[henryspencer]

Hey everyone
I have been really into fela kuti for quite a while now and I am interested as to how I can let this interest spill over into my electronic music production, probably in terms of the rhythms and such. However, to be honest, I am having a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what is going on that makes it so groovy. It seems that there is so much going on that each instrument sort of blends in to one another. I checked out the other thread about afrobeat and learned a bit but I was hoping that anyone here who understands a bit more about the construction of this music could talk a bit about how one might go about creating those interlocking plolyrhythms, especially in terms of the placement of the kick which I am really struggling to get... It does seem like there allot of kicks on the offbeat though if I’m not mistaken.
So, please feel free to talk about afrobeat or anything about this african sort of interlocking rhythms and all that!

[ManpulateRealty]

The way I use polyrythms is essentially quite simple. I make several instrument and drum loops. Then I make some of those loops shorter or longer than the other, everytime the loop repeats you'll get another combination of the loops, but make sure you're using a tempo grid. Then you have to calculate when the loops all begin at the same time again. At that point you have what is called a cycle. And with those cycles you can build music. You can make it easy for yourselve and create for example a beat in 7/8 and a bassline in 4/4. But you can make it as crazy or sophisticated as you like.

The Africans are indeed the founding fathers of polyrythm. I've heard that the rythms of the African tribes as they are now, are passed on not by writing, but by a method where the father or mother takes his or her son or daughter on his or her lap, grabs his or her arms and start playing the rythms. So the rythms are taught by muscle memory and not by brain memory.

[henryspencer]

Originally Posted by ManpulateRealty

The way I use polyrythms is essentially quite simple. I make several instrument and drum loops. Then I make some of those loops shorter or longer than the other, everytime the loop repeats you'll get another combination of the loops, but make sure you're using a tempo grid. Then you have to calculate when the loops all begin at the same time again. At that point you have what is called a cycle. And with those cycles you can build music. You can make it easy for yourselve and create for example a beat in 7/8 and a bassline in 4/4. But you can make it as crazy or sophisticated as you like.

The Africans are indeed the founding fathers of polyrythm. I've heard that the rythms of the African tribes as they are now, are passed on not by writing, but by a method where the father or mother takes his or her son or daughter on his or her lap, grabs his or her arms and start playing the rythms. So the rythms are taught by muscle memory and not by brain memory.

Thats actually a really good idea about making polyrhythms! Also very interesting about how african tribes teach the polyrhythms by muscle memory.

How do you avoid the song becoming overly cluttered though when you keep adding more and more new loops? This is a problem I tend to have where I sit down to make a drum pattern and then I add in the shaker, and more percussion loops and pretty soon there is no room for any melodies...

[ManpulateRealty]

It is quite difficult to know when to stop adding things to songs in general. And with polyrythms thing could get even more chaotic. But the proportion of additives have to fit like a puzzle and sound like they are one thing. And I always try to hear intuitively when I reached that, I don't think you can make common rules for that.

[Focalized]

Is it ironic that you made your post black.....

[YoMyEX]

Originally Posted by henryspencer

How do you avoid the song becoming overly cluttered though when you keep adding more and more new loops?

Choose instruments that reside in their own frequency space, or close to their own. Masking will occur if you choose two or more instruments that exhibit the same frequency response. For things like congas, akubas, and toms (which are similar in timbre), you could try experimenting with panning them into their own spaces, minimizing masking to some extent.
Are you planning to record this, btw?

[henryspencer]

Originally Posted by YoMyEX

Choose instruments that reside in their own frequency space, or close to their own. Masking will occur if you choose two or more instruments that exhibit the same frequency response. For things like congas, akubas, and toms (which are similar in timbre), you could try experimenting with panning them into their own spaces, minimizing masking to some extent.
Are you planning to record this, btw?

Im just making electronic stuff in reason, so all those instruments would be sampled from records or I have a few shakers to record. My main thing though is that I start building a drum loop with kick, clap, etc then I add in shakers, then more percussion and more and more and I have a really cool busy sounding drum loop but theres just no room to add in my actual melodic instruments. Then I listen to stuff like Zomby who kind of has that groovy african inspired sound in a way but the drum loops are so much simpler with maybe a 3 elements going on at once........ Im trying to get to the heart of how some stuff like Fela Kuti manages to have all these different percussion going on at once but still meshing it with all those other instruments like organs, guitar, horns etc.

[YoMyEX]

Originally Posted by henryspencer

Im just making electronic stuff in reason, so all those instruments would be sampled from records or I have a few shakers to record. My main thing though is that I start building a drum loop with kick, clap, etc then I add in shakers, then more percussion and more and more and I have a really cool busy sounding drum loop but theres just no room to add in my actual melodic instruments. Then I listen to stuff like Zomby who kind of has that groovy african inspired sound in a way but the drum loops are so much simpler with maybe a 3 elements going on at once........ Im trying to get to the heart of how some stuff like Fela Kuti manages to have all these different percussion going on at once but still meshing it with all those other instruments like organs, guitar, horns etc.

this?

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Listen to the frequency response of every instrument. Everything has a good amount of space to move around without masking one another. You got (from lowest to highest) bass guitar, Kick, conga-like drums, cow bell, guitar, organ/piano, horns/vocals, shaker-type percussion (rather dark), and hi-hats/cymbals. They also exhibit different timbres to each other.
The trick is to choose the right samples/loops that live in their own space (or record your own). And don't go overboard with the amount of drum loops. Pick an instrument, play/sequence a rhythm, and stick to it.

[Alarinth]

This is an interesting field.

While I don't know anything about Afrobeat, I know a lot about how to work in weird time signatures and make it sound natural.

In psychology there is a term called redundancy, which refers to repeated information. This term originates from a field of study that measures the efficiency of sent information. This can be directly translated to music, and especially so with progressive time signatures.

So if you have a very complex beat, the chance is good that your listener is gonna get thrown off. So by adding redundancy (repeated information), the listener will have something to hold on to. So in a practical setting, this piece of redundancy could be a laid back pad in 4/4 over a hellishly fierce and complex 19/16 groove. This pad would allow the user to get comfortable with at least a part of the groove, and that way the other part would by nature come easier.

The point I'm trying to make, is that you need to connect the parts of your song, by adding redundancy. If you have something complex, try adding some simple element on top of it. Same thing applies to speed and dynamics. This element can be anything, as long as it's to a certain extent distinguishable. Contrasts are your greatest friend in this example. If you happen to have a very busy snare/hihat, a steady kick will provide the redundancy. If your whole kit is busy, the bass might provide that redundancy.

This is the key to mastering polyrhythms, make it sound natural.