Hello, everyone.
Upon the many years of research I've done into Making Music,
I've discovered there are two fundamental ways of measuring time.
Waltz.
...and Polka.
To demonstrate what I mean, we're going to look at a song called "Some Chords",
from deadmau5's hit album...
...Base 14.
Let's begin by examining a bar of music.
If you are at all familiar with dance music, you'll probably recognize this as a "four on the floor" beat.
Every quarter note contains a kick.
This means that this song is composed primarily out of polka.
...or a 2/8 measure. So to speak.
However, you can change this to a waltz rhythm.
A "waltz particle", if you would.
Now, if you want to work in odd time signatures,
all you need to do is combine these two rhythms
to fill out the bar for the time that you want to make.
For example, let's say we want a 5/8 rhythm.
Just combine one polka and one waltz.
That's 5/8.
If you want 7/8, just combine one waltz and TWO polkas.
For 11/8 here, I use what is roughly
four polkas and one waltz.
13/8 is a particularly fun signature
--the one from Terminator.
It is three waltzes followed by two polkas.
Now armed with this knowledge,
I'd like for you EDM producers to go out there and produce 13-on-the-floor...
...ish
weird music that I can't really dance to.
Because odd time signatures are cool.