SX, complicated time signatures in songs?

[bball_1523]

I was wondering if you guys can provide me examples of Symphony X doing time signature changes, playing around with weird time sigs, and other signature stuff.

I'm taking music theory classes and learning more about this stuff so I wanna figure out How symphony X has done it and maybe share it with my class.

 

[Granskog]

i guess almost all of their songs cointain some kind of odd time sigs. in Inferno the guitar "theme" or main riff is in 5/4 alternating with 7/8. in Accolade 2 the riff where the guitars come in is in 5/8 alternating with 7/8. this song is for the most part just in odd time sigs.

i think their aproach is just to NOT discard ideas that incompasses this but to use them in songs. its not like they say "lets make some thing in 25/16!". this way the riffs still (despite the strange rythms) sounds like a melody with sense. accolade 1/2 are particularly full of these...

 

[Emanuele]

Recently I was talking with a friend about odd times. We were listening to the "acoustic part" in Accolade II, that one with clean guitar and piano. It is a great example of "prog" and it is hard to understand that time...

 

[The Stormbringer]

Symphony X are one of the most skilled bands when it comes to incorporating odd time signatures and polythythms into their music tastefully... the legendary part towards the end of the original Accolade stuns me everytime.

 

[Fossil Records]

If you go to the PowerTab website and download PowerTab (it's free) you can then go to the PowerTab Tabulature website and download SymX tabs for free. In the tabs you can see the time changes.

Enjoy

 

[SyXified]

Just listen to The Accolade, that has basically all the odd time signatures, and then after the vocal break, all of them at once. Plus there is a cool polyrythm in the verse as everything is in 4/4 but the vocals, which tend towards 3/4 accents.

 

[OfSinsAndShred]

How about the little 9/8 section, "The night falls" in Smoke and Mirrors? That's my favorite odd time riff - it just works so well.

Out of the Ashes has some good stuff in 7/4 in the beginning. Then that weird rhythm (I don't know what time it's in) in the second verse ("Praay for my lost soul"). I like how SX uses odd times tastefully and effectively, then once in a while they go nuts like in The Death of Balance.

 

[bball_1523]

Just listen to The Accolade, that has basically all the odd time signatures, and then after the vocal break, all of them at once. Plus there is a cool polyrythm in the verse as everything is in 4/4 but the vocals, which tend towards 3/4 accents.

do you have anymore specific examples of a time signature change in s-x's songs? I just wanna see a few specific examples at what time in the songs and so forth.

 

[Liquid Shadow]

A few examples from Church of the Machine...

When they come in at 0:51, it is all 4/4 until 1:45, where it switches to 5/4. The "main riff" at 2:52 is in 3/4 or 6/4, depending on how you want to look at it. I see it as 6, just because 3 is usually grouped with one strong beat and 2 weak beats, but Rullo is drumming it as bass-snare-bass-snare-bass-snare...alternating strong and weak beats evenly. That groups it as 3 sets of 2 (strong-weak) as opposed to a set of 1 and 2.

 

[MorphineChild205]

What's a time signature?

My friend's impression of Symphony X:

Him: "You guys have all these crazy time signatures and changes in your songs. How do you piece it all together to make it sound so awesome?"

P: "Huh?"
Rullo: "What's a time signature?"
Lepond: "Yeah, we just write what sounds good, you know. And what works."
Romeo: "It's really neat. A while back we wrote a song in about seven minutes...and that song turned out to be The Odyssey. We just make it up as we go along."
Russ: "And I sing over all of it!"

 

[scanner313]

I don't know if this counts, but my favorite odd time sequence from SyX is the segment at about 5:50 into Rediscovery part 2. Awesome!

 

[Gildamere]

P: "Huh?"
Rullo: "What's a time signature?"
Lepond: "Yeah, we just write what sounds good, you know. And what works."
Romeo: "It's really neat. A while back we wrote a song in about seven minutes...and that song turned out to be The Odyssey. We just make it up as we go along."
Russ: "And I sing over all of it!"

That's kinda how my band does it. Last time we wrote a song which was basically straight but somehow it didn't groove right. So we changed some parts into odd time sigs and voila, suddenly the song started rolling. Best thing was one part in which we'd play a 7/8 while our drummer played 4/4. We tried that part with all of us playing 4/4 and all of us playing 7/8 but it didn't sound right.

to sum up: sometimes odd time sigs just happen - and usually for a reason...

 

[Katalepsy]

I do believe almost (if not all) of Sym X's songs use different time signatures...but not necessarily odd ones...They're just not common time (4/4). My former band wrote a lot of stuff in different time signatures, hell, our keyboardist wrote a few 11/16 unisons...Talk about odd time signatures. It was usually me, the keys, and 3rd guitarist that wrote all of our songs, and most of the time we did it without instruments, so it wasn't just like playing by ear...Although it is MUCH harder to do..

Best thing was one part in which we'd play a 7/8 while our drummer played 4/4.

Polyrhythms kickass

 

[Rose Immortal]

to sum up: sometimes odd time sigs just happen - and usually for a reason...

I think this is probably the best approach. If you set out deliberately to be complicated, and that becomes your prime goal, it just makes you sound pretentious. But if it flows out naturally--in fact, I don't even recommend THINKING of theory at all, as you compose--it sounds absolutely cool.

 

[Liquid Shadow]

There's also good and bad ways to go about playing in odd time for those of us who decide "Ok, time for something in 7/8." You have to know how to subdivide things like the back of your hand and know how to give the correct pulse in the riffs...this is what gives odd time a natural feel as opposed to sounding forced.