search: pop songs with weird time signatures and metric shifts

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Ha, yeah, if you're going to count partial measures and such as part of the overall time signature (which you shouldn't), then "Walk the Line" would be in something like 42/4, and "Ring of Fire" would be the best-known song to be alternating between 11/4 and 6/4 and whatever else -- but they are not, they just have truncated measures and whatnot.

(I think "Walk the Line" just has a half-measure going into each verse section, to loop back to the vocal faster. If I'm remembering right, "Ring of Fire" has three-beat bars that could probably trip you up if you were asked to, like, play the bass part unrehearsed, and couldn't remember exactly how they worked -- but still a conventional signature.)

Ha, wait -- just call those cut time 2/2 and you're good (except "Ring" would have a few 3/2 bars when the horns are involved)

Yup. This happened to me on a gig with "All You Need Is Love", because I am the only person on earth who doesn't really listen to the Beatles and I didn't know where the dropped beats were on that tune.

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tipsy mothra, if you ever do one of those "Music Together" classes with your kid, watch out for this tricky clapping exercise they throw at you near the end which is a couple bars of kind of syncopated 9/8 followed by a turnaround bar of 4/8.

What about Battles? Aren't "weird time signatures" and abrupt shift changes what they're known for?

God that 29/8 thing still makes me angry. WHY DON'T YOU JUST ADD UP ALL THE BEATS IN THE SONG AND MAKE THE WHOLE SONG ONE MEASURE OF 1568/8

re: Beatles. Yes, there's a link upthread to another thread called John Lennon and his penchant for silly half-time changes in almost every song.

And, of course, nabisco otm.

xpost re: all you need is love

Aww! It's the last beat that drops, which is presumably why someone on Wikipedia is saying it'd be 7/4 (ha, and 4/4 + 3/4 would look like something else entirely) -- but I think it's actually in 3s (like a 6/8), and not just shuffled, which would make it ... slightly out of my depth. How would you denote that? Consulting the song via YouTube has not helped, but I like how Lennon was apparently chewing gum while singing this on their global broadcast.

4/4 : 6/8 :: 7/4 : ?/?

(Middle-school math suggests "10/8," but that doesn't help at all.)

I mean 9/8, actually

Isn't there some theory that Lennon chewed gum before, and apparently during, singing to mucify his vocal chords to rectify the damage that started with "Twist and Shout"?

I'd check Allan Pollack for the "All You Need Is Love" time signature.

nabisco: 6/8 + 6/8 + 9/8

OR LIKE 21/8 GOD THE BEATLES ARE PROG LOL, I'M GONNA GO PLAY HOT BASSLICKS TO MY TOOL ALBUMS GUYS

xpost - yes, W, I was just coming around

(I just wound up doing exactly what I was bitching about upthread -- like "would that be 21/8, then?" when putting it in 6/8 makes the half-measure not weird anymore)

double x-post haha!

I just listened to All You Need Is Love on youtube, it's pretty simple...7/4 bars for most of the verses (OR 4/4 + 3/4 IF YOU PREFER), and a 3/4 bar at the turnaround coming out of the chorus. Where are you getting 6/8 from, nabs?

Because it's in 3s:

LOVE-2-3 2-2-3
LOVE-2-3 4-2-3

You could consider that an extreme shuffle, but if not for the dropped beat I'd call that 6/8 easy.

(Or rather in 6s, if that's easier -- LOVE-2-3 / 4-5-6, etc.)

But the backbeats are on "one TWO three FOUR five SIX sev". If it was what I think you're describing, I'd only expect a backbeat on four.

Each of the spaces between your "one TWO three FOUR" etc. is subdivided into three beats, not four.

Hopefully this will line up proportionally -- O is kick and X is snare:

1 2 3 / 1 2 3  / 1 2 3  / 1 2 3  / 1 2 3  / 1 2 3  / 1 2 3

O       X        O        X        O        X        O

LOVE             LOVE              LOVE              dump-da

I was gonna go count this out for myself, but I just started watching Leonard Cohen doc on Sundance. Maybe he'll provide some time sig food for thought,

There are two reasons to break 21/8 into 6/8 + 6/8 + 9/8 (or 3/8 + 9/8 + 9/8 or whatever): 1. Since certain time signatures are often, but not necessarily, associated with emphasis on certain notes, it gives the musician some idea of how to interpret the score, and 2. It's a lot easier to read 21/8 broken into 3 bars than as a unit. In some cases, however, it's better to keep the time signature more odd-looking. I've seen scores in 17/16, and while this is difficult to play, it made more sense than shoveling it into 4/4 + 4/4 + 4/4 + 5/4.

speaking of the beatles, i've always been fascinated/confused by the intro to "got to get you into my life." the hi-hat, which counts out 16 beats, and tambourine, which joins for last eight, seem to be playing a simple 4/4, while the horns are playing a 4/4 of their own with the 1 in a different place.

