Basic problem

Playing in compound meters feels odd to me. It feels like the first beat of every bar comes in the wrong place and that I need to keep track of it by counting. If I am playing in 4/4 or 3/4, I don’t need to keep track of the one, I feel it. So how can I make a meter like 7/4 feel natural?

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Solutions

• Every odd meter is made up of groups of 3 or 2.
• Feeling an odd meter can be simpler by turning a 7/4 into one bar of 4 plus one bar of 3.
• If you play an odd meter slowly, say 70 bpm the two parts of the bar become easy to maneuver
• In fast tempos it helps to think in half notes. This turns two bars of 7/4 into one slow bar of 7/4. I will explain this principle more below.

Feeling the long beat

The principle of dividing a 7/4 into a group of 4 + 3 is a great tool. If you want a feel for how this sounds listen to this drum beat. The first half of the bar sounds like a simple rock beat in 4/4 and the 3/4 part is based on dotted quarter notes. This becomes slightly awkward though in fast tempos, which is why it makes sense to feel the half-notes as the main beat instead. Like this:

This produces the slightly weird effect of turning the downbeats of the second bar into upbeats. Apart from this, this even makes tempos of 300 bpm feel slow.

Practice ideas:

A way to practice this is by clapping your hands in half notes and singing a 7/4 riff. One that I particularly love is this by Gael Horellou.

The claps occur simultaneously as the first two chords in the first bar but between them in the second bar. It makes it even more swinging somehow.

It makes sense to feel the tempo like this when playing the last movement of Prokofiev’s 7th sonata as well.

Again this has the effect of turning the two Bb major chords in the second bar into upbeats.

Playing eighths notes

Another helpful thing is an exercise I picked up from Kenny Werner. The idea is to fill up a bar of 7/4 with eighth notes and then remove them in various ways. The first way consists of removing just one eighth note and shifting that space around. Like this:

The exercise is done in four-bar phrases, to add the bonus of cementing the feeling of four-bars. Of course, this can be varied in countless ways. You can remove more than one eighth note, and displace the whole group of eighth notes to other parts of the beat.

With this things are improving. Problems are soluble, it is good to remember to be happy when we encounter something we can’t do, for that means we have a clear path towards progress.

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