Shame we can't get more going on this thread, wouldn't have minded chipping in with some thoughts of my own.
I'm a little confused as to some of it though as to me, 99% of what was talked about, is what I'd always thought were polymeters not polyrhythms, ie: 2 or more different time signatures running along side each other but the borders seem slightly blurry on that. I guess that doesn't matter though as long as we know what was meant...
If anyone knows any music where polyrhythms/meters are used, I'd like a listen/link. Ideally with music phrases being incorporated too, not just percussive parts.
Percussive parts are easy to do and don't require much other than placement, feel and whatever else you like to experiment with, for me, where it gets tricky is with melodic parts, ie: bass, melody stuff, musical phrases/licks, harmony, chords etc, as you are also dealing with punctuation too where a riff might not sound right if it has no resolution or the resolution happens to be in say 5/4 against 4/4, this is a difficult area and a lot more complicated than non tonal percussive elements.
I dunno if that makes sense, but I will elaborate: A lot of dance based stuff has musical sections or riffs/phrases which resolve themselves in a 4/4 way, say a bass pattern for example, it could be set to resolve itself over 4 bars with some musical punctuation or a type of fill etc which leads the pattern back to bar 1 in a way that makes musical sense ( a resolution ) patterns that do not resolve themselves can often feel as though they are left wandering, without purpose or function so whether you know it or not, you usually apply these techniques to melodic parts. Ok, all well and good......
But when writing musical phrases in polymeters, it becomes a lot more tricky, say you wanted a bass pattern in 5/4 and run it over a 4/4 kick, it immediately causes confusion in a way that percussive parts do not. If the pattern is played in such a way that resolution occurs out of 4/4 time, to me it just sounds seriously wrong and left foots you in a rhythmic sense. It's messy and hard to keep track of momentum and groove. If you want to write musical parts, it's my opinion that you avoid resolving patterns but then you run the risk of the above where there is no structure or purpose and musical elements sound like they have no function and are wandering.
This is how I feel anyway, wouldn't mind a technical discussion on it, I hope what I said makes sense...
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