a standard 12/8 swung feel.

I love guessing time signatures while driving, it's a fun game to pass the time!

Medtner's elegie op. 45 has the singer singing in 4/4, whilst the piano accompaniment is mostly 10/8 with lots of funky 5 against 3 against 2 polyrithms

I appreciate the mix between analysis and fun you put on your videos. Thank you for doing them

This takes me back to high school Big Band (Jazz Orchestra). Our group loved highly syncopated pieces across the wind and percussive sections with wacky time signatures because the interpretations were truly endless. Every run was different and it challenged us to get into the composer’s head to try and understand the message and create it over and over again. It’s like a musical puzzle and that’s awesome.

The whole intro to the song Sun Spat by EMEFE also has a really nebulous beat structure until the drums kick in. It's fun to quiz people on where beat 1 is if they've never heard the song before.

Man, I am obsessed with this kind of music, so cool to see it broken down like this! One artist I'd love to see you react to sometime is Anna Meredith, she's the absolute master of overlapping polyrhythms & mid-song downbeat changes

Great video, Charles! Been a subscriber for a while, but I clicked on this video specifically because Tigran was in the thumbnail. I've been fascinated by his rhythms for years, and his scatting is a far more polished example that I can show others of how/why I geek out about complex rhythms and drum patterns in my head.

I would love a whole series on odd time signatures and polyrhythms - but I'm really terrible at maths 😬

The Earth is a sick song! I love coming here and hearing you review a obscure song I know! Thanks for recommendation for System, this song is amazing!

Here are some songs with rhythmical illusions that I found interesting: 1. Knockin’ Em Down by Phat Phunktion: the intro into verse really throws your brain for a loop. 2. Top Secret by Yellowjackets: also the intro you kinda get a feel, but when the drums begin the groove, it’s also confusing the first time listening. 3. Du du - Kristian Kristensen: this one opens up with a pattern of 5’s and 7’s (5/16+5/16+5/16+7/16+5/16+5/16 which equals 2 measures of 4/4 haha) so you can either feel the subdivisions of 16ths or the slow 4/4 beat 4. Molasses - Hiatus Kaiyote: I think it’s only me perhaps, but in my head the part of «Bet-ter, bet-ter» from 3 mins 33 secs my feel is always one 16th note off (only in studio ver., not live ver.), so every 2nd kick drum gets to be a downbeat in my head even though I know from the live ver. that they intended the 1st 16th note of the kickdrum pattern to be downbeat. But I guess that’s just how my brain works🤷🏽‍♂️

thanks for your enthusiasm around this kind of stuff. it inspires a lot of us, to hear, to create, to remember why we should love music

I've been testing how healed my hearing is by (re)listening to a bunch of your videos. This video reminded me I can still access some parts of music, even with my busted, muffled, robo-pitchy ears 😊 Keep up the good work!

Not a multi-layered groove, but I'm reminded of Gentle Giant's 'So Sincere'. The first verse gives you just the violin and voice (IIRC) and it all sounds just rhythmically unhinged, really. Enter the drums on the second verse with a very simple 4-4 rhythm and it locks down in a very surprising and satisfying way.

II-L has some of the most insane rhythmically challenging songs in rhythm games

I love this stuff! I’m a trained opera singer who has worked as a non-singing opera musician for the past 25 years, and I’m constantly analyzing and picking apart the structure and rhythm of interesting pop songs I hear. I remember hearing Ne-Yo’s "Let Me Love You" years ago and trying to figure out the time signature; the vocal part is all dotted eighth notes and tied sixteenth and eighth notes across bar lines, so finding the 4/4 structure underneath took me a few minutes. Maybe not as difficult as Britten writing polymetric and polyrhythmic music, but still very rhythmically interesting.

7:40 That statement really resonates with me. I write a lot of music with extra beats or pauses, odd rhythms, or odd time signatures and it just happens naturally as part of the flow. Redefining the rhythm feel as part of seeking a melody or chord progression can let unique ideas come out. It can be hard to communicate these ideas though with musicians who focus too much on theory and counting every beat instead of feeling the pocket and intention in a song.

Theres a song by Igorrr that i got reminded of while watching, and thats a track called Houmous. The main rhythmic idea can be counted as 7, 11, 7, 7. Whats interesting is the phrase is 32 beats, so you could theoretically break it down into 4 bars of 8 and try to count it that way, giving it a alternating straight-syncopated feel. Whats really cool is later in the track it switches to a straight 6, which in a 4 bar phrase adds up to 24. I dont know why but it makes the transition feel like a 'rhythmic resolution' because the previous 32 beat phrase was so uneven in its split. Its very satisfying to hear.

Isorhythmssss. That's what my old composition teacher at uni called this: isorhythm. Also, for interesting subdivision stuff, check into how J. Dilla got his swing sound by subdividing on 5's.

My drumming teacher once gave me the music sheet (for drumkit) of 'Cissy strut' by The Meters. If you played the notes in the length they were written in - you would never hit the groove correctly. Once I released myself from what's written and started to feel - that's when I was able to play the groove right. And it was awesome!