That one actually sounds kind of like a recording issue -- like maybe everything originally came in on the same rhythm as the horns, but they wound up re-tracking bits and had to fudge the first few notes.

So far this song Antony is singing seems to be in 3/4, but maybe there will be some metrical fireworks at the end to go with the vocal ones.

Beth Orton number in 3/4 too! Man, this is boring!

Rufus Wainwright too. I give up.

OK, I count "All You Need As Love" same as Jordan, I think: "one TWO three FOUR one TWO three-and"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/DavidBowieHeroesCover.jpg
Beware the savage roar
Of 19/84

Bowie himself found the tempo to be a real headscratcher.

Ha, you guys are either tripping or reading that as a REALLY hard shuffle! Obviously it goes "one TWO three FOUR" -- the point's that the spaces between those counts are divided into threes: One-and-a TWO-and-a three-and-a FOUR-and-a

Umm if you're not hearing it, listen to the word "easy" at the end of the verse -- the E is split into exactly the three beats I'm talking about. "It's e-e-e sy."

Bowie himself found the tempometer to be a real headscratcher. He finally figured it out years later during the Heroes cover photo shoot.

We're jazz guys, nabisco. We're hearing those as swing eighths.

I know, that's what's weirding me out -- reading it as a swing/shuffle on lumpy classicist song (which presumably has you putting the Marseillaise at the beginning in swung eighths too)

(xpost)
OK, I heard what you are saying. I guess you could call that 12/8 -"the doo-wop meter" - for the measure with 4 beats, and then you'd have to call the other measure 9/8, like you guys did. It just seems to be easier to say 4/4+3/4 with 8th-note triplets.

xpost - yes, W, I was just coming around
W? As in Alan W. Pollack?

Isn't that kind of another of the Beatles specialty, putting in a few metrical oddities and then smoothing them over so you might not notice them the first few hundred listens until you actually had to play the damned thing? Whereas if some other band had a weird meter song they would be sure to highlight it with a "Look Ma, I Just Changed My Strings And Am Playing In 7/8!" bass solo.

Actually I was joking a little bit: I think those 8th-note triplets are probably too even to be considered swung.

All You Need is Love is in duple meter. The drums aren't playing anything that implies triple meter. And listen to the strings at 1:33 - "one ee and a two ee and a three ee and a four ee and a, one a two, three a four"

I think what you're hearing is a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth, which is close to shuffled eighth notes but not quite the same.

no i just hear swung 8ths, ken was right the first time. that song swings pretty well, for being such an overladen elephant. but yeah the count on that part i think is like seven and a half over 8.

Captain & Tennille - "Broddy Bounce" !!

tipsy mothra, are you talking about AYNIL? I promise it's in 4 and not swung.

National anthem as pop song: Flower of Scotland. It has something odd between the 'when will we see' and 'your likes again' lines. Not sure if it's a bar of 2/4 in a 3/4 song, or just the second vocal line jumping in early. In any case, it's another reason why this is a dreadful choice as a sporting anthem, because crowds can't sing it and immediately go out of time with the band.

Plus there's one bit in the song that the crowd always sing as major when it's actually minor

Okay you guys, there are sections in AYNIL that are definitely swung (like the verses...it's hard to pick out the cymbals, but just listen to the bass/guitar on the turnaround, of course it's swung), and there are sections that are straight (like the intro, and then they switch to straight 8ths at the outro).

And while I guess you could notate jazz that's in 4/4 in 12/8, for me that just falls into the category of feel, not meter. But there's multiple ways to correctly notate something, it's all a way of describing how it sounds to you, blah blah blah.

I still think those are dotted eighth plus sixteenth, not swung eighths. But the distinction is pretty small. The straight sixteenth parts definitely put it in duple meter and not triple, though.

It can be both.