Hi, I’m Frank Coleman, and I'm a drummer,
and I've been a drummer for a very long time.
And there is a video that's been going around
amongst my drummer and musician friends,
about how to play In 13/8 time, 
and this guy sits down, he's about to play in 13/8 time,
and he goes, "What are you doing, playing in 13/8 time? Nobody can dance to 13/8 time! Play 4/4! Blah blah..."
and I have some sympathy for that point of view, 
because when I -
A lot of times, when I listen to music in odd meters, 
or I hear music in odd meters,
I kind of go, "Ugh. Yah. Great. Show off!"
But the fact of the matter is that
especially if you're an up-and-coming
 or learning musician,
or just at any point in your development,
it's a good idea to be able
to play in different time signatures,
be able to play smoothly and musically 
in different time signatures
in case you ever called upon to do it.
And you might be surprised at some
of the popular songs that actually have
as their underpinning a non-standard time signature,
or perhaps a different way of looking at time
within the song.
There are certain odd time signatures that 
I actually really enjoy playing as a drummer.
Some of this stuff, if it's not really handled properly,
it gets to be kind of like what I call 
"Music for Musicians."
I'm reminded of what Mark Twain said 
about Richard Wagner,
"His music is better than it sounds."
While trying to resist the show-offy aspects of this
let me show you some approaches to trying
to think about these things and make them
more musical.
Let's take 13/8 as the example, because
that's a really strange one, and it's the one that they
demonstrated in the video.
Well, alright. What is 13? 
Well, 13 is 12 + 1.
Although, if you count a one beat in music, 
it'll tend to sound like a skipping record,
or something like that.
So, I would look at 13 as being a pair of fours.
Two sets of 4, that's 8. And then, what have we got?
Eight, you've got nine, 10, 11, 12, you've got five left.
So, I would break that into, instead of four and one,
I would break that into two and three.
So I would count it like:
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2, 1 2 3, 
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2, 1 2 3.
And you can already see, it sort of starts to have 
this sort of "ebb and flow" feeling,
just by my counting it that way.
So, if I were writing a song...
Let's say in the verse, the protagonist is saying,  
"Well, I did this, and I did that,
And then I ran into this problem.
And then I did this, and I did that, 
and then I ran into this problem.
You can see that it sort of has that sort of contour to it.
So, sort of like:
1,2,3,4 / 1,2,3,4 / 1,2 / 1,2,3 
1,2,3,4 / 1,2,3,4 / 1,2 / 1,2,3
Right? You see, the idea is you can throw in all
kinds of little bits of regular beats inside
this structure, to make it feel more like it's just sort of flowing along, like a regular beat.
The idea's to try to not emphasize the sharpness, 
the angles, the hard edges of these things,
to try to make it sort of - more flowing
and more musical. To try to find, try to pull out
the musicality and the... whatever is
the mood, or the atmosphere that you're trying
to create within these structures.
"Take 5" is, of course, a very famous song. 
It's in 5/4 time.
See, and it just kind of like bounces along.
But there's also another song that's in five.
that I think of, is "America is Waiting." It's the
first song on "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,"
by Brian Eno and David Byrne.
And that is kind of more like stilted,
because it's a really kind of angular kind of song.
Like that. So, that's another one. 
Also, see -- threes and twos.
Threes and fours. And sometimes you can have 
sort of like a macro structure of a 3,
and underneath, sets of 4. I'm thinking of the song, 
"Tomorrow's World" by Killing Joke.
That's actually sort of... the phrase is in 3, but underneath, each one, it's in 4/4. So, it's...
Right? So, you'll be surprised at how much odd
meters and non-standard time signatures
can filter into some of your favorite songs.
Let's see, "Tattooed Love Boys" by The Pretenders.
That's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 / 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 / 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Practicing this stuff and all..
It's more important to just
like I say, just kind of go more for
the aesthetics and the mood that you're trying
to create, and contour the music around
that, around your message, rather than just
doing this sort of intellectual exercise
purely for its own sake.
Anyway, I'll play a little 7/8, which is one of my favorites.
So there's that. When I was at Berklee,
I used to... when I was a snot-nosed kid,
I used to make people play in 31/8 time, which is
4 bars of 4 minus an eigth note,
So, right where you expect the phrase to turn around, 
it drops an 1/8th note.
It feels like the bottom just fell out of everything. 
Just to be a wise-ass.
So that's - and again...
I'm playing just like a regular beat inside it. 
It's just that when I get to that end,
I just count seven instead of eight. 
Four bars of four, minus an 1/8th note.
That's obnoxious! So that's just to take things to a ridiculous extreme.
A song I used to play a lot when I was at Berklee was "Scatterbrain" by Jeff Beck, which is alternating seven and nine.
Which - gee, let's do the math - 7 plus 9 comes to two bars of four, basically!
Etc., etc. Anyway. So, there you go. Odd Meters.
It's good for you to stretch your mind and all like that,
but never sacrifice the musicality 
for the intellectual exercise.
Otherwise, you're just playing "Music for Musicians." That's it!
