Tigran Hamasyan - Jazz +world music +meshuggah +fempop

[MattHood0]

I do have MIDI (engraved with Lilypond), but as wankerness pointed out, attachments are a pain. Here's a dropbox link, to a zip with both the PDF and MIDI files. I'm not sure why I didn't think of that earlier.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/87ul0v75ghr19hk/The%20Grid%20%28Tigran%20Hamasyan%29.zip?dl=0

 

[MattHood0]

Does anyone have any requests, from Shadow Theatre or Mockroot? I'm just getting into to transcription, and The Grid was great fun. A part of me wants to tackle Out of the Grid, for completion's sake, but I also want to try something different.

 

[wankerness]

Does anyone have any requests, from Shadow Theatre or Mockroot? I'm just getting into to transcription, and The Grid was great fun. A part of me wants to tackle Out of the Grid, for completion's sake, but I also want to try something different.

Road Song would be my vote. I started a powertab of it, but for obvious reasons that probably wouldn't be much help to you. I'll post it later anyway.

 

[Zalbu]

Does anyone have any requests, from Shadow Theatre or Mockroot? I'm just getting into to transcription, and The Grid was great fun. A part of me wants to tackle Out of the Grid, for completion's sake, but I also want to try something different.

Drip from Shadow Theater would be neat, at least that one sounds like something us humans can play

 

[wankerness]

Drip from Shadow Theater would be neat, at least that one sounds like something us humans can play

I think that would be one of the most annoying to transcribe just cause of how nasty the rhythms are. It's easy to transcribe a million sixteenth notes in shifting time signatures, much less easy to transcribe super-weird syncopation in 4/4!

 

[Zalbu]

I think that would be one of the most annoying to transcribe just cause of how nasty the rhythms are. It's easy to transcribe a million sixteenth notes in shifting time signatures, much less easy to transcribe super-weird syncopation in 4/4!

Eh, you're probably right, my method of measuring how difficult something to play is is more or less "how many notes a second do you have to play?"

And Drip have a pretty wicked piano solo towards the last part of the song that's pretty hard to hear.

Edit: I meant Drip, not Grid...

 

[MattHood0]

I think that would be one of the most annoying to transcribe just cause of how nasty the rhythms are. It's easy to transcribe a million sixteenth notes in shifting time signatures, much less easy to transcribe super-weird syncopation in 4/4!

Spot on. The Grid was just a matter of slowing the song down 50%, and the rhythm is consistent through almost all of the piece. I am pretty curious about Drip, so I'll give it a go. Road Song too, I've got parts of that worked out anyway. Don't hold your breath though, it'll take me a while!

 

[Bakerman]

If anyone's interested, I transcribed the piano for The Grid, including the solo. Enjoy!

I would consider a different notation approach for this: all 4/4, except measures 123-126. From Tigran's track by track comments: "It’s based around a grid-like rhythmic pattern, which is two bars of 4/4 that is grouped in 5, 5, 7, 5, 5, 5/16 notes."

This would mean at measures 29-30 beat 1 doesn't shift. The ascending groups from before descend in the same part of the measure as before, moving accents to the new lowest notes. (9th note of measure 31 should be A♭ not C.) The "1" of your 4/4 on the next page would actually be "2", putting snare on 2 and 4.

Thinking and feeling 4/4 might make rhythms sound more on-grid where you have less common tuplets. For example measures 83-87 seem to be this, played pretty accurately:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28651/grid-rhythm.png

 

[Konfyouzd]

Finally something that isn't palm muted open notes... This is good sh!t...

 

[TheHandOfStone]

Yeah The Grid is "officially" in 4/4, but IMO whatever notation helps you count it better is fine.

 

[MattHood0]

I would consider a different notation approach for this: all 4/4, except measures 123-126. From Tigran's track by track comments: "It’s based around a grid-like rhythmic pattern, which is two bars of 4/4 that is grouped in 5, 5, 7, 5, 5, 5/16 notes."

This would mean at measures 29-30 beat 1 doesn't shift. The ascending groups from before descend in the same part of the measure as before, moving accents to the new lowest notes. (9th note of measure 31 should be A♭ not C.) The "1" of your 4/4 on the next page would actually be "2", putting snare on 2 and 4.

Thinking and feeling 4/4 might make rhythms sound more on-grid where you have less common tuplets. For example measures 83-87 seem to be this, played pretty accurately:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28651/grid-rhythm.png

I'm not exactly going to try and disagree with Tigran , but I've got a certain philosophy when it comes to this stuff.

