The Dream Theater rhythmic shift trick

Time Consuming Ep #70 discusses context and it's powers through this EPIC song, 'The Mirror' by Dream Theater.
Also, this episode is sponsored by 'Modalics' and their app "THE BEAT SCHOLAR" which is an exciting new app that makes beat writing and composing accessible and fun, while tackling some of the issues our usual DAWs have with complex rhythmic structures!
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'The Mirror' original song:
• The Mirror
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Intro by Sharon Renold (@sharonrenold on Instagram) and myself
Intro music by Shwesmo (@shwesmo on Instagram)
#musicanalysis #beatscholar #dreamtheater

[@PostApocolyptica]

Yes! "The Mirror"'s shifting rhythm is so simple, yet so effective. Awake is a fantastic album, and "The Mirror" is a refreshing resurge of energy after the trilogy of the chaotic "Erotomania", the brooding "Voices", and calming "The Silent Man". Thank you for taking a look at a prog metal classic!

[@JakobStrand]

One of the best prog albums ever made.

[@Mr._Kagle]

There's a lot of this in the Twelve-Step Suite, particularly the 6/8 riffs from "The Glass Prison" and "This Dying Soul" that are played as 3/4, 6/4, or 4/4 (in triplets) at many different points throughout all five songs in the suite.

[@TheProgSchool]

I always go to Honor Thy Father with the shifting trick! Fun to see some DT on the channel!

[@CnutLongsword]

No matter how hard I try, I can’t ever seem to count that shift correctly.

[@TheProgSchool]

@@CnutLongsword it’s a weird one. Probably worth doing a video on at some point, let me think about that!

[@motopolak]

Is this referring to the intro?

[@TheProgSchool]

@@motopolak yep

[@YogevGabay]

This video was supposed to be 'The Mirror' AND 'Honor Thy Father' but it started got to be loooooong

[@AdityaBhargava]

Dream Theater does this a lot, but my favourite example in terms of overall feel is in Dance of Eternity, starting at around 1:44. Like in the example here from The Mirror, they mostly play the same rhythm over and over, but Portnoy's drumming changes the feel in a great way. It starts out sounding like quintuplets, with the first four notes played and the final a rest. The kick drums play with. But on the second run, Portnoy brings more of his kit in, using the snares to convince us that no, actually, it's not quintuplets but just plain old sixteenths with a five-note repeating rhythm. The third round reinforces this more, with the cymbals coming in and the guitars playing the same riff but higher up the neck, which also helps build things up for the fourth and final run. But then for the fourth one, Portnoy brings it back to the quintuplet feel! And this works so well because it feels like, after the build-up, the whole band is now coming together in a really powerful way. And, because the note grouping shifts, it also feels slower (even though the notes are played at the same speed), which helps make it feel still more emphatic and powerful. It's one of my favourite DT sections. It's a real joy to listen to with a nice pair of headphones!

[@nj1255]

Beat Scholar is an absolute banger of a plug-in. I've never had GAS for a sequencer, but I really need this one.

[@rowan3269]

currently trying to build a time machine so we can fast forward to Mayshuggah 2023

[@kilianbeyly3934]

Nice to see you finally picked a DT song! Another great example can be found in "a change of seasons" (the 2nd part of it). Portnoy start by accenting every 3 eight notes in the 15/8 bar which gives us a 5/4 + triplets feel, and he then alternates between 4/4 and 7/8 which gives us a binary feel.

[@feliperiquelmet]

Learning to Live i think

[@MaestroKatProductions]

Fun fact: the guitar was supposed to fade in for the intro, but the producer for that album (also responsible for the triggered drum sound) was at loggerheads with the band, so we got the version that got released

[@FrancescoDiMauro]

In Panic Attack the same riff is played alternatively in 3 and 4 in the instrumental break, nice stuff!

[@YogevGabay]

Man I love that song hahaha

[@winterunterseher8937]

Dream Theater - Honor Thy Father has this too.

