I've been trying to think of a way to kickstart this music thing and I think the best way to go about doing that would be by talking about the coolest, most interesting topic ever conceived: music genres. Yeah, that's right. I can already hear your pulse speeding with exuberance. Each month I plan on bringing a new genre (Or maybe even subgenre... gasp!) to the table, parsing out what it is and providing commentary off and on about what bands I think are worth checking out. And that is just... so great.
Alright, so first we've got my favorite genre of rock music ever, none other than the poorly understood yet highly influential kingdom of math rock. What is math rock? To put it in it's simplest terms, math rock is rock music that puts heavy emphasis on rhythmic experimentation, usually in the use of odd time signatures (Brief tutorial on that in a moment, for the uninitiated). Now, I know you're just dying for me to break that down more completely, so I'll do it. Just for you. You're welcome.
Alright, so the core concept is rhythmic experimentation, but why? Well, the goal of most math rock bands (At least initially, but again we'll get to that) is deconstructive. You take apart a rock song and get to see and the innards, what really makes it tick. Then you get to have fun and reconstruct everything by deliberately building something that isn't in the blueprint, but bears a striking resemblance to it. If you take a driving 4/4 rock backbeat, a math rock band will flip it several times with asymmetrical meter and leave you awkwardly bobbing along to the downbeat, then cut into a disruptive unison passage before the instruments wander off on their own again. That's part of what makes it so awesome, you can tell that you're listening to a rock song but it's all "wrong" somehow. Nothing flows like your ear expects it to (At first).
Alright, before I go any further I really need to comment on time signatures. If you don't know (And if you never studied music in a formal context, there's a pretty large chance that you don't. That's normal), a time signature specifies the rhythmic meter of the music and is represented as a fraction. The numerator tells us the number of "beats" in a measure of music, the denominator tells us the duration of each beat. So a 3/4 meter tells us that there are three beats to the measure (Think waltz) and that each beat is a quarter note, 1/4th of a whole note. Quarter notes have more or less become the "standard" beat duration in modern music, so most meters you'll come across with be x/4. Also, most modern music is felt either in 3s or 4s, so 3/4 and 4/4 are pretty much the vanilla time signatures these days.
An odd time signature is a time technically a meter with a numerator that is not divisible by 3 or 4, but in practical use it's normally any meter where the number of beats is anything other than 2, 3 or 4. 5/4, with five beats in each bar and the quarter note getting the beat, is odd. 6/4, with six beats in each bar and the quarter note getting the beat, is not odd in strict music theory but is unusual and thus considered "odd" in practice. A meter of 7/8 is another common odd time, in which there are seven beats to the bar each of which take up an eight note in duration. An 11/16 meter is not quite so common, with eleven beats in each measure and the sixteenth note getting the beat. Are you seeing the pattern? It's very simple stuff when you think about it, but for some reason the "feel" of these meters hasn't caught much mainstream traction. I'm not going to keep prattling on about this, but if someone wants me to dedicate a post or ten to time signatures, I'll totally do it.
Now, math rock makes heavy use of the aforementioned odd meters. While a standard rock song may be written in 4/4 (Likely have beats 2 and 4 accented in most measures. Listen to the snare in any song on the radio) and maybe have a short section in 3/4 if they're really adventurous, a fairly simple math rock tune might have verses in 13/8, choruses that alternate 15/8 and 29/16, and an instrumental passage or three that change meter every measure. This is the most obvious characteristic that distinguishes the genre and it is one that you should keep in mind once we stop talking and start listening.
Now, there is a lot more to the rhythmic experimentation found in math rock than just the use of odd times, but I'm going to put that aside for later in the week. If you're enjoying this just wait until we get into tuplets and polyrhythms.
Ok, that's a good enough introduction anyways, I'll pick up with the overview (And focus on a few key bands) throughout the course of the month... maybe even later tonight if the mood strikes me (And it always strikes me... so, y'know, there probably will be one). If you just can't wait, the wikipedia article on math is actually fairly informative and factually accurate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_rock), or at least it was the last time I looked. Also, here are a few math rock bands you might want to check out independently (I'll probably devote time to most of them, but not all and all the bands I end up covering might not be on this list. Hey, there's a lot of great stuff to pick from):
Don Caballero
Thingy
Slint
The Jesus Lizard
Shellac
Minus The Bear
June of 44
Tera Melos
We Are Knives
Sleeping People
Yowie
Hella
The Dirty Projectors
Giraffes? Giraffes!
We Followed Tigers
Sharks Keep Moving
Rodan
Dazzling Killmen
Faraquet
Drive Like Jehu
Capillary Action
We Insist!
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