search: pop songs with weird time signatures and metric shifts

i like that you can hear some stick clicks during "black dog," it's nice to know even bonham couldn't count that in his head.

oh shit, i think youtube took down the SNL clip of P Diddy & Jimmy Page, which had the sickest drumming ever!

"Kashmir" = drums in 4, everyone else in 3, right?

I mean, for the main riff.

Stevie Wonder: Livin' For The City

This isn't all that strange: the verses are 4/4 the chorus is 3/4.

xpost Sundar OTM re "Kashmir"

yeah. i think of it as a hemiola over a six-bar phrase, but it comes out to the same thing.

same with livin' for the city, actually...it feels like 3/4 of course, but the number of bars are such that you can play in 4/4 through it and comes out correctly. this is drummerthink, i guess!

i think of it as a hemiola over a six-bar phrase, but it comes out to the same thing.

otm. it's 6/8 but bonham plays it like it's 4/4, so his beat works in a sort of ellipse with the time signature, meeting back up every two measures.

Actually, there are two bars of 4/4 at the end of the chorus for Livin' for the City. So either the chorus is in 3/4 until those bars (which is probably most accurate), or the whole thing is seven bars of 4/4.

Well, "Livin'..." mostly sounds weird because that "head" or whatever has some elongated notes that can't be subdivided easily into 4s or 3s, seems to me. And does the drum track continue at the same tempo throughout that little playlet, or does it fade entirely and then return? I'll have to give that a listen when I get home...

the drums hit quarter notes, so they're not really defining any meter during the chorus (a la that beatles tune)

All right, I had one more thing to say about S4 but I'll save it for later. In the meantime I ripped How The West Was Won. I'll see you blecches tomorrow!

OK, the dropped eight note in "The Ocean" is pretty easy to deal with, "Black Dog" is kind of hard to figure out, can't find Physical Graffiti to work on "Kashmir." Without AWP I am lost.

OK, Sorry for the geocities, but John Paul Jones explains Black Dog to you

neat

Speaking of Zep and weird time changes, I love what they always did with "Heartbreaker" in concert, changing the verses from 5 measures to 4 by playing that little tricky bit when Plant's only halfway through singing the final line in each verse. Dunno exactly when they began to perform it that way, or whether the change made it easier or more difficult to play, or neither. But it definitely makes the track swing and groove a bit more.

oh yeah, i see what you mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVM9Q6pBBWo

I think what you're hearing is a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth
You probably were thinking of the samba version, that was only broadcast in Latin America, and had Ringo manhandling a pandeiro.

"Fire"? Is that all there is to "Fire"?

Dionne Warwick's "Anyone Who Had a Heart": It goes from 3/8 to 2/4 to 4/4....in the first line.
Hm. Lots of people on the web have quoted some source (AMG?) saying it goes from 5/4 to 4/4 and back. I'd say it's in 3/4 with bars of 5/4, which sound like two bars of 3/4 with the last beat cut out. (I guess you could also say 3/4 with an extra 2/4 now and then if you wanted to)

"Promises, Promises" also has a weird time signature, but we don't have to argue about it since, according to the myspace page of Bacharach & David
In this song, he incorporates a very complex time signature sequence of |3/8|÷|4/8|3/8|÷|4/8|.

OK, extra level of confusion over "Anyone Who Had A Heart" is the way the bars are grouped, there are five bar phrases alternating with four bar phrases.

Hm, maybe there's no chopped off bar, just a little hiccup of syncopation. I guess people mean 5/4 and 4/4 with triplets, so what I was calling 5 bars is considered one bar.

Anyone who killed a thread...

The Fiery Furnaces - Straight Street

I would call this a pop song.

The Go-Betweens had their fair share: "Cattle and Cane," "Two Steps, Step Out," "The Ghost and the Black Hat."

What's going on in 'Fake Empire' by The National? Some bits are 4/4, others 3/4 - or maybe it's 4/4 throughout but the drums are 3/4 - or maybe the drummer just uses triplets a lot, I don't know. This is why I'm not a musician.

The song is in 3/4, but the piano is playing that dotted 8th note pattern that creates a 4/4 feel over the top.

The Elvin Jones/Greek bandleader joke is in the "Jokes" section of Jazz Anecdotes.

"Welcome To The Cheap Seats" by The Wonderstuff is in 5/4 plus it has some triplets in the chorus which adds to the rhythmic complexity.

I was listening to a tune of the newest Low album last night that's in 9. Can't remember which one offhand but I'll check later.

Oingo Boingo were big on playing half- or third-measures all the time

Surprised no one's mentioned:

Sugababes - Round Round

"Hey Ya" is definitely crowded with weird time signature, and that is very much a major reason for its appeal and impact. Not at least because it is from a genre where this kind of thing (apart from polyrhythmics and other microrhythmic tendencies, it must be added) is so unusual.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, September 22, 2006 8:00 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

that TOTALLY PROG bar of 2/4

The verses of Arcade Fire's "Modern Man" have a very weird structure.

This is as best as I can figure out the first verse, from when the guitar comes in:

one measure of 8
four measures of 9 (Win's vocal comes in on the second)
two measures of 8
two measures of 9
two measures of 8
four measures of 9
one measure of 8

"i love rock and roll"

(some accelerated turnaround bars of 7 in there)

okay i generally don't listen to the arcade fire but i am on the case

jaymc, are you counting 8th notes? here's why i think it comes off as tricky: there are bars of 5/4, but they always accent the "&" of 5 before the one, and don't really mark the one (at least in the drums). usually when people play odd times they hit the one pretty clearly, and you only hear that kind of anticipation in 4/4.

so, i hear the verse as alternating measures of 4/4 and 5/4, but downbeat of the 4/4 bars is anticipated by an 8th note. does that make sense?

I believe Juliana Hatfield's 'Spin the bottle' is in 5/4.

xp I guess that makes sense; I've always been lousy at counting off-beats.

It's been mentione upthread but just a moment ago I was listening to 'hey ya' and noticed for the first time it doesn't have a straight 4/4 time signature.

9/8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-YrTtYaCD0&feature=player_embedded

I think we discussed this in another thread but there's a single bar of 3/4 at the end of the bridge in Beyonce's "Single Ladies".

There was a really good article in an old issue of the English musicology journal Popular Music on the really free meter in some early Incredible String Band songs. "October Song" from the first album is a good example.

And, interestingly, both of those guys did it. Try counting the meter in "Gently Tender."

Pink Floyd - "Bike"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIkOVe0MF1k

lots of early Pretenders songs boast unexpected time signatures ("Tattooed Love Boys") and chord changes ("The Phone Call").