[@Zeta9966]

My favorite moments are the feel shift in Learning to Live and the middle bit of Dance of Eternity. Portnoy is the master of flipping feel on its head into something really straight that feels so not straight.

[@gingerbenw]

I always referred to this as Rhythmic Displacement, and I always use this song to talk about it! Great video as always 👍🏻

[@gavinsmith4894]

Yes! Dream theater was actually my first “metal” band. More DT analysis please!

[@heavenlyactsatheavycost7629]

“The Mirror” was my introduction to Dream Theater (the riff featured on a video by Andrea Boma Boccarusso), and I really enjoyed it, but didn't really explore the rest of their stuff. So I suppose your channel has now pushed me to enjoy the music of three great metal bands: Gojira, Meshuggah and now off to Dream Theater. Cheers! Edit: I should mention that the intro riffs confused the hell out of me and I spent many many minutes trying to decode it and eventually gave up. Maybe it was too early for me hehe. Thanks for the lucid explanations.

[@Kris_jellybeard]

Love to see you share some of these specific presets for Beat Scholar ;-) Currently working the trial... still have to get used to some specific shortcuts...

[@Nei_Esteves]

I always loved the intro of this song precisely because of those groove changes on top of a simple riff

[@heavenly2k]

Really cool video, I discovered this a while ago on my own and have never let go because of how fun it is to use in all genres of music.

[@gabrielallert]

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG IVE BEEN WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO DO A VIDEO ON THE MIRROR OMG YES THANKS

[@YogevGabay]

NIIIICCCEEEEEEE

[@restencourtlaurent840]

There is some exemples in Panzerballett music too. My favorite album to play drums with is "X-Mas Jazz", a lot of ideas. The final of the saxophone solo on "For whom the Jingle Bells toll", or the debut of "Let it snow" for example.

[@tomnaumann2104]

I’ve waited over 25 years for this video. Haha! Many thanks!

[@machinate]

Regardless of sponsorships, you really should consider doing visualisations with Beat Scholar in the future for the quicker stuff. Its method of showing subdivs is really neat.

[@Modalics]

🥰

[@itai666999]

Awesome content once again. Looks like a great app

[@cheezeofelune]

Thank you for inventing circles.

[@celsomachado247]

hilarius and brilliant presentation my friend, congrats!!!

[@Yuna-Chan]

This song IS so Epic it's so great you did a video about it. Thank you

[@MaxB-nv2lp]

that one part in the middle of change of seasons before the shreddy solo part

[@metalmusictheory5401]

Start of “Fall Into The Light”! Nice video, that app looks useful. Do you have a name for these? (I’ve been calling them “pulse-preserving tactus modulations in my videos etc which is accurate but clunky)

[@eqprog]

Another thing Portnoy did a lot in Dream theater was actually demonstrated in the Mirror during the fill to the third rhythmic context as it was called here. He will play a fill which introduces the new rhythmic motive before the rest of the band shifts to the new rhythm. Another rhythmic thing DT did a lot (hate to say it this way but pre-mangini….) was use “mirrored compound rhythms”. (My name for it, idk) a good example is during the solo section of A Nightmare To Remember. The time signature is 11/8 but you can also look at it as a measure of 5/8 + 6/8 followed by 6/8 + 5/8. The rhythm guitar outlines it really nicely, essentially repeating tonal phrase during the second half but modifying it to stretch it out over the slightly longer measure

[@Gilveis]

OMG it was you with GAG quartet. I watched those videos so much times back then but never made the link since i watch your channel. That was great!

[@YogevGabay]

HAHAH yesssss

[@Sqaarg]

A good example of displacing what is felt as the first beat is Steve Reich's Clapping music. It's a single bar of claps and rests, but what is perceived as the first beat is shifted around for a total of twelve times. What I like about this, is how you can squeeze 12 different feels out of a single, (relatively) simple rhythm.

[@gdvpi]

Great example indeed!

