Odd time signatures

Elí Saúl

I been wondering about doing some odd time signatures within gypsy jazz. However it's not really easy come up with an steady base that resembles the feel of the genre.
Could someone direct me to someone videos or audios of people doing somewhat similar? I been looking for a while but all the usual 4/4 ,3/4 6/8.

Elí Saúl

stuart wrote: »

This is Remi Harris doing Odd Elegy, some of which is in 7/16 - is that odd enough?

that's exactly what i was looking for, cheers.

Buco

Aside from small parts of the song, what I've heard is eithe/or.
Either the band will take songs with odd time signatures and make it 4/4 or the tune will be played as is, without trying to make it GJ sounding.
Rhythm Future did this


Hot Club of Belgrade took a lot of odd time signatures and made them swing



And there was Tcha in his recent performance, lots of odd time signatures there, I'll have to look for the link but it was posted here recently.

You'll have to do something your own if you want to marry the two it looks like.

Elí Saúl

Buco wrote: »

Aside from small parts of the song, what I've heard is eithe/or.
Either the band will take songs with odd time signatures and make it 4/4 or the tune will be played as is, without trying to make it GJ sounding.
Rhythm Future did this

Hot Club of Belgrade took a lot of odd time signatures and made them swing


And there was Tcha in his recent performance, lots of odd time signatures there, I'll have to look for the link but it was posted here recently.

You'll have to do something your own if you want to marry the two it looks like.

Yeah i've been thinking about that myself, i guess i could use to compose something.

I heard Tcha doing some odd signature stuff but to my ears he is more balkan sounding, which is not bad at all ... acually he's a hell of a musician. always enjoy listening to him.

I guess i'lll have to experiment more until i find my bone

Buco

Koran Agan told me once they did Nuages in...I think 7/8 or could've been 5/4, one of those.

adrian

Check out the Les Doigts De L'Homme album "1910" — several odd time signatures there. One example is Ol Man River:

Buco

Yes of course! I listened to it yesterday and couldn't think of it.
In their case it's so masterfully arranged and played, it's smooth like a well beaten egg white.

Jazzaferri

Nuages melody would fit into 5/4 with only slight variations in Rhythm

If one is comfortable in an odd time signature its fairly straightforward to get the melody's phrasing to fit with minimal timing modifications. Best way to to do that is to start with 5/4 as there are two ways to play it

1,2,3,1,2 with ones being strong or 1,2,1,2,3 Dave Brubeck did lots of off time signature tunes. Take 5 being the most well known and is 1,2,3,1,2 Blue Rondo a la Turk is another standard in 11/8 and 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2

While in 5/4 it may seem that it blurs together getting the groove right makes a huge difference to how the soloist plays this. For a GJ player a good beginning rhythm would be standard GJ 3/4 rhythm followed by a half bar of 4/4 pompe.

The key is to not lose the groove.

BlueSkies

I know that Pearl Django has one in 5/4 called Trois et Deux (Guess how its subdivided haha)

wim

It's hard to do it while staying in the style of the genre without taking it too far away from swing / Django music! Oh, I was also going to suggest LDDLH version of Ol' Man River but Adrian got there first

Also shout out for Kill Bob, Aurélien Robert / Rémi Oswald play some fresh guitar in wacky time signatures sometimes

Jazzaferri

Swing is defined by how the eighths are played. even subdivisions are not swing if played as a triplet eighth with the first two notes tied its swing