One signature musical element I often rely on when writing music for Revocation is the use of shifting meters, or time signatures.
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I love the sound of a primary riff that is built from sudden
One signature musical element I often rely on when writing music for Revocation is the use of shifting meters, or time signatures.
I love the sound of a primary riff that is built from sudden and unexpected rhythmic shifts, such as alternating between 4/4 and 7/8 or moving from 7/4 to 6/4 to 4/4. When I’m incorporating odd meters into a song, I have the freedom to imagine a given phrase in different rhythmic patterns: for example, a shift from 7/4 to 6/4 could just as easily be conceived as 4/4 to 3/4 to 4/4 to 2/4. This is exactly the case with the song “Profanum Vulgus,” from the new Revocation album, Great Is Our Sin, which is the focus of this month’s column.
FIGURE 1 illustrates the song’s intro and primary riff, which is also played during the guitar solo section. I begin in 4/4 time, with an inherent rhythmic feel throughout three evenly spaced accents on each beat, expressed as eighth-note triplets. Throughout bar 1 and across beats one and two of bar 2, I move alternately between the low C root note and the full Cm(maj7) chord. Notice that the chord is accented in different rhythmic patterns on each beat, which lends an intriguing sense of musical ambiguity to the phrase.
At the end of bar 2, I move down a minor third, to Am(maj7), but then on the first beat of the next bar, I immediate move the root note of the chord down a half step, changing the chord to Ab. Bar 4 features a shift to 2/4 meter, and here I bring the open G string into play, sounding an Abmaj7 chord. These types of seventh chords are not usually found in metal and thrash music, which, for me,