search: pop songs with weird time signatures and metric shifts

Well

In any case I just recently a variant answer to "How many bass players does it take to change a lightbulb?"

"one, five, one, five"

The more common answer being: "None, the keyboard player can do it with his left hand."

Since there is no "natural" notation for a 5th note, 2/5 is pretty much impossible to notate.

True. You might as well call it 2/4 (or maybe 2/2) and spare yourself the agita.

Unless you are in the Cyclops's cave in the Aegean Sea and they only understand 5.

Damn, what a disappointment if that's just a plain ol' joke and not a true story...:(

xpost

I only notate music in binary.

You and everybody else

nice use of 9/8. (although it's more fun in bellydance and balkan brass stuff.)

And Wagner.

yeah, i like that 9/8 track.

yeah, who are those guys?

Nhhmbase? It's like a prog jam band?

japanese prog something something

I just noticed the post upthread but I had figured out that SDRE thing. Took me a little while though. It sounded not-too-uncommon but I was confused when I tried to actually count it! haha, moments in retardation.

anybody know steeleye span's version of "one misty moisty morning"? it does one of my favorite rhythm tricks. it has a melody line of plucked quarter-notes, nice and straightforward, but then on one of the verses they shift so the quarter-notes are played on the offbeat, while the vocal line continues as before. totally simple move, but it sounds great and weird. my dad asked me to figure out what was going on and when i told him they were just playing the offbeats he didn't believe me because it sounds like they're doing something much odder.

Beatles "It's Only Love" is in 4/4, but the guitar hook is syncopated and then the vocal comes in and takes over and is just straight quarter notes, having some similar effect to what you are describing, maybe in reverse.

Time Signature Cheat Sheet.

OK, I give up. This page lists some time signatures with really high numerators including some by Kyle Gann. If you go to http://www.kylegann.com/Gannscores.html you can actual see the score with the 29/4 time signature notated in black and white.

Maybe it's finally time to get the Moondog book.

The high numbers are just ways of saying it's a measure of 4/4 followed by a measure of 9/8 (ie 17/8) or whatever. It's speaking to form more than anything else, and I don't find it at all useful to think "oh, it's in 19/8, cool".

And to think I used to believe that Kyle Gann was a down-to-earth kind of guy.

If somebody is capable of accurately counting out to large prime numbers in their head, I say more power to 'em.

my favorite time signature joke goes something like, "yeah, I got this hot beat in 7, check it out -- [while playing normal rock beat] ONE, TWO, THREE , FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEV-, -VEN!"

I don't find it at all useful to think "oh, it's in 19/8, cool"

No one does except for tubbies filling out the Mars Volta entry on wikipedia.

i was gonna say rush fans, but i guess either/or.

This Rush fan couldn't care less about the goddamn time sig.

I just had a vision of Bela Fleck covering "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown" and changing the time signature.

Or Muddy Waters singing "She's Nineteen" in a slow 19/8.

Well...

I count one...

two...

three...

four...

five...

...

...nineteen!

Too bad Scorsese left it on The Last Waltz cutting room floor.

Or "Hey Nineteen," where they really can't dance together.

To say nothing of "19/99"

21/12

"In the time signature 25/25 ..."

31/21

25/41
Big beats so dancers have fun

Chronic 200/1

19/77
And we are going mad

18/7 on a motherfuckin' cop

Ram Jam's 'Black Betty' has got some weird timing/shifting going on. Or maybe the CD was skipping when I heard it last...

3/6 Mafia