search: pop songs with weird time signatures and metric shifts

Yeah, I could hear it as triplets. I'm going to blame my laptop speakers again, and the previous comments about the song's corniness could've affected how I was hearing it.

Ha, corny Music Hall swing is Example Three of the link gypsy mothra put on the other page.

I'm interested in this conversation but not enough to download a fucking Beatles song.

haha. i've just been youtubing it.

I finally ripped my copy of The Yellow Submarine Songtrack and sent it out through the WiFi to the Internet Radio to avoid the cheapo laptop speakers problem that tripped up Steve.

I feel like I'm turning into that Mike Meyers character Middle-Aged Man.

I would like to note that I did NOT call it a "really hard swing" and considered others to be tripping for doing so. This the kind of thing I can't help hearing in 6/8, essentially because that's how it'd be cleanest and easiest to program it on a machine, where you don't have recourse to dots or ties or "oh, but it's all in triplets."

(I do find it weird, though, that people keep saying "well the drums never XYZ," as if drums are the only instrument with meter! Ringo's mostly just playing kick-snare-kick-snare, but the harpsichord-type sound is doing something every single bar that requires notating with dot/tie, with triplets, or just calling it 6/8.)

Just don't show up at the jazz club, nabisco, and try to swing like that, or the ghost of Dizzy Gillespie might come and say you "have a beat like a cop."

I tell the drum machine that every weekend, it's still just got the one shuffle knob. One day I will show you all up with a sweet schaffel cover of this song.

Schaffel?

Oh, I get it.

(I do find it weird, though, that people keep saying "well the drums never XYZ," as if drums are the only instrument with meter! Ringo's mostly just playing kick-snare-kick-snare, but the harpsichord-type sound is doing something every single bar that requires notating with dot/tie, with triplets, or just calling it 6/8.)

agreed, this was my point too.

programming shit to swing with a good feel (ie between triplets and straight) is time consuming at best.

I do find it weird, though, that people keep saying "well the drums never XYZ," as if drums are the only instrument with meter!

It's not that, it's just that if the song were meant to have a triple meter feel the drums would probably be doing something different. All the instruments play within the meter, but the drums still tend to carry the most responsibility in establishing the metrical feel.

I think you should stick to the cheap laptop speakers argument.

I think that since the arrangement is pretty thick and there are some phrases that cut across the feel (ie the occasional straight 8ths/16ths by the string and horn sections), Ringo is probably playing it smart by staying simple and letting the other instruments state the 8th note feel. Kind of like the example above example of a jazz bass player holding it down on quarter notes, partly because the drums etc. are already playing so many eighth notes.

Well, like you said, you could notate it any number of ways. I wouldn't be very surprised if the parts for the different players (strings vs. brass vs. guitar or bass or drums if you bothered to write those down) were notated in different ways, which makes the argument about how "the song" would be written somewhat moot. Overall though I still feel it as duple time.

http://www.9thx.com/content-thumbs/d1f95e1dd0402783153936798e06e4512
Three is a magic number.

Ringo is probably playing it smart by staying simple and letting the other instruments state the 8th note feel.
Which was an especially smooth move given that if he screwed up, hundreds of millions of people would see him do so on live television.

Actually, I'm pretty sure you can see him fudge what he's doing on that 7th beat at least once, in terms of kick-or-snare. It just doesn't really matter enough to call it a "mistake." (Put a percussionist's arm right next to him would seem to be doing ... not what he's doing.)

Put = But

http://www.delafont.com/music_acts/Music_Images/delasoul-album-three.jpg
How high is the water, Mama?

http://www.retrojunk.com/img/art-images/nick_lowe_coolf.jpg
I remember the night they put a percussionist's right arm

a percussionist's arm right next to him would seem to be doing ... not what he's doing.

yeah there are a couple different percussion parts going on. i haven't tried to work out the different bits but ringo's just doing one of them.

as for who's doing the swinging, everybody is. the drums are mostly holding down the quarter-notes (although of course you can swing even on just quarters), with most of the swing coming from elsewhere.

http://www.vaporrecords.com/img/jonrichman/jr_be_promo_250.jpg
You know about history and geometry
But you don't know enough to just let the baby be
And you think I should be tired now
That's because I'm not yet three

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000046XT.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

(But a percussionist's arm right next to him would seem to be doing ... not what he's doing.)

That percussionist is Keith Moon (you can briefly glimpse his face early in the clip). And yeah, he pretty much never did what anyone else was doing.

Haha, Moon would explain it. Although there IS something about Ringo's face that looks like he was all kick, snare, kick, snare, kick, snare, kick, s- oh wait that was the half measure KICK, snare

Yeah, Ringo might've been high. He usually handled the tricky time signatures with ease and swing ("Here Comes The Sun," especially...I mean, he does fills during the trickiest parts of that song).

And he was no doubt distracted by Moon's brush-twirling antics.

If it had been done a few years later, he would have had Jim Keltner to help him.

http://www.rutles.org/rpix/leggy.jpg

Right. Now that that's been sorted out, lets figure out the weird bumps in "She Said, She Said."

I just listened to that song for the first time, sounds like it just goes to 3/4 at the bridge that starts on (when I was a) "boy", then back to 4/4 on the 8th bar.

AWP has that one pretty well covered:

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/ssss.shtml

I love that song though.

Ha, that entry has more or less his trademark statement about this stuff
Our great illustration of the principle of keeping some musical parameters steady when maxing out on others is two-fold: rather than "fight" the changing meter (at risk of obscuring it), both the harmonic rhythm and the drumming are slavishly at the meter's service. The chords change on every measure boundary, and the drumming (and the bass as well) forgo fancy syncopation for strictly even eighth-note marking of the beat.

^^ that's what I be saying about programming drums in threes, people

apart from the bridge section though the drumming on that song is really inventive. one of my favorite beatles drum tracks.

(i'm just guessing, but it sounds like some keith moon influence)

The drumming sort of does obscure it/smooth it out. If you're playing the snare on every single beat then there's no real indication of where the downbeat is.

xpost

Yeah, marking the beats is not necessarily the same as serving the meter.

^^ that's what I be saying about programming drums in threes, people
say what?

I mean, I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to say.

Do typical Syd Barrett songs count as pop songs?

I guess everybody is over on the Heath Ledger OD/RIP thread.

time of the season

Just syncopated 4/4 no?

I count it
four-and-One-(two)-AND-(three)

Repeat.

Unless I got up on my bad foot and started on the wrong beat...

yeah, nothing odd in that song.

OK, I read the AWP thing and listened to S^4 last night and started to understand the bridge. Once it really settles down into 3/4 it feels pretty natural, it's just the very beginning that is disorienting, where it's technically in 4/4 for two bars and then 3/4 for two bars, but there's no real backbeat as Jordan pointed out and no other hook, bass or otherwise, to hang your hat on.