Rock Hemiolas

5/21/2018 Rock Hemiolas

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ROCK HEMIOLASWhen I was in sixth grade, I had a banda power duo with my best friend Bill who played drums,

called The Rolling Pebbles. Bill did most of the singing, but I had a couple of vocal features, and one

was Subdivisions from Rush. Bill and Iwere nuts about Rush, and that was the title track of their latest

record at the time, and the first single. Subdivisions was the first song I played that used the odd time

signature of 7/4. It planted the seed of all things 7 in my brain and I followed up much later, exploring

that rhythmic meter in the jazz format with my trio.

For the non-musicians: Much of Occidental music is rhythmically written and felt in continuous groups

of 2 (TUM-tum TUM-tum), 3 (TUM-tum-tum TUM-tum-tum) or 4 (TUM-tum-tum-tum TUM-tum-tum-

tum) beats. Other rhythmic groupingslike 5, 7, 9 or even 11are common in folk music from the

Balkans, Indian ragas, flamenco music, and other music, but are not the norm in western classical, jazz

and pop/rock music. Odd rhythmic meters, as they are called, do indeed crop up in those genres: 20th

Century composers like Bartok and Prokofiev use them, and jazz musicians like Dave Brubeck

popularized them. For me though, the portal into that rhythmic world when I was ten was Rush.

The appeal of Subdivisions for me is the way it simultaneously has a large and small 7 feeling.

(The whole song is not in 7; it switches between the odd meter and a straightforward 4/4 meter

throughouta favorite device of prog-rockers.) We could write the opening synth-bass figure that drives

much of the song like this:

How we write that should depend on how we feel the song. The figure itself is 7 beats long; so one

might ask, why write it the first way? Why put two of those seven beat figures in one bar, subdividing

the bar awkwardly in the middle? (I wonder if the double-entendre of the songs title was intentional on

lyricist Neil Pearts part.) Why not simply let the length of the figure dictate the meter, so that it starts

logically at the beginning of the bar, as with the 7/8 meter of the second example?


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I myself favor the first notation, though, because it corresponds to what Im feeling, which is two things

at once. On the one hand, Im feeling these groups of seven that continually repeat. On theother hand,

Im simultaneously feeling a larger, slower seven Im feeling the quarter notes of the 7/4 in the first

example. That is for me what makes the groove not merely complex but also pretty fat. There is

symmetry at play: The large seven is split into two smaller groups of sevens. Because seven is an odd

number, though, it must split between the third and fourth beat. This rub of something resembling a

downbeat landing on an upbeat gives a very cool feeling in the body.

This phenomenon has a name in classical musicit is called a hemiola(yes, it sounds like a blood

disease). Brahms loves them, and will keep them going for a long time, creating wonderful rhythmic

tension. A hemiola in classical music is usually understood as a repeated pattern of four in the context of

a meter of three or sixfor instance, in a 6/8 meter, groups of phrases that last 4 beats. But it could

involve more unorthodox, odd numbered patterns. One of my favorite hemiolas is at the end of

BrahmsCapriccio, the fifth piece from the Opus 76Klavierstcke, when he places five-beat groupings

into the 6/8 meter:

The effect is great and full of drama, like a big wheel that has fallen off its axle, careening wildly

towards some poor soul. This piece of Brahms is huge for me. Its chock full of hemiolas and 2 against 3

patterns; one could say that hemiolas are the subject of the piece. Note the more traditional hemiolas

in groups of two as well in the right hand.

When I learned about fractions and their common multiples and denominators, I think in third grade, we

had rectangular blocks of different colors and different lengths. If you lined them up, two longer red


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ones would be the same distance as 3 green ones, or four shorter blue ones, etc. The fun of hemiolas is

not just where the overlap, but also where they meet again, and when my teacher, Ms. Hurwitz, showed

me what they were for the first time in a piano lesson, I thought of those colored blocks.

This phenomenon has a name in rock too: Kashmir. Led Zeppelins classic groove on that songfromPhysical Graffiti, demonstrates why its members are truly rock gods: We usually think of Led

Zeppelin as proto-heavy metal, leading the way for head-banging, but with Kashmir they instigated a

solidly prog gesture, one that bands like Rush would expand upon, and later, prog-inspired metal bands

like Dream Theater will exploit. Here is the grandfather of modern rocknroll hemiolas, the vamp on

Kashmir:

Even though drummer John Bonham plays a relentless rock beat in 4/4, no one would say that this song

is simply in 4/4, because the riff played by the guitar, mellotron, etc. is in groups of three. That riff unto

itself, though, is twofold: It suggests a quicker 6/8 meter, as it repeats that ostinato rhythm every six 8th

notes, but also implies a larger, slower 6/4. The single D that ends each bar above is subtle but very

importantit makes us feel the end of a bar; it wordlessly instructs us to feel the 3 note ostinato in

groups of two, and thus ultimately hearKashmiras a slow, strange 6/4. So there are really threeimplied

grooves at once: the quicker 6/8 meter suggested in the figure played by the guitar, the 4/4 of the drums,

and the final marriage of the twothe 6/4 as it is written aboveor at least thats how I feel it.

As with Rushs Subdivisions, the play between quick and slow meters inKashmiris a big part of its

design. In Both the Led Zeppelin and Rush, the drummer is holding down the fort, so to speak, providing

the slower backbeat that passes over the barline, like a cement roller smoothing over cracks in pavement.

This approach pays off for the same reason in both songs: Both of them shift to a regular 4/4 groove,

making an actual time signature change, but when they do, there is no hiccupthe drummer is already

there, grooving.

The metaphor for the feeling that hemiolas give is often one of physical motion, and with Kashmir,

Im led undoubtedly by the back story of the song as well, which was inspired by a journey through


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Moroccoto visualize way a camel and its rider move across a desertslowly, stately, powerful, but

with a bounce and a shake on each step, with a constant funky jerkiness that mingles with the backbeat

of the camels slow trudge.

When I went to write Boomer for my trio with JorgeRossy and Larry Grenadier, which we recordedon an album calledHouse on Hill, both Subdivisions and Kashmir were informing it: Jorge, a la John

Bonham, plays a slower rock beat in 4 which passes through the barline and then meets up again with

the quicker meter, and the 7/4 bar is split into to equal halfs of 8 eighth notes, like in Rushs

Subdivisions. Here is the piano ostinato figure ofBoomer, the bass root-motion, and a simplified

sketch of the drum beat under it:


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A little more of that third grade math will tell us that the first common multiple between the 7/4 meter

and Jorges implied 4/4 is 28. So it takes 28 quarter- notesor four bars, like the four bars shown here

until Jorges bass drum cycles around to land on the downbeat of the bar, as it does on the following bar.

Larry, Jeff Ballard and I explored this idea a little further on our version of Oasis Wonderwall a few

years later. On that one, Jeff and I played in regular 4/4 meter, but Larry played a truncated bass line:


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That line would immediately repeat itself starting on the 8th note upbeat of beat two of that fourth bar,

and similarly thereafter, giving us a repeating pattern that was 27 8th notes in length, against the

backdrop of the 4/4 meter. Did we all meet up eventually in the right place? Im not even sure anymore!

Brad Mehldau, All Rights Reserved

Rock Hemiolas

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