Tips on counting and playing odd time signatures?

Question

I'm pretty interested in learning, composing and playing along to songs using odd time signatures (3/4, 5/4, 7/8, ...) and I'd like some advice on how to wrap my head around all this stuff.For example, counting along to 7/8 is specially hard. I understand I can see this as 4/4 with an eight missing and stomp my foot 7 times at double tempo, but this tends to make me rush the song I'm playing. If I try to stomp 3 times plus a shorter one, oh boy, do I get lost.Another annoying problem is that I tend to fallback to the more commonplace time signatures without realizing, even more if I have no metronome. I'd like to be able to just pick an instrument and play these songs, preferably counting only in my head.I know there are some questions touching this matter but I wanted some tips and exercises to help me *implement* this successfully.

Answer 1

Hi, you should think all subdivisions in two(s) and three(s). For instance the most common 7/8 would be 2-2-3 (12 12 123). This applies in most time signatures that has 8ths and 16ths in the bottom. 7/16 is the same idea but faster as 16ths are faster subdivisions. If it was 7/4 you could count 7 quarter notes.

Also listening, and trying to identify the odd meters are great practices. Bulgarian, Indian, Turkish or Greek music has plenty of odd meters. Also Israeli artist Avishai Cohen (Bass player), and Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan have ton of great compositions where they play these rhythms just amazing and naturally. If it's classical then Stravinsky has them all. Worth to check them out!