Can you play more than one time signature at a time?

Question

Can you play more than one time signature at a time on the drums and guitar

Answer 1

Short version: yes. You can even play in two time signatures on one instrument, if you can think through it and make yourself play it.



There are two ways to conceptualize this: polyrhythm and metric modulation.



Polyrhythm is when you are literally playing two time signatures at once to create a complex rhythm. Latin American and East Indian music frequently feature polyrhythm. Professional percussionists who have "rhythmically independent limbs" can literally play polyrhythmically in multiple time signatures simultaneously. For example, a drummer might play in 3/4 on the kick drum, 5/4 on the snare, and hit accents in other time signatures on snare, toms and cymbals.



Now... simply playing two different time signatures is not necessarily polyrhythm: If you're playing in 2/4 and I'm playing in 4/4, any polyrhythm that *might* be going on (not likely tho) is not a function of the time signatures involved. Musical theatre scores and orchestral scores sometime write parts for different instruments in different time signatures in order to make the parts easier to read.



Metric modulation is when you superimpose the accents of one time signature on top of another without actually changing the underlying time signature. For example if you are playing in 4/4 and you accent every three beats, the accents create a triplet pattern but you don't ever actually change the real meter of 4/4. So the accent lines up with the downbeat of the beginning of the phrase every four bars:



>===>=====>====>===

1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 |



(hope this is readable, YA kept removing the spaces between the accents so I had to put "=" in place of them)

Answer 2

I remember accompanying a clarinetist about 10 years ago. Can't remember the name or composer of the piece, but the piano accompaniment was in 3/4, and the clarinet was written in 7/4. It was hell - none of the bars matched up so had to rely on the rehearsal figures for rehearsal as my bar 10 was not where his was. Great piece to play once we got it together though.



Why? My only reasoning is a continual stream of hemiolas in the clarinet which the composer felt were better seen written in the 7/4 time signature rather than with accents marking the beginning of the phrase.

Answer 3

Not at the exact same time. There can be different time signatures in the music. For ex. you start of in 4/4 and after so many measure it will be in 3/4. Or something a long that line. It is impossible to play 4/4 and 3/4 at the exact same time.

Answer 4

Actually yes, I play kind of a BTBAM-esque prog metal thing with my drummer when we jam and there's a good part in the middle that we wrote together where he does a triple beat that sounds like regular triplets until he changes and I'm doing 4th's. It's complicated to explain but the 4/4 just has to be faster.

On the other hand, if you mean to play more than one on one instrument, then no. Unless you can use all your fingers and 2 different parts of your brain, which I would love to see actually.

Answer 5

Not at the same time, but a song can change time signature. So one part could be 4/4 and another part 7/8.

Answer 6

that's exactly what it is supposed to do. Once you have saved the signature and compose an email with that signature...it will play once the recipient will open your email.

Answer 7

I guess you could... it would definitely be easier to do on the drums, as each limb could do something independent from the others. On guitar, both hands work together to create one sound, so a polymetric thing would end up being like a really complicated counterpoint.



Definitely possible though.

Answer 8

i'm not a drum player but i guess it goes with all other instruments, i guess you could, if you were playing it wrong...