[@thoughtsforthebuilders]

the Awake album is one of my faves. can't remember who analyzed the Mirror before (I feel like I saw it on KZbin) but it's a classic metric shift. Honor Thy Father from the Train of Thought album also has a cool displacement in the introduction (not metric but Mike Porn Toy makes excellent use of making the offbeat the beat-beat LOL)

[@thomashymon654]

Nice ! Please do more Beat Scholar videos :D

[@ItaliansShredsBetter]

finally! I was always fascinated by that aong, but couldn't quite wrap my head around it. I initially thought that the guitar was changing rhythm, but it didn't feel right.

[@YogevGabay]

When in doubt, always blame the drummer ! You'll be right 87% of the time.

[@maggus_1]

Not DT, but the same trick is used at the beginning of "Fear of a Blank Planet".

[@snirb8703]

The Ride part on Metropolis part 1 at 4:30. Also 3 parts and a rest that changes context when time sig is 7/8

[@motopolak]

Yo, I love that section! That section that immediately follows with the double bass & back and forth on hihat/china is an awesome shift as well.

[@arielterkeltoub940]

You can hear this kind of metric modulation in The Root of All Evil and A Change of Seasons.

[@vulcandj]

DT does this a lot. It’s very cool. I think the first time I noticed it was in Take the Time from Images and Words.

[@EldeNova]

I had a feeling you were tight with Eyal and that scene! Smart techy musos you lot!

[@YogevGabay]

hahahaha for sure !

[@andersonoliveira9144]

they do something similar in the intro of Falling into the Light with 3/4, 4/4, and triplets on drums. This is a very interesting concept that they've applied to other songs as well.

[@benleydon]

That was well done - a complex concept explained simple enough for bassists like me to understand ;) Good diagrams as well

[@MikeLumer]

I love you dude! Well done. Also, I dunno if the sticky note colors were a conscious choice, but I love that too! ♥️

[@ch3zin]

Dance of Eternity is full of these!

[@mihneazoican2479]

Well.. there’s a line from “The Glass Prison” that alternates the feel between 6/4 and 12/8 (it also appears in The Shattered Fortress). The intro to “Fall into the Light” does the same 6/4-12/8 shift

[@colombanoalessandro]

Great video man!

[@BigDig90]

They also do it in "Fall into the light"!

[@wrongperfection]

Another note about this song is that it features the 'Gojira' pickrake, despite Gojira didn't really use them until 2005 (Also it is seen in a Nevermore song from 95 and Morbid Angel 98)

[@Erkki_Mela]

Pantera did it in Use My Third Arm too. Why would it be called Gojira pickrake?

[@wrongperfection]

@@Erkki_Mela kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y6qzpKiqg6uasJo Not all of these are the pickrakes, but you get the point. Pantera, DT, MA and Nevermore didn't use these THAT frequently.

[@Erkki_Mela]

@@wrongperfection alright bro 🤙

[@ThyArtIsMetal]

I feel like I havnt seen Eyal since that amazing project rnl? Song with Jordan rudess! That song was amazing

[@thesmellycatjazz]

I've been following Eyal since Project RNL did the video with Jordan Rudess. I had no clue you were playing in some of his tracks

[@YogevGabay]

Eyal is insane !

[@pazmiki77]

איזה גבר עד שמצאתי סרטון כזה סוף סוף פתאום זה אחד משלנו, עלה והצלח יא אח🤙🏼❤️🔥🔥

[@YogevGabay]

מלך !

I just checked "The Great Debate", around 8:38. They use that same trick. Same remark on "The Dance of Eternity", around 1:45

[@bastugollum4473]

Hopely We see soon in The Future.

[@mrbullseye]

One of my favourite songs ever, any category. I blew the mind of my band mate when I made him realise that the guitar riff part does not change, in any way, until about a minute into the song. He fervently disagreed with me.

[@mustaineboots]

they've used it in countless songs. take me years to name all of them

[@Fliegenpilzkonsument]

Thank you for reminding me that I still have to listen to that album. I will do my homework! I love your channel.

[@YogevGabay]

AMAZING album

[@alirezabayat6388]

Tempo modulation is sooo overlooked

[@ihartcrackers]

Great video!

[@macarebe]

insane video, thanks alot.

