Autechre Strangest AE beats/signatures that still work

Alot of autechre music gives me some trouble to comprehend because they often use very strangely co-ordinated beats that sound like they shouldn't fit at all but end up being some of the most danceable/ easiest to track the beat.

for example, Milk Dx perplexes me and it wasnt until recently that i finally figured out how they got that beat to work

Stud is another one, where you think the beat is some weird shit for a while until they highlight it as a proper 4/4 a minute or so in.

discuss some of your favourite/perplexing autechre beats that still managed to work

i suppose flutter may throw some people

but not really i guess

cichli is in 5/4 but danceable

fold 4 wrap 5 lol

Drane's beats are in 5/8 I think. They work soooo perfectly! <3

  rocky path said:

fold 4 wrap 5 lol

that song doenst even have a time signature per say, its a weird beat yes but it doesnt 'work' as i was discussing above

  thehauntingsoul said:

  rocky path said:

fold 4 wrap 5 lol

 

that song doenst even have a time signature per say, its a weird beat yes but it doesnt 'work' as i was discussing above

fold4,wrap5 is 4/4 but made so it slows down to half speed by the end of every bar, but doubles the speed of the drum pattern in the middle of the bar - i made a thread about it and posted an example here.

so i dont quite understand the concept of time signatures, and the wiki article is much more baffling than it is enlightening on the subject.

Anybody think of an easy way to explain it? perhaps list a bunch of AE songs with their signatures so i can get an idea.

the thing is i'm vell versed in music, i played piano for 3 years, and then guitar for about 6 so far and just started the odd sequencing stuff in FL lately but either i forgot or never really learned the concept of time signatures.

i get that the first number is beats per measure, i get that but i dont understand how many beats make a note and w/e that gibberish stuff sorry if its a noob question

the second # is what type of notes count as a beat

4/4 - the quarter note is a beat

4/8 - the eighth note is a beat

overwhelming majority of Ae's stuff is in 4/4. i honestly think if you want to study varying time signatures more closely, with autechre youd be barking up the wrong tree. Autechre imo is quite skilled at making amazingly complex and crazy off kilter beats but still at 4/4 , most people resort to weird signatures like 7/8 ie: Gasman to make their music sound 'weird' . i think its much more challenging to make a catchy non weird sounding song in an unusual time signature than it is to make a crazy/fucked up sounding one.

but yeah most of the craziest experimental AE songs are in 4/4, gantz graf is one example

ok cool, thx man. do you have any specific examples from autechre music that i can truly get the grasp from?

Edit: Gb3, thats what i had a feeling about for ae music because theres alot of strange arrangements that somehow manage to get crammed into 4/4 signature with surprisingly successful results

  thehauntingsoul said:

ok cool, thx man. do you have any specific examples from autechre music that i can truly get the grasp from?

not really, for exactly the reasons i was describing above. IF your goal is specifically to learn how different time signatures relate to particular rhythmic/musical sound, then i would study other kinds of music such as classical or jazz some forms of world music as well.

what makes autechre's rythms interesting to me is that they are able to do so much weirdness within the confines of 4/4. But if what your really trying to get at is how exactly makes their rhythms sound so obscenely bizarre but still dancey, i would say most of those are in 4/4 but using a lot of very well placed odd triplet patterns, or patterns morphing in real-time rythmic in a stairstep fashion from say 64th note triplets back down to 8th note triplets. A triplet note sequence can give one the impression that the music is actually in 3/4 when its still safely in 4/4. An example of this can be done in Reaktor. Find the patch 'experimental sequencer' that comes pre-packaged with Reaktor 3 (for some reason not included on later versions). Duplicated the sequencer twice, make 2 beats with it that sound very similar to eachother and have them in sync. Now with one of them automate the 'triplet' button so that it turns on and off randomly and also automate the clock knob that goes from 16th - 64th. When you do this both at the same time you get a very Autechrey drifting out of synch but coming back into sync type of effect that can seem like a crazy time signature when it is in fact a very simple one.

yeah i'm trying to learn certain things about music theory for now, I'm not trying to become a famous electronic music artist or anything but its interesting how your perspective on AE's music changes after you try to craft a couple of beats on your own.

like i just recently concluded that you can barely do shit in a song of repeating 4 beat measures and i never noticed (concsciously) that they have similar beats throughout a couple of measures but they alter things slightly measure by measure.

but yeah if you are trying to do like some creeping ambient noises and stuff you need way more than 4 measures lol

Also if anybody would let me pm them a couple tracks i've written and provide some constructive criticism that would be swell, i dont think the tracks are good but the only way to get better is the critique eh

  thehauntingsoul said:

but the only way to get better is practice

fixed

send em over.

  thehauntingsoul said:

Also if anybody would let me pm them a couple tracks i've written and provide some constructive criticism that would be swell, i dont think the tracks are good but the only way to get better is the critique eh

ok, i'll give you constructive criticism.. as long as you don't mind me being a bit harsh if i believe you can learn from it! heheh

777 is in 7/8!!!!!!!!!

  thehauntingsoul said:

yeah i'm trying to learn certain things about music theory for now, I'm not trying to become a famous electronic music artist or anything but its interesting how your perspective on AE's music changes after you try to craft a couple of beats on your own.

 

like i just recently concluded that you can barely do shit in a song of repeating 4 beat measures and i never noticed (concsciously) that they have similar beats throughout a couple of measures but they alter things slightly measure by measure.

 

but yeah if you are trying to do like some creeping ambient noises and stuff you need way more than 4 measures lol

God I know what you mean. It wasn't untill I started my own music production projects that I really really began to appreciate the skill and creativity involved with Autechre's programming. My friends are like "oh yeah I could do that, it's just random whatever shit." I wanna kick their asses when they say garbage like that. They just don't understand.

  thehauntingsoul said:

Also if anybody would let me pm them a couple tracks i've written and provide some constructive criticism that would be swell, i dont think the tracks are good but the only way to get better is the critique eh

EKT -> Your Latest Creations

i thought you needed a subscription to start threads in ekt

  thehauntingsoul said:

i thought you needed a subscription to start threads in ekt

not at all!

nuane

  Ghostbusters III said:

An example of this can be done in Reaktor. Find the patch 'experimental sequencer' that comes pre-packaged with Reaktor 3 (for some reason not included on later versions).

Hi, first post here guys.

GBIII, can u tell me where exactly i can find this experimental sequencer in R3? Ive looked through both ensembles and instruments in the premium, essentials and new in R3 folders but cant find it?? hmmm. it sounds interesting.

Thanks.

  On 5/21/2008 at 8:44 AM, Salvatorin said:

777 is in 7/8!!!!!!!!!

Yes it is. Any ideas on Yuop? Every time I think I have it figured out, I get confused again. The lack of beats in many Oversteps tracks makes it difficult to determine the time signatures.

I can dance to fucking anything so it doesnt really matter.

yuop is 4 /4 if im thinking of it right

  On 2/1/2011 at 7:38 PM, xxx said:

I was always tripped out by the theory that "Fold 4, Wrap 5" was created by layering 2 4/4 beats at staggered meter to give the "illusion" of altered time sig. Anyway, I was compiling all the archive work that I've done and ran into an experiment where I did something...uh, similar but didn't realize the implications until now.

 

It's Dr. Dre - "Xplosive" and Aaliyah - "More Than A Woman" blended at a staggered meter. It was an accident using Goldwave's "stretch to fit" feature. I was trying to do something much less inspired back in 2002 for less demanding folks than WATMM. It approaches something like a messy 6/8 and isn't anything as good as Autechre lol

lol that's pretty cool