Post 6: Varying tempos, time signatures, and rhythms in Bluegrass and Psychedelic music

Another similarity between Bluegrass music and Psychedelic music is the varying tempos, time signatures, and rhythms. In Bluegrass music there are usually two meters that are used: Triple meter notated as ¾ (used for ballads and religious songs) and Duple meter notated as 4/4 or 2/4. In Psychedelic music time signatures are experimented with, there is no one time signature used more than another. In Psychedelic music the time signature changes with the feeling that is desired. In both Bluegrass and Psychedelic music tempos are speed up or slowed down to produce an effect. Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys used this technique, speeding up at the beginning of phrases in order to produce a surging effect. This speeding up and slowing down (or vice-versa) also occurs in Psychedelic music. Since Psychedelic music is created in order to produce the feeling of a trip, varying tempos and time signatures are used in order to create this effect.

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In Bluegrass music the impression of speed is enhanced with the use of accented up-beats in duple meter, off-beat melodic phrasing, and changes in pitch in order to accent the rhythm. Psychedelic music uses the basic rhythm of rock which is the straight eighth-note division of the beat, as opposed to the dotted-eighth, sixteenth, or triplet rhythm.

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