[@travisferrie]

I would absolutely love if you analyzed the song The Longest Shadow Of The Day by Fates Warning. Section from 8:38-10:17, particularly 9:20-10:17. This is a nice musically complex section in 11/4. Featuring 3 distinct guitar tracks, 1 bass track, drums, and vocals. Very very unique song, personally one of my favorites and i would love to see how you break this down and analyze this. Thank you!!!!

[@pitzpitz]

Love this video, this song makes so much more sense now :)

[@BloodHarvest21]

Sacrificed Sons has an awesome shift in the riff after the softer portion of the song

[@matthewperez8656]

One interesting technique they used can be found in The Killing Hand. About 3 minutes in they take the triplet of the tempo and make that the new tempo in the next section giving it a slowed down groovier feel.

[@sheldonfernandes]

Another cool thing is in Voices and Count of Tuscany where the crash/splash is done in quarters but the beat is in eight so every bar switches the down/up beats. I think both are in 9/4 or 9/8 Voices for sure is 9 but I don't remember TCoS. The one that usually goes unnoticed though is the intro to Take the Time. Bass starts in 4/4(and stays in 4) while they're in 6/4 when they come in and then the triplet "feel" in the orignal 6/4 becomes the new pulse/quarter of the song. The other big one is the second verse of Glass Prison - the snare placement is pretty unpredictable unless you know the song

[@krisnadexter]

OMG, finally I find him, Eyal Amir! I heard one of his song years ago. But I forget his name, so I can't find the song for a long time. Thx Yogev.

[@YogevGabay]

hahahha you're welcome !!

[@buwumet]

The Panic Attack solo shifting always gets me going

[@YogevGabay]

LOOOOOVE that song

[@RobotLVS]

The Shattered Fortress has some of that concept

[@ItsDrewsif]

Hey dude can you please cover whatever the heck is happening at 0:40 in “Seven” by Necrophagist? It seems like some sort of tuplet or something, but I haven’t been able to explain it other than a single measure of a different tempo. Very curious about it, and there’s no documentation because Necrophagist just fell off the earth and I don’t think they’re ever coming back, haha

[@sethbrundle6506]

Dream Theater indeed uses alot of these kinds of rhythmic illusions! The most commonly used one, I think is when Mr Portnoy is accompanying a riff by switching between a couple of odd-time groupings and then "resolving" it into something with a more "straight ahead" feel making the riff sound completely different. And examples of those metric modulations (like from triplet to 16th note feel) are also abundant! But I believe your question was to spot another rhythmic shift (or permutation) specifically? Those are a bit more rare! The closest thing that comes to mind, is when Mr Portnoy is switching the beat around in the beginning of The Glass Prison (ard. 2:12). I believe thats a beat in 7/8 while the riff in the back alternates between 8/8 and 6/8 resulting in turning the riff on it's head every other time. It's not exactly this! But it's conceptually pretty close.

[@oceanmachine1906]

Even Pull Me Under has similar riff displacement in the intro

[@Madhatter1781]

Hey, with that app, someone may finally be able to adequately visualize the Strong One (Masked Man) theme from Mother 3. If you want some very, very off beat content for the channel yet still very in theme, check out the Strong One and Strong One (Masked Man) themes from Mother 3. Some fairly complicated rhythmic ideas that get totally spaghettified in the remixed version into this nonsense with a decimal in the time signature 😂

[@arvo_cado]

The riff reminded me of "Off the Grid" from Tigran

[@hanshanshansans]

You should really check out the rythm programming language nestup, its made especially to find easier way to profram rhythms containg nested tuplets and other complex studf. Nor as cisually pleasing, but another cool way of dealing with complex rhythms in the digital domain!

[@matthewbenedict5923]

Such a good video!! :)

[@tyelerhiggins300]

Fatal tragedy just a little after 3:50 always made me think of this. Every time, I try to figure out where the snare is going to go, but always get it wrong. Even though I've listened to the album dozens of times.

