it's all rhythm 1

 if you’ve taken music lessons or had a too-talkative musician friend, you’ve probably heard said, ‘it’s all rhythm,’ or one of a few possible variations. for me, when I first heard it, it was something of an abstract concept that validated my choice of instrument. it was a cool idea. it meant that the real genius of both Charlie Parker and Stravinsky was the way they divided time; their sense of rhythm. ‘the complex part of simplicity is timing.’ –Keith Jarrettlater, over lunch with a teacher, said teacher said that ratio’s of pure harmonic intervals were ‘rather like polyrhythms.’ we didn’t explore it then, but I did later.Pythagoras organized pitches by ratios of the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. if you had a string of length 1, a string of length 2 (twice as long) would be the same pitch an octave higher, and length 4 an octave above 2. a string of length 2 will sound a perfect 5^th below a string of length 3 (1.5x as long). these strings and their sounds are said to have the ratio of 3/2.what these ratios actually mean is that a string of length 3 vibrates three times in the same amount of time that a string of length 2 vibrates twice. it’s a rhythm! same polyrhythm as is so important in West African, Cuban, Mexican, and early American popular music—3/2 (or one of a few possible variations). in the same way, a string of lengths 4 and 5 sounded together will be a pure third, and the polyrhythm 5/4.  this is literally rhythm, but moving too fast for us to perceive it as such. melody and intervals are ‘hyper-rhythm!’ if you recorded yourself playing 3 against 2 and sped it up in a program, it would at some point turn into a perfect fifth. cool.this means you could listen to melody as faster and slower vibrations, and harmony as crazy fast polyrhythms. we already hear it that way, after all.