Rhythm Mnemonics
Some music-related mnemonics, just because I taught some to a friend today and they amuse me....
First, how to count jigs, slip jigs, reels, and hornpipes:
A jig is 123-123-123-123 [...]
So the jig mnemonic is apples and oranges, apples and oranges [repeat to infinity or until the tune ends]. A popular alternative is edible elephant, edible elephant....
Slip jigs are in 9/8 (which we usually think of as a difficult Middle Eastern rhythm....maybe not!)
The slip jig mnemonic is apples and oranges fill you up repeated until tired. Or done.
Reels are alligator alligator. Hornpipes are HUMPty DUMPty.
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When I was a kid learning to play, I had some conservatory-style teachers who taught us to slowly count time signatures and work our way into them.
.,...And then, out on the gig, various more experienced players taught me a few vernacular methods which work rather better than the conservatory method for learning rhythm on the fly:
To count two against three, which is sort of the root of syncopation? The mnemonic is pass the butter, where you tap both hands on the syllable for "pass", right hand for "the", and left-right for "butter"....try it, it works.
Four against three becomes pass the god-damned butter, using similar technique.
Seven against eight can be rearranged a couple of ways, so it's unpredictable, but what I use is one-two-one-two-one-two-three. It's difficult to tap this rhythm out; it can be a little chaotic at first.
It's fun to teach this stuff to kids - they get it much faster than adults, usually, who get lost processing the words and don't hear the sound and rhythm, unless you're doing it in a bar, at which point the adults are often sufficiently relaxed to actually go with it.
...and no entry on meter would be complete without mentioning math rock, an entire genre of music devoted to interesting rhythms, some of which aren't obvious to the casual listener. Jazz has long played with meter, but rock? 4/4 rock? Not until math rock, or mathcore, or whatever you want to call the genre. It's surprisingly listenable....and unlike prog-rock, the time signatures are sometimes not especially obvious.
Yes, rhythm is fun, and odd time sigs are fun, but mnemonics are how we remember them. I'm sure there's a mnemonic for really weird time sigs like 13/7 or some such but I haven't figured it out yet....