Can anyone identify what's going on with this rhythm? Is it syncopated, odd time signature or are the instruments out of sync?

Question

I'm currently transcribing the outro section of the song "Even the Gods Must Die" by Nile and I've been trying to figure out how to approach the feel of the rhythm. It seems like the drums are syncopated but the more I try to transcribe, the more complicated it's becoming and it's making me second guess whether it is syncopated or not. The reason why its becoming more difficult is because one of the strong beats sound as though it lands on a 32 note. This means every time the drums repeat, the entire drum pattern has to shift a 32 note along in order to play in sync with the guitar. This creates for quite a messy tabulation as there are a mixture of everything between 32 to quarter notes all being carried across measures.

The other idea was to transcribe the drums by adjusting the time signature in order to accommodate the rhythm. This also proved to be tricky because I was getting lots of weird time signatures like 30/32 or 19/16 and it just seemed like there should have been a more straight forward way to solve this.

My other thought was to assume the drums and guitar had an unintentional delay that wasn't supposed to be there. This would eliminate the need for random 32 notes dotted everywhere and therefore make it more manageable to tab. However, I can't help but imagine that this was the kind of sound they were going for and don't think it was by accident.

In short: The rhythm isn't too complicated as far as the general feel goes but the slight delay between the drums and guitar are causing me some confusion. So if anyone can point me in the right direction that would be great, i.e. what the time signatures are and/or if it is syncopated or not or anything else.

Here is a link to the song, the outro starts at 7:01.

Answer 1

A few thoughts.

It‘s interesting you make the guitar the reference. Usually it‘s the drummer, who is on time. This can happen, e.g. when the guitarist just gives into the music.

Having only listened once I‘m not sure if we really have a time division of 32-th notes. Ian Paice (Deep Purple) was a master on this level and beyond, and this song doesn‘t even sound close.

IF the rhythm is like you describe, it‘s probably like described here: https://music.stackexchange.com/a/127090/88467 , a polyrhythm on accents.

If you want to literally „see“ the music, obtain an audio file of the video (e.g. via https://vid.puffyan.us) and feed it to SonicVisualizer. Pick the view, which shows the frequencies vertically, so you see root frequencies and overtones of instruments (probably the spectrogramm layer). Obtain the BPM and overlay with this raster. Then it‘s easier to follow measures. And yes, sometimes musicians aren‘t machines, i.e. deviate in tempo.

Answer 2

What I hear is:

• A consistent, underlying 16th-note pulse in the drums.
• A seemingly irregular pattern of accents in the drums.
• A periodic strummed guitar
• The solo guitar playing freely "across" the time.

Thus the drums are the reason it sounds like there's a consistent meter, but the solo guitar isn't attempting to play within that structure.

To approach transcribing the drum part, I would lay out a grid for 16th notes and mark each on that gets an accent. (I would likely also lay out the high-hat part on the same grid, for reference.) That would allow me to see whether the drum part is consistent, operating in a polymeter, or whether the accents are "random". It would also give me a grid to mark where the guitar strums happen.