This video recently made the rounds on Facebook:
I was thinking about “Clair de Lune” and how strange and complicated the rhythm is. I was humming it to myself and couldn’t figure out where the downbeats were. I have previously used Ableton Live to help me learn a classical piece aurally, so I figured I would do the same thing with this one.
I found a MIDI version of the piece and brought it into Ableton. The MIDI file put the left and right hand of the piano on separate tracks, so I used separate instruments for each one: a palm-muted guitar for the right, and a synth pluck for the left.
For rhythm, I used the old reliable “Yeah Woo” break, pitched down for extra vibe.
I split the MIDI wherever I felt an intuitive phrase boundary and arranged my drum loops accordingly. I doubled the synths with softer and more sustained sounds in a few sections as well.
Hear the result:
Will Kuhn suggests that the rhythms of “Clair de Lune” are so weird because Debussy was trying to notate rubato. That sounds plausible to me. It turns out that when you quantize the piece over beats, it sounds very syncopated and hip. Live and learn.
Update: as a commenter points out, “Clair de Lune” is in 9/8, so of course it’s going to sound strange over a 4/4 beat. However, for me, the 4/4 beat actually makes it sound less strange. I find 9/8 totally unnatural, I can count it deliberately but I haven’t internalized it intuitively. On the other hand, groups of triplets over 4/4 is a common sound in the African-descended American music, and I can feel it just fine. So the piece makes more sense to me over “Yeah Woo” than it does in its intended meter.
Over on Facebook, Isaac Schankler points out:
The polyrhythm is cool but I’d say it actually obscures your understanding because the characteristic accent pattern is completely different
True. So I guess I’m not so much “understanding” the piece as I am creating a different piece of music using the same pitches and durations but with a different rhythmic feel (one that I like better, sorry Debussy.)
Further update: I did another remix in actual 9/8.
Which do you like better, the correct way or the 4/4 way?
Well you found a 9/8 drum groove but one that doesn’t make sense at all, at least if you’re trying to make sense of the original score.
You can divide 9 in multiple ways: 3+3+3, 4+4+1, 5+4, 4+5, 4+3+2, etc. The drum groove you chose is a 5+4, or maybe a 4+1+4. But Debussy’s Clair de Lune is clearly a more conventional 3+3+3. It’s more like a very slow waltz, really, with each beat also subdivided in 3 (like of waltz of tiny waltzes). And there are indeed syncopations when there are some kind of inverted hemiolas, with a 2:3 eighth notes. The irony is that with a 4/4 groove, the syncopations from the original become in sync in 4/4 and lose their syncopation.
I’m quite familiar with the Clair de Lune as I play it myself, so I was very disturbed by the 4/4 (a bit less with the 5+4/8). The downbeats were not at all in the “right” place (again, if your goal is to understand what Debussy wrote).
I’m sure you would find it makes way more sense with a waltz rythm.
I’m hearing the drum groove I found as 4+3+2. I wanted to find a more “waltz-y” 9/8 rhythm, but I couldn’t find any musical-sounding ones, because no modern musician treats 9/8 as 3+3+3. I used that McCoy Tyner pattern too, which is a jazz waltz with a 6/8 feel. I know it sort of cycles in and out of phase, but it does give some more “waltz-y” flavor.
I’m not surprised I couldn’t find a 9/8 drum pattern with a 3+3+3 feel. Isn’t the whole reason people write in 9/8 specifically is that it’s supposed to be a longer, more complex phrase that doesn’t just reduce to a fast waltz? It’s the same reason 4/4 and 2/4 aren’t interchangeable. You could treat 4/4 as a pair of 2/4 oom-pahs, but since about 1930 we’ve stopped doing that because it sounds corny. The whole point of 4/4 is that the two halves of the bar are usually not be identical. The same logic appears to hold for 9/8.
I did program myself an oom-pah-pah waltz pattern for “Claire de Lune” and while it “makes sense,” it sounds as corny and unmusical as an oom-pah pattern in 4/4. Debussy must have been doing all that syncopation for a reason, right? Maybe 4+3+2 is not the right complex phrase structure, but it does show off the phrase structure of “Claire de Lune” nicely, even if it’s doing so by fighting it.
If there is a musical-sounding drum pattern in 9/8 that would fit this piece better, please let me know – audio, MIDI, notated, I can work with anything.
I don’t really get it. In its original 9/8 meter I don’t think the rhythm is especially weird, maybe a few unintuitive syncopations. Won’t most 9/8 melodies sound strange when played over a 4/4 beat?
I find 9/8 melodies tend to work great over 4/4 beats, they create a gratifying African-sounding 3 against 4 polyrhythm. Actually, this combination is more intuitive to me than regular 9/8, which I have a very difficult time feeling, probably due to enculturation. As I listen more to my Claire de Lune remix, its rhythms are starting to make more sense to me.