With the sort of "automatic" quantization in a lot of music making that involves a digital interface it becomes a lot "easier" to play around with rhythms like this. You can lay down a clear 4/4 groove, and layer tracks over it, manipulating them in various ways. Using these digital interfaces makes approaching the music from the instrument AND from the perspective of how it functions in the end much easier. For example: I noticed when I first started using a notation software (finale and sibelius) to write music instead of pen and paper, having the ability to copy and paste, transpose, layer, stretch or shorten, at the click of a button (sometimes by accident) lead to ways of thinking about the music that didn't come as easily just sitting at a piano with pen and paper. An example of a similar effect in music history was Steve Reich's comping up with "phasing". He discovered this, and the resulting intricate rhythms, by playing around with tape recording and noticing them going out of phase with each other. Also, if you're making music directly on paper/computer in an abstract sense, and not "hearing" it, you can write the meter as 4/4, but have it notated in a way that no matter who plays it, it will never sound like "4/4". For example, write all your measures in 4/4 but write every measure with tuplets of 5 or 7 in the space of 4 with accents alternating every 3 and 6 notes. it's in "4/4" but no one will ever hear it that way...although it will effect how a good performer plays it and possibly create certain effects you wouldn't get otherwise (see any of Morton Feldman's later compositions as an example). sorry for the effort post

The amount of times I here things in 8/8 or 10/8 is higher than it should be. Hooked on compound meters works for me.

These videos make me feel like i sent my best friend a song and he explains to me, with the same excitement, why i like it specifically and then get excited with me. I just didnt have the words to explain that i hear it, i get it, I under it.

Soooo glad to hear you reacting to Hamasyan's The Grid! I discovered the guy with this particular track and spent hours hitting my laps trying to figure out its insanely skilled and rich rhythmic structure! Funny thing is, I later on dug into Vardavar thanks to you and your previous video... Feels like I've come full circle now 🤗😁

I'm getting one of those things! Like a headache with pictures!

I love II-L! That first song was custom made for the osu! world cup (a rhythm game) - if I remember correctly

Oh man, I just love this! Those kinds of polyrhythms are really challenging for my brain, but they still groove as hell!

For Tigran's "The Grid", I've felt it for years with the bass drum groupings you mentioned but as alternating measures of 3/4 + 7/8 (groups of 2 with 1 group of 3). My brain feels a grouping and wants it to be the smallest number of subdivisions for the groups. But with the 5 groups of 5 and 1 group of 7 that fits into 4/4 makes perfect sense in my hands. It's also like 2 groups of chopped and misplaced 5:4. "The Earth" still breaks my brain. I can't reconcile the 7 grouping that gets established at the beginning with the hihat, and the 4/4 backbeat later on. I also have to fight to not feel a quarter note triplet in the 2nd half of the measure even though it's displaced one quintuplet beat.

You should absolutely listen to "VOLA - Straight Lines". Really cool 4/3 groove throughout the whole thing.

You have to love when music becomes math

I love when I spontaneously write something and work it out on an instrument, the whole time thinking I'm playing in 5/4 or 7/8 or something weird like that but its just that it has this bump and swing and is really in 4/4.

I learnt piano as a child and hat to learn about all the different time signatures. Then in my teens I learned dancing where I learned doing 8-count and everything just ends up as 4/4 no matter what. On rare occasions 3/4.

hades ost tonite 👀 hades ost tonight queen?? hades ost tonite 👀

God, the grid is such a friggin BANGER. Absolute jam. I wish spotify was smart enough to show me all of these similar songs and artists but I guess I just have to find them through the comment sections on your videos lmfao

This video got on my feed; i'm a self taught bassist and have been playing bass since 2008 and just recently got into real music theory and this quote about "The Grid" composer saying that you can hear it anyway you want really goes to show how music and rythm are built into our brains; also Victor Wooten adressed this on his tedxtalk saying music it's is own language.

Wow, thanks mate! Love these rythm tricks!

The Earth ft. Amelie xoxo is just a 5/4 time signature! Interpret the first two notes as quarter notes and everything else falls into line in a 5/4 measure.

I've nothing against challenging time sigs, but if it's that difficult to listen to I'm not interested, music for me is for enjoying.

That way to aproach polyrithms and odd signatures with vocal phrases and common speech remind me how Marco Minemann explain it, and once became musical to you is a joy!

A common technique in rudimental drumming is to use “the grid”. We take the thing we are working on, be it an accent, flam, or diddle, and then move it onto every part of a given subdivision. Example would be if we are working on our diddles we would play a measure of 16ths, next measure diddle all of the down beats, next measure all of the “e”s, and so on.

interesting rhythms. thanks charles! they don't sound like 4/4, even if they are!

Anybody know a Spotify playlist for this kind of brainmelting rythms in music?

This is a great video! I wish more people would write music using these kinds of techniques

I had this with the Eurovision song for Russia a few years ago. It was a song by Sergey Lazarev, “You’re the only one” if I’m not mistaken is what it was called. With the intro and the verse it sounded like a classic 6/8 song, but then the prechorus came in and all of a sudden it had this four on the floor in the background, and it just threw me for a loop especially the first time and because of the fact that it’s a regular pop song. It’s not weird now anymore but I still would’ve preferred it if the song was in 6/8.

