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Ever noticed how traditional african music sometimes have weird grooves? I tried figuring it out for a long time, and finally had to give up doing it by ear, and instead measured and averaged the timings of a lot of beats in various songs by different artists to see if it's just "feel" or if there's a system to it. What I found was surprising. I managed to isolate two specific rhythms, that most people would probably perceive as "odd triplets". What might have caused me so much trouble is the fact that you have to use 10 subticks, in order to hit the same intervals! Here's the two rhythms I've found so far:



This demo song: http://www.robotplanet.dk/f/buzzf/Tutor ... iplets.bmx (mp3) plays normal triplets first (for comparison), then the two different weird shuffles.

Good work! Never seen an explination for those..

very nice work, could this also be done using note delays?

Because of the way subticks work in buzz, the actual times the hihat plays in the example are actually:

0, 29/96, 58/96
0, 38/96, 67/96

But it's probably difficult to hear the difference anyway.

Oh! Well that difference is so small, it won't matter.

Anyway, I'm mostly hoping to either inspire someone to try writing a piece of music in this rhythm (and please post mp3's if you do!), or to step up and say "I think your theory is flawed because blabla" or maybe even "I am real Mandinka djeli from Africa. You crazy white head talk de rubbish."

Whatever. Discuss.

I'm working on an arpeggiator for buzz/corona and I think I'll use it for it.

tried to figure this out but couldnt... how do you change subtick timing?

this is really cool. i had tried to make some cumbia style songs before but it never sounded right on the normal subtick timing. these rhythms are spot on. great job!

Cumbia is from Columbia, and there's a lot of black people there (especially at the coastal areas.) The influence from african music is quite apparent.

Make sure you're using Pattern XP (not available in old Buzz), press Ctrl-Backspace to edit the pattern properties, and put in the value "10" into Rows Per Beat.

Rhythm A: Use only line 0, 3, 6, 10, 13, 16, 20, 23, 26, 30, 33, 36
Rhythm B: Use only line 0, 4, 7, 10, 14, 17, 20, 24, 27, 30, 34, 37

I made some weird shit.. http://box.retrofox.dk/t2/African_Rhythm.mp3
Interesting rhythm though! I have never worked with such a rhythm before, thats for sure.

Joachip wrote:Make sure you're using Pattern XP (not available in old Buzz), press Ctrl-Backspace to edit the pattern properties, and put in the value "10" into Rows Per Beat.

Pattern XP's killer feature that I keep forgetting

The way I implemented it in the arpeggiator is when you have a triplet clock like 1/12 or 1/24 you get the 3-3-4 rhythm at -100% swing and the 4-3-3 rhythm at +100% swing.

Shro0m wrote:I made some weird shit.. http://box.retrofox.dk/t2/African_Rhythm.mp3
Interesting rhythm though! I have never worked with such a rhythm before, thats for sure.

Whoa! Sweet lord. Promising stuff.. . Hey, i use it too! Im gonna make at least some slow oldschoolish Acid House in to this rhythm. =) AfrikAaaciiiiieeeeeeed!

Dr3Tri wrote:

Shro0m wrote:I made some weird shit.. http://box.retrofox.dk/t2/African_Rhythm.mp3
Interesting rhythm though! I have never worked with such a rhythm before, thats for sure.

Whoa! Sweet lord. Promising stuff.. . Hey, i use it too! Im gonna make at least some slow oldschoolish Acid House in to this rhythm. =) AfrikAaaciiiiieeeeeeed!

Hehh.. Thnx.
I might turn this into a club track when i find the time. Could be interesting.
Btw, check out Oskari's new arp machine. Set swing to -100% (or was it +?), and it should match this rhythm exactly.
Easy way to make some acid arp's with very little effort

Very interresting, tracker editors are very different of score editors, and the mathematical approach is the way with buzz's pattern editor, a samba analysis.
Thx for this excelent topic

tinga wrote:Very interresting, tracker editors are very different of score editors, and the mathematical approach is the way with buzz's pattern editor, a samba analysis.
Thx for this excelent topic

Thanks for the link. I would like to see more of these educating rhythm topics. I surrender pretty often to catch the rhythm of a beat. Trying and trying in a loop makes me pretty fast dull and my first idea of a rhythm I had in mind gets washed away, before it might have led to a new and cool swinging beat.

Dr3Tri wrote:

Shro0m wrote:I made some weird shit.. http://box.retrofox.dk/t2/African_Rhythm.mp3
Interesting rhythm though! I have never worked with such a rhythm before, thats for sure.

Whoa! Sweet lord. Promising stuff.. . Hey, i use it too! Im gonna make at least some slow oldschoolish Acid House in to this rhythm. =) AfrikAaaciiiiieeeeeeed!

Quoting my own post.. because i just made that track and uploaded it to SC. =)
So here it is, my first attempt to use that rhythm:
http://soundcloud.com/savojr/in-the-beat-of-the-night

Very good african rhythmic madness experiment shro0m. Great stuff!

Dr3Tri wrote:Quoting my own post.. because i just made that track and uploaded it to SC. =)
So here it is, my first attempt to use that rhythm:
http://soundcloud.com/savojr/in-the-beat-of-the-night

Ha ha, you got it, dude!

indeed ! nicely done.