[@omristeiner6285]

Fatal Tragedy at 4:21 and Dance of Eternity at 2:05

[@FrancoW1]

Hey man, I might have a song for you with an interesting rhythmical section of a musician that I really love. It's the song "Emergent One" by Comaduster - more like DnB/IDM, so not Metal or Rock but very enjoyable to listen to. The part starts around 1:48 minutes and still baffles me, as the rhythmic switching seems so complicated but still effortless. Maybe you could analyze this for us? :) Take care and keep it up!

[@motopolak]

I listened to that and it was definitely trippy, but I wasn't convinced it was rhythmic modulation. I started by applying a metronome to that section, applying it before it starts and keeping it on afterwards. The metronome doesn't line up by the time the beat gets back into consistent sounding 4/4 no matter what BPM I set it at. (96 or 97 by what I could figure out). It sounds like the tempo literally literally slows down and speeds up, vs. using auditory shifts on the same beat. I guess that's more easily done with electronic music.

[@FrancoW1]

@@motopolak im a musician and producer myself, but never cared to check it out in my DAW, lol. Thanks for doing that ❤️

[@YogevGabay]

will definitely take a look 1

[@FrancoW1]

@@YogevGabay wow thank you :)

[@dreamtheater_92]

Cool hamsa 🪬

[@astrolopitekos]

Hey wow now I gotta go listen again to that crazy Eminem version Eyal Amir did back in the day!!!! I loved their songs/versions so much

[@YogevGabay]

Oh hell yeh I love it !

[@pitzpitz]

I think something a bit similar is happening on the end of Mellotron Scratch by Porcupine Tree

[@Koropokel]

please do more tigran or meshuggah stuff!

[@erikenwald3668]

Honor thy father uses something similar

[@angrydwarf6563]

Cool vid Yogev. Every day is a school day! BTW when are distorted harmony going to release new material? We’re waiting …….

[@YogevGabay]

Ohhhhh asking the hard questions! I hope we get our shit together soon !

[@MajykOyster666]

I hope Yogev does a video on Metallica one day. I can understand Meshuggah, Car Bomb and Tigran Hamasyan, but the time modulations of Lars are unfathomable for me.

[@MladenDragovicMusic]

Those are not modulations, he just can't keep time. 😂

[@zakguitar2359]

The Art Of Guitar has a series on Metallica drum "rhythmic illusions" I think it may interest you

[@YogevGabay]

HAHAHAHHAAHHA shaddeeeeee

[@sandysatya2625]

ah finally.. Dream Theater!

[@loschain2224]

time to do the bleed videos again. just for visuals....

[@Paregoros123]

Make a video about the count of tuscany 7:10 - 7:30. Mainly about how portnoy arranges the rhythm to create a sense of drift. The crash is constant and is the pulse, but goes in and out of being on beat and off beat bar to bar. ;)

[@danilomattar332]

Please man, analise some Tesseract songs. Such an amazing band that makes use of tempo deslocation !

[@YogevGabay]

Which one ?!?

[@markkilley2683]

Great demo. What's Beats Scholar's maximum bar and pattern length?

[@Modalics]

Hey! So the maximum is 32 steps per bar (could be 32/8, 32/16, 32/4, etc) and no limit on the amount of bars, even though at some point you might want to move to the next pattern just to avoid screen clutter. :)

[@RAMMY237]

4:22 Not Bad, Not Bad.! =)

[@benoitderat9602]

Under a glass moon

[@Aiwe_Musician]

