The first hack is ignoring the underlying meter and pretending you are playing a riff with an uneven time signature. It's how I started and most of my students seem to take this approach naturally. It's a great hack to get started, but it has a couple of disadvantages. For one, if we are not aware of the underlying pulse, our phrasing will change. this will often (depending on what you are aiming for) result in making the groove and feel suffer. Another problem is that this method works great if you play the cross-rhythm on your own or with the original song. But the moment you play it with a metronome or just a drummer, you will be completely lost.

The second hack is about awareness. Charting a cross-rhythm out over chord changes let's you see where the cycle ends and starts repeating itself. you'll also see which chords are anticipated according to the pattern and which chords are slightly delayed, if any. This way you have a few signposts throughout. Which makes it a lot easier to keep track of the song structure. And in case you mess up, you stand a good chance of finding your way back into the groove at any point.

The third hack is not only the most useful for more complex polyrhythms, it's also a great exercise to strengthening your time feel in general. One way I like to approach complex cross-rhythms is learning them measure by measure and putting them back together once I can execute every measure on its own. Practicing this way gets you used to how every shift feels, rather than counting cycles, beats or measures.

You can also use this technique to tighten up any groove or lick in 4/4. Just shift it one subdivision at a time and see if you can execute all the variations perfectly.

In this video you'll learn:

- The getting started with polyrhythms hack
- How to approach polyrhythms when played over chord changes
- How to master complex cross-rhythms

Find the music from this video on Spotify:

Reborn Again
Open Path

Watch more related videos:

- The Binary Code Of Music
- Do your Quarter Notes Swing?
- Rhythm & Groove Playlist

See you in the next video!

Can’t wait? Then check out my Youtube channel to find more videos on advanced bass techniques and practicing hacks: http://www.youtube.com/c/MischaMarcks 

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Until next time MMEducation is helping you to learn faster & practice smarter.

So keep up the good work!

Love & Bass

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