Bulgarian Time Signatures (1 Viewer)

[demosthenes]

Hey guys,
Was just interested, have any of you had experience with composing in bulgarian time signatures with bulgarian dance metres? Coz i wanna totally transform my composition and spark it up a bit with some interesting time....
Not just Bulgarian, any gypsy music?
Thanks a big ole' bunch!

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[Oxytocin]

*chuckles* guess I can be of some help here.
Being Bulgarian myself, I favour the uneven time sigs....but they're pretty common in a lot of music these days...as angelo-von-drez said, there's quite a bit of use of 7/8 9/8 etc...however...its impotant to remember how to group these, they're always grouped in twos and one three...let me give you an example of how to count in 7/8 'ONE two ONE two ONE two three' try tapping this on a table, accenting the ONEs...thats the basic feel you're looking for. Of course you can arrange these in any way you want like 'One two One two three One two' and so on and so forth...and I guess the syncopation and pauses etc are up to you.

You can go ahead and look for Bulgarian music to listen to...but there's some great bands and composers that use these time signatures in fantastic ways. Example: Deliverance by Opeth (might not be your cup of tea...but the rhythm is so catchy) or if I'm not mistaken Dave Brubeck is quite influenced by those time-sigs since his visit to Bulgaria.

Well I'm off to Bulgaria for twenty days as from tomorrow and I intend on finding out as much about their use of time sigs as possible for my own composition...I'd love to share my findings if you're still interested by then.