Something I’ve been doing to work on my time and odd meter stuff in general is an activity I’ve coined Constant Quarter. I first thought of this a year or two ago while shedding a difficult composition by pianist/composer Matt Mitchell which contained a section in 13/16 and again recently rehearsing a tune by guitarist/composer Nick Demopoulos that has a 4/4 + 7/16 groove.

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So, this is the first Rhythm Blog post. Please visit the About page for an explanation of this blog….

As with all posts that will appear on this blog, this post is meant as a kernel to spur your own ideas. If you begin by mastering this small idea, you’ll probably find yourself with many more ideas and concepts. While I work on this idea mainly behind a drumset or as a rhythmic compositional device, this can be applied to any instrument or situation…

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This post will compare repeating quarter note triplets and repeating dotted eighth notes in 3/4 time and the various related situations that arise. These two polyrhythms, or rhythmic ratios as I like to call them, occur between the quarter note and the respective repeating rhythmic values. Triplet quarters over quarters is a common example of 3 over 2 and dotted eighths over quarters of 4 over 3. For more on rhythmic ratios check out the polyrhythms/rhythmic ratios page.

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