Update to Video Resources - Syncopated (or Beat Shifted) Harmonic Polyrhythms

Youtube Video

Syncopated harmonic polyrhythm 8 : 5 as 3+2+3 : 3+2, shifted by fractional beats
Pitches: 2/1 3/1 12/5 13/1 24/5 3/1 4/1 1/1

These new video resource pages explore a technique from African Drumming. When you play a polyrhythm such as say 4:3, you can shift the rhythms so that the two rhythms meet each other at different places in the measure, not just at the measure beat.
 

You get a syncopated effect - a feeling that you are playing "off the beat". Wtih these examples I've also used the 3+2+3 type rhythms of Eastern European music. Then I added pitch as well.

Melody, or rhythm, ambiguity

When you add pitches to the rhythms, you get melodic phrases and harmonies arising out of the interaction of the parts when the tempo is slow.

As the rhythms get faster you may begin to hear individual parts as independent rhythms. Sometimes you find that you join the same pitches together linearly to make rhythms and sometimes they join together with other parts to make melodic patterns. 

This ambiguity is what I particularly like about these syncopated, beat shifted, harmonic metronomes.

More about them here: Syncopated, or beat shifted, 4 : 3 type Harmonic Polyrhythms or Cross Rhythms