Bank · 15 grooves
Odd Times
Fusion and jazz-funk players keep looking for new horizons, and odd-time measures open endless rhythmic possibilities. Fives, sevens, and everything they suggest.
Why odd meters break most drum apps
Programming a groove in seven is not the hard part. Any step sequencer will hold seven beats if you tell it to. The hard part is everything that happens around the groove: the fill that has to land on the last bar and not on a bar and a half, the crash that belongs on beat one of the next cycle, the section change that has to wait for the right moment instead of the nearest one.
Those are the things that quietly assume four. An app that counts bars in fours will place your fill in the wrong place in seven and never mention it. Here the count follows the groove's own time signature, so the fill before the chorus arrives when the cycle ends, and the pad you tapped mid-bar waits for the real bar line rather than an imaginary one.
That is what makes these fifteen usable in a song rather than impressive in a demo. You can put one under a verse, set bars to fill, tap a pad for the chorus, and the arrangement behaves.
Playing them
Count it once, then stop counting
The usual advice for odd meters is to subdivide: seven as four plus three, five as three plus two. The grooves in here are built that way, and you can hear the grouping in where the kick and the snare fall. Once you have heard it a couple of times you stop counting, which is the whole point.
Two features earn their keep in this bank. Count in gives you the cycle before you play, which matters far more in seven than in four. And the bars to fill setting counts in the groove's own bars, so setting it to eight gives you eight cycles of seven, not a number of beats divided by four.
If you write with a bass player, this is also the bank that makes the groove sharing worth it: send the pattern to iBassist and the bass line comes back in the same meter, locked to the same cycle, instead of leaving somebody to count it out by hand.
Some of what is in here
- Seven Funkers
- Syncopating Sevens
- 5 Insistence
- Ordered 5
- Busy Fives
- Get Five
- SkaFunk 5
Fifteen in total, mostly in five and seven, with a couple that group in three.
Any groove, any meter
Take the groove you are playing into seven
This bank is written in odd meters, but it is not the only way to get there. Open NEW GROOVE, turn on ADAPT CURRENT GROOVE, and choose a time signature: the groove that is playing is recast into it. Same kick, same snare, same feel, now in five, in seven, or in any time signature you ask for.
That changes what the bank is for. The fifteen grooves in here are a starting point rather than the whole story, because any rhythm in the app can end up in an odd meter without being programmed step by step: one from Disco Funk, one from Fusion, or one you wrote yourself.
With the button off, NEW GROOVE works the way it always has and builds a pattern from the hats, snare and kick segments underneath. With it on, those segments disappear, because the groove you already like is the raw material.
Odd Times is one of the seven factory banks. Get Funk Drummer
Next door
Back to four
Fusion has the same phrasing and the same players behind it, in four, and is the natural place to go before or after this one. Disco Funk is the opposite corner of the app, and sometimes that is exactly what a song needs after a long stretch in seven.
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