it's all rhythm ii

 over a year and a half ago, i wrote a short version of my thoughts on this idea of everything being rhythm. i confined it to a musical discussion, as i will here, but it extends far beyond that.the reason i'm bringing it up is that in the introductory paragraph of my article in this months modern drummer, i made the point that

The usual analogy for scales to drummers is the rudiments, but we have scales too. These ‘rhythm scales’ give us access to new rhythmic ‘notes’ like the quintuplet, which is something like playing a major third where before there were only octaves and fifths.

at least, that's what i originally wrote. it was changed a bit, but i meant what i said literally. dig:our basic rhythmic values are the whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, and sixteenth note--that is, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. in the harmonic series (drums have overtones, but they're irrational, so they're not harmonics technically. stupid drums), those numbers correspond to the octavesthe frequency of the second octave to the first is 2:1, vibrating twice for every one of the lower octave. this is the relationship of half notes to whole notes, sped up so much that we perceive it not as rhythm, but as in or out of tune.the next most basic interval is the perfect fifth, the ratio 3:2; the same ratio of our most ubiquitous rhythmic dissonance. from this humble polyrhythm we get all the rhythmic intrigue of music from ghana, to cuba (interesting overlap, no?), to mexico, to europe, to jazz, etc. they are one and the same.the fifth harmonic is a 'just' major third above the nearest octave, four. the ratio 5:4 is an equally beautiful but drastically less common polyrhythm than 3:2. most music ever made is built on triads, which are built on thirds, yet precious little is built around their slower rhythmic twin 5:4 (or the first minor third in the series, 6:5).i bet you can see where this is going.early church music used only one melody (harmonics 1 and 2), the so-called gregorian chant. next up was organum, which began using perfect fifths (harmonic 3). a little before the ars antiqua, thirds show up, hitherto deemed too sexy (harmonics 5 and 6). shortly thereafter dominant sevenths show up (h 7, the ratio 7:4). music continues to expand its pitch repertoire along the harmonic series even today (partch, von schweinitz, radulescu). despite this, most all music is the rhythmic equivalent of organum.misc: as with pitches, you can play these rhythmic notes simultaneously or sequentially, vertically or horizontally, harmonically or melodically. you could play 5:4 as the harmonic polyrhythm--with five evenly spaced beats in the space of four like the video above--or the melodic polyrhythm, with groupings of five notes going at the same pace as groupings of four which will line up every five bars. so now, it's totally fair to ask someone to tune their rhythm, or ask them to take the rhythm 'up the octave,' meaning 'double-time.' lastly, impress your friends by betting you can play at 26,400 bpm, then, when they're sure they've made some easy money, play the 'a' above middle c.i'm not advocating some numerological crap about the rhythm of the heavens, and i'm not all that impressed by peoples rhythmic and harmonic studies using fractals, the fibonacci sequence, the golden ratio, etc (except this), but i believe we can rightly expand our rhythmic repertoire. maybe when a song goes up a half step we don't need it to rhythmically modulate the same way--15:16=1.067x faster, which is crazy--but there are studio and electronic musicians who do nudge up the tempo by one click, or who position the backbeat just slightly more forward. even so, these are not the point.the point is that rhythm is melody, and it is harmony, in the most literal sense of those words. it really is all rhythm. and that's beautiful.