Off the top of my head I think about Fall Into The Light, maybe it's because it is so easy that even I can count it)) I think there's something like 12/8 riff that Petrucci plays twice, then it repeats while Mangini (and Myang along) plays beneath it four bars of 6/8 (or you can think of it as pretty slow 4/4 with triplet feel), and then for another two riffs he goes to swung 4/4 for another four bars (or, eeeeh, doubles the time, if you percieve first two bars as 4/4), and then he plays a four bars of 6/4 - again, beneath the same riff played twice. And then there's part when it goes TAAATgdgdgDAAA TgdgdgDAAA Tgdgdg-Tagada-taGada-DAAA))) I call this metric modulation, although I'm not sure I'm using the term right. If I'm right, first part is played as 4 bars of 6/8, then in the second part the same amount of time is divided as 4 bars of 4/4, which means former dotted quarter note became new half-note. And then in the third part the same amount of time divided by four bars of 6/4, which means that eighth-note triplets from a 4/4 part became a new eighth notes. And this also means that tempo will be different for all three parts. But hey, I'm pretty sure that guys from DT didn't think of it as metric modulations, but rather as of some versatile time in which different groupings are played. Like 12/8 or something. UPD: Just noticed MetalMusicTheory comment below) Sorry) Also while I was writing all this I completely forgot about what I was going to say in the first place)) Yogev, thank you very much, your channel is so inspiring and helpful! It's an excellent guide to the beautiful realm of rhythms, I discovered great things here and it's always such a cool feeling to see your breakdown of some composition and find out that I've got it right (or at least not completely wrong =)) ). I love Dream Theater music so much, and I always loved this song, but I always struggle with understanding all details. That 16th note at the end of the break was the confusing thing to me: I was never quite sure that it actually is there or it is my imagination and I'm counting wrong and riff just starts a 16th away. P.S. Also discovered HAGO thanks to your channel and totally digging it! !תוֹדה רבה! אני מאחל לך בהצלחה

[@Aiwe_Musician]

Also while I was writing all this I completely forgot about what I was going to say in the first place)) Yogev, thank you very much, your channel is so inspiring and helpful! It's an excellent guide to the beautiful realm of rhythms, I discovered great things here and it's always such a cool feeling to see your breakdown of some composition and find out that I've got it right (or at least not completely wrong =)) ). I love Dream Theater music so much, and I always loved this song, but I always struggle with understanding all details. That 16th note at the end of the break was the confusing thing to me: I was never quite sure that it actually is there or it is my imagination and I'm counting wrong and riff just starts a 16th away. P.S. Also discovered HAGO thanks to your channel and totally digging it! !תוֹדה רבה! אני מאחל לך בהצלחה

[@YogevGabay]

המון המון תודה ! ממש ממש שמח שאתה אוהב !

[@Aiwe_Musician]

🖖🎉

[@aldobachini1221]

That was an interesting video. By the way, where can i listen to the music that we hear at the end of your video? I'm curious. Cheers !

[@YogevGabay]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/d4GYe3yQrNGSia8&ab_channel=Shwesmo

[@bencebalogh7307]

I think the The great debate riff from about 8:38 works the same way

[@sinkler123]

I really miss the RNL crew... 😢 Wish they would shift some focus back to making music rather than just making cool plugins 😅

[@camerontgore]

What is the name of the song played during the outro? It absolutely slaps!

[@YogevGabay]

Shwesmo - Digital Elephants

[@joaomatheus6222]

Honor thy father is a great example of rythmic shifting, but I'd say it's more complex than this one My favorite though

[@YogevGabay]

Yup !

[@joaomatheus6222]

@@YogevGabay you should do a video about it 🥺

[@YogevGabay]

@@joaomatheus6222 I would lie if I said it's not on my list hahaha

[@vladalexeev8529]

Your video has so much production value, so much effort and 6 thousand views. That's unfair. Maybe it's due to unpopularity of the topic

[@YogevGabay]

I mean, this is a very very very niche topic haha

[@TheRealisticNihilist]

Yo... Gev! Ga bay...

[@LightsOfSkadi]

I would love to hear you disect my song Norse code pt.1: Lights Of Skadi. I count most of the song as 6/4 but my bandmates counts it as 4/4 or sometimes triplets. If anyone else got a clue how it should be counted, let us know!-

[@Gabrol]

I had no idea you played drums for gag quartet lol

[@YogevGabay]

Yup !

[@chriscopeman8820]

The meaningless blabber sounded the same to me so I had to listen a couple of times. On the second time I could hear the background drums. Perhaps I’m old and it’s kinda noisey here, or maybe I’m rhythmically inept and should just give up trying.