Non-Bodily Rhythms and Escaping Even Bars

Since being often non-bodily motivated, universal music will use non-bodily rhythms. These are rhythms that employ patterns that either because of theirs character, either tempo, can not be directly followed by our body. Therefore they reverberate inside.

The idea of writing music in non-biological rhythm was strong within serial and electro-acoustic fields, and composers such as Stockhausen wrote pieces in non-bodily tempo that take the music away from our muscles. In contemporary music we often hear this purely mental rhythm which our body find hard to follow. I had this impression for the first time – and never again not remotely so intensive – with the bass line from JM Jarre’s Equinoxe 4. The impact it had on me was something I never experienced before, nor could imagine exists: there was a sense of overflow of rhythmic happenings that fail to find expression through body and remain to reverberate inside the mind, having a rather mind-blowing effect. It was the consciousness-expanding experience, like hearing music for the first time.

These non-bodily, mental rhythms while seemingly being completely free and various, still seem to mostly tend towards four big groups: vibrational, pulsating, trance and meditative rhythms. Vibrations are the fastest mental rhythms and are usually rather sensual in effect, and in classical music those are tremolos such as that which opens Beethoven's Ninth symphony. Also ambient pieces, those looms of sound, are usually full of vibrations. Vibrations usually appear to create some sensual impression, such as that of shimmering, or of space. "Waiting For Cousteau" ambient piece from JM Jarre has main theme (waiting loop) in vibrational rhythm.

Pulsating rhythms are slower and create impression of a living organism, of the drive, because they are close to the rhythm of the human heart. Pink Floyd used them often, or it can be seen in the theme “Moment In Love” of Art Of Noise. JM Jarre’s Equinoxe 4 bass line I mentioned is also in pulsating rhythm, albeit faster than most of them, where Oxygene 2 bass uses slower, Pink Floyd-like pulsation. When this rhythm is used, always an impression of a drive, of a living creature is created.

Trance rhythm is even slower and is the closest to body rhythm of all the mind rhythms. This sort of rhythm is connected with the will to obey and clears the mind of any content of its own. Unlike the previous two, this kind of rhythmic impact is often found in ancient and ethnic music, especially oriental and eastern, and makes us almost close the eyes and go back and forth with our head, like in mantras. It is also the basic rhythm in techno dance (techno trance), not only because of this trance impact but also because of said fact that it is the most dancable mental rhythm. It can be found almost anywhere in techno music, say Kraftwerk “It’s More Fun To Compute”, or “Icct Hedral” of Apex Twin.

Meditational rhythms are the slowest and are often found at Buddhist and Hindu ethnic music. They induce very meditative and calm states, creating an outset for eventual additional sensual or emotional excitation, or mind introspection. Klaus Schultze and Kitaro often use them. Vangelis “Creation Du Monde” and “La Mer Recomence” are also example of pieces in meditational rhythm (and let’s notice that Vangelis also introduces vibrations in second part of the latter). These rhythms however, as said, should principally be used as an outset for additional excitation of senses, mind and emotions, which JM Jarre did best, often creating meditative rhythm with a phaser effect, and than doing chord progressions and other melodic development that actually excite (ex. Equinoxe 2).

Non-body electronic music is mostly build around these four families of rhythms, often mixed. Waiting For Cousteau for example mixes meditative rhythm of the background with vibration of the main theme, same as Eno’s Apollo soundtracks (a very common combination). Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schultze pieces often mix arpeggios in trance rhythm with meditational outset.

Now, when we speak about rhythm, the most interesting is an option to use non-even beats, what classical composer Messiaen was into. Music should not work through even beats, but melodies should be built around uneven rhythmic patterns, ever-shifting rhythm, such as those that appear in some non-regular happenings in nature (movements of clouds, flow of the rivers…). This is connected with a tendency to take music away from rhythm-domination, found also at the place of Gustav Mahler, who was obsessed with the idea to take music away from rhythms and even time, so to convert it into a kind of literature. Piece with little or no rhythm feel to them, that emphasize harmonic and melodic elements, are usually called Adagios in classical music tradition, albeit are to these days rarely found in electronic music (there is classical Barber’s adagio for strings in electronic arrangement).