I feel (this is strictly imho) that the time signature should only serve the 'tactus', the beat that is felt. In "The Grid", what you feel is 5 + 5 + 7, 5 + 5 + 5, because that's where the beats are. Appropriate time signatures might be 17/16 + 15/16 (as I've used), 10/16 + 12/16 + 10/16, or even 5/16 + 5/16 + 7/16 + 5/16 + 5/16 + 5/16 - all of these are accurate representations, and the beaming can do the rest of the work. Just because there happens to be 32 semiquavers in the riff doesn't mean that 4/4 is a good way of representing it.

This is demonstrated in the part where they go into a straight feel (2:15, bar 33 on my transcription). The bass line is, for the sake of this example, the same, but the feel is one of straight crotchets. That's why I notate this part in 4/4, despite it being melodically (and in one sense rhythmically) the same as previous parts notated with different signatures. In this section, everything is grouped into beams of four semiquavers, with all syncopation extraneous to the crotchet tied.

If we were to just simplify everything mathematically, we'd have parts of totally different rhythmic feels that look rhythmically identical without close inspection. This difficulty would become even more pronounced on the next track, "Out of the Grid", where Tigran extends the polymetricism by playing the riff in triplet compound time, albeit with an odd time signature ending to resolve it before things get out of hand.

But as TheHandOfStone says:

IMO whatever notation helps you count it better is fine.

 

[Bakerman]

In "The Grid", what you feel is 5 + 5 + 7, 5 + 5 + 5, because that's where the beats are. Appropriate time signatures might be 17/16 + 15/16 (as I've used), 10/16 + 12/16 + 10/16, or even 5/16 + 5/16 + 7/16 + 5/16 + 5/16 + 5/16 - all of these are accurate representations, and the beaming can do the rest of the work. Just because there happens to be 32 semiquavers in the riff doesn't mean that 4/4 is a good way of representing it.

It's also possible to count/feel it in 4/4 though, with accents that aren't all on downbeats. It's not the only way, but I'd say that's what Arthur's doing here w/ hi-hat:

https://youtu.be/-6R4kCQk6XA?t=11m14s

 

[MattHood0]

It's also possible to count/feel it in 4/4 though, with accents that aren't all on downbeats. It's not the only way, but I'd say that's what Arthur's doing here w/ hi-hat:

https://youtu.be/-6R4kCQk6XA?t=11m14s

I wouldn't think so, I think that they're playing in a sort of quintuplet compound time, and what he's doing on the hat fits that pretty nicely. Pretty much think of 15/16 as 3/4 with quintuplets, just as 12/8 is felt as 4/4 in triplets. The septuplet in the 17/16 part makes it less regular, but the principle still applies.

They do feel it in 4/4 at this point, however, that much is clear.

 

[Bakerman]

He's doing quarter notes on hi-hat in both of those sections. (With foot; not sure if you thought I was referring to the stacked cymbals in front as hi-hat.) I feel like that's a good clue to how he's feeling the beat. One section is just busier without snare on 2 & 4.

Around 13:48 he's even tapping foot in quarters while keeping HH closed.

 

[AugmentedFourth]

Here's a transcription I did of "To Negate" (in .pdf and .musx):

Tigran_Hamasyan_-_To_Negate.zip

 

[jonajon91]

This is exactly why I miss being able to give little green boxes, you guy's are fantastic.

---edit---

I don't suppose you could upload either the .midi or the .sib file?

 

[AugmentedFourth]

I don't suppose you could upload either the .midi or the .sib file?

I'm not sure that Finale exports to Sibelius, but this .mid should work.

 

[wankerness]

Just get Finale IMO, Sibelius has the tyranny of not being able to have incomplete measures even for a second!

 

[Guthrielicious]

Have anyone of you heard luys i luso yet? and if so what are your "favorites"/recommendations? I notice that the album has quite a tracklist. I know that the release is different from his other works, but are there songs that feel like his previous compositions?

 

[jonajon91]

I don't think it's something you can go into thinking of it as a jazzy Tigran album. This is 70% church music, 20% modern classical, 10% jazzy Tigran. There are two tracks on here that do have some funky rhythms, but I think that they are actually the weaker tracks and a little out of place. Still, it's worth checking out, one of my favourite albums from last year.