With music notation software it has become ridiculously easy to experiment with polyrhythms. Drop in a bunch of sixteenth-note rests to space out notes in awkward ways, hit play, listen to the effect. In the old days you would need to play everything yourself and hope that you were playing what you intended. EDIT for the benefit of the pedantic people who are telling me that syncopated rhythms are not polyrhythms: Yes, thanks, I am well aware. My point is that coming up with a satisfying polyrhythm is less challenging with the use of music notation software. With which you can, FOR EXAMPLE, space out a theme by dropping in notes or rests, which will have the effect of lengthening it such that it no longer matches up with whatever else you have going on. You can then easily arrange it such that the various elements elements periodically meet up. BEFORE YOU SAY IT, yes, I am ALSO AWARE that polyrhythms do not necessarily need to meet up. BUT IN MY OPINION it can be satisfying when they do. And my technique using music notation software makes this process easy because you can listen as you go. I really did not think it necessary to go into this much detail when offering my initial observation, but some people can apparently just not resist trying to teach me music theory. To them I would point out that my technique does not NECESSARILY even create syncopation (because you have no idea where the beats fell in the original phrase, do you?)

I dunno, I just find that a lot of this type of music tends to come off as pretentious. It's very fascinating from an academic perspective, don't get me wrong, but it simultaneously just feels like complexity for complexity's sake, if that makes sense.

One of the best examples of this is Black Dog by Led Zeppelin. I’ve seen like 10 ways of transcribing that song and some people feel it as 5 over 4 but I just hear really funky 4/4.

Man, this channel is so cool. I've love your thoughts on Thomas Newman music. Road to Perdition theme, Shawshank Redemption, etc.

Anything can be 4/4 if you count hard enough 😄

My man needs to listen to some Dream Theater and love the rhythms there!

II-L has a really popular song in rhythm gaming called "SPUTNIK-3", which has very interesting rhythms. It was awesome seeing them featured!

"You will be able to hear mmmtsaaaa batsssah mmmtsaaaa" yeah totally, Charles... 😂

Try Nightwish, they're switching their rhythms and keys through a lot of their songs to change the pace😊

i love this video because until now i didnt know what poly rythms were called until now, and you made me realize how i hear the groove un things

I remember first time hearing Animals as Leaders in 2009 i was stunned. Couldn't guess where the first beat is so i felt lost and i loved it. Thanks to Metal, now I'm so familiar with irregular rhythms patterns.

All music is in 4/4 if you stop trying to count it like a nerd

the way the video-tracked finger-tap at 0:51 makes me giggle every time... I am so easily amused

Good video and definitely true advice on how each of us can interpret rhythms differently in a song. We shouldn’t get so hung up on the time signatures as you can see some songs can be counted many different ways and still technically be correct.

Yes! More of this!

This was so fun and informative thank you! A few of my favs over the years; Compared to What, Al Jarreau’s version. First Circle by Path Metheny, and YYZ by Rush.

In the shadows and sun spat are great examples of this stuff!

As a percussionist the first song is just 6/8 into 4/4 over and over. Then each measure has its own rhythms going on. You could also call it 10/8 which I would subdivide as 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2 (2 dotted quarter notes into 4 quarter note pulse) so it’s a cool feel. Kind of like 7/8 with an extra dotted quarter note pulse.

The way you counted the rhythm at the end reminds me a lot how we count some syncopations in dancing. It is sometimes much simpler to explain a rhythm with vocalizations instead of just counting measures. Obviously measures are still important, but to get the actual feel of a syncopation or delayed rhythms you kinda just have to adapt and use vocalizations. It was a fun video, and ai have no idea why, but is was quite easy for me to understand. Thanks a lot

This is incredible! I hear it as being in 7 over 4, at least for a while. That little snare back beat in the opening is just cutting the 7 count in half. If you imagine the first one being on beat 1, the second one would occur on the + of 4, which is the halfway point in 7 beats. So it's 2 over 7. It's just displaced so it happens on 3 and the + of 6 instead which gives it a backbeat feel. They start by only playing it on the + of 6 and then add in the 3 after a few times through. As for the hi hat sound, it's just alternating between 8th notes and 8th note triplets over the original 7. Then they cut the 2 from the 2 over 7 in half, which gives them 4 over 7 (one beat every 7 sixteenth notes) and now you have the kick drum four on the floor feel. Later something happens though where the big 4 is subdivided into quintuplets like you mention, but I haven't been able to figure out that transition though. Something changes there at one point I'm pretty sure because the 4 over 7 thing lines up until it suddenly doesn't. My brain is melting though so I'll need to come back to this! That Tigran explanation is fantastic. It's so simple once you see it notated and play it a few times. The pattern actually seems to start in the 2nd bar and then wraps around through the 1st in one continuous rhythmic phrase. It reminds me of bossa nova, where the cross stick pattern does something similar! Just stumbled across this video randomly and was very pleasantly surprised. Good stuff!