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Pop hits with weird time signatures...

Left Turn Clyde said:
I like Solsbury Hill, but I can't say I've noticed anything odd about it.
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In many respects that's a tribute to how well it's done.

The verse of All You Need is Love by The Beatles is two measures of 7/4, followed by one of 8/4 then back to one of 7/4: probably the biggest single hit with an unusual time signature.

Turn It On Again by Genesis is mostly in 13/4 and made Number 8 in the UK chart.
 
Pyramid Song by Radiohead is an interesting one.

It's 16/8 (or a complicated 4/4). But if you count carefully, you can hear 4 groups of 3 beats and 1 group of 4 beats (as a musical representation of a square-based pyramid: 4 faces with 3 sides, 1 face with 4 sides)

:cool:
 
Heart of Glass has a bridge in 7/8.

2+2=5 by Radiohead is in 7/4.

Hey Ya by Outkast has a weird bit of 11/4 that I don't really understand.
 
The main riff in Paranoid Android by Radiohead is in 7/8
The solo in Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden is in 9/8 (and loads of the superunknown album is in weird times too)
 
Crispy said:
A good challenge to set yourself is tapping 4/4 on one thigh while tapping 3/4 on the other :)
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I can't even play a 3/4 beat with someone else playing 4/4 :(

This is a shame, because if you get polyrhythms right it sounds awesome. We did it with eight drummers once, in a cave :cool:
 
skyscraper101 said:
Pyramid Song by Radiohead is an interesting one.

It's 16/8 (or a complicated 4/4). But if you count carefully, you can hear 4 groups of 3 beats and 1 group of 4 beats (as a musical representation of a square-based pyramid: 4 faces with 3 sides, 1 face with 4 sides)

:cool:
Click to expand...

That's fairly normal for weird time signatures. They're often referred to as "compound time". For instance 7/8 is normally played as
1 2, 1 2, 1 2 3, in folk music anyway. Actually with 16/8 it would have to be like that, otherwise it would fall into 4 groups of 4 beats and wouldn't sound any different from a kind of fast 4/4.

Compound time is common in East European/Balkan folk music, and is dance music. I guess if you grow up hearing it it comes instinctively and you don't fall over your feet. I can get the hang of most weird time signatures, but the Swedish polska is still a bit of a mystery to me.
 
Not exactly a hit, but the original theme tune for The Bill was in 5/4, and "Turn It On Again" by Genesis apparently has the verses and choruses in 13/8, with other parts in 8/8 and 5/8.
 
the main riff in Feed me with your Kiss by My Bloody Valentine is one bar of 5/4 and then one bar of 7/4. Then it has a brilliant climactic ending that increases the repeated thumping note at the end of the 7/4 bar by one each time. I'm a nerd, I'm a nerd, how much of a nerd am I?!!
 
Beat Surrender by the Jam is all odd, impossible to dance to. Or is it me? don't really understand the beat thing. Educate me
 
oneflewover said:
Beat Surrender by the Jam is all odd, impossible to dance to. Or is it me? don't really understand the beat thing. Educate me
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I count it as 4/4 and to be honest don't think the rythmn is that odd, but I struggle to dance to anything much (and also playing jazz = playing odd rythmns so my sense of these things is skewed). for much of the song the beat places some emphasis on the 3rd-4th beat, but there is a lack of hits between the 4th and 1st beat that mark bars (along with the bass line).. rythmn to me feels like 1,2,3and4 1,2,3and4 .. there's emphasis on the 1st beat, courtesy of the space beforehand, and the 3rd beat, courtesy of the extra drum hits during that beat. the lack of extra hits between the 1st and 2nd beat may be what makes it difficult to dance to.
I've struggled to teach people how to count music in the past, but with beat surrender you can hear the starts of bars with the bass note on the piano, and you can count the 1-2-3-4 easily in the sections where only the kick drum is being used to hit out the individual beats.. then keep counting through the next section, using the bass note.. for much of the song the bass on the piano only plays a single note at the start of each bar (although every fourth bar there are more).
 
Left Turn Clyde said:
Please explain what a weird time signature is.
I like Solsbury Hill, but I can't say I've noticed anything odd about it.
Click to expand...

Basically anything with two, four or eight beats to a bar ("simple time") or three, six or nine beats to a bar ("compound time") can be regarded as conventional and anything else (five, seven or any other number) would be regarded as "weird".

If you're a decent dancer (unlike me) try dancing to Solsbury Hill and you'll find that it's extremely difficult. :)
 
Weird little extra bar or something at the start of the chorus of X Ray Spex's "Art-I-Ficial". The part that goes "wooah, in a consumer society". I think it's just an extra 3-note bar that they insert, with the next bar starting on the "a" of "a consumer..." but the emphasis of the words makes it hard to tell. (You could equally call it an extra 2-note bar followed by a bar of 9 beats, starting on the "in" of "in a consumer...")

I'd appreciate a second opinion as I might be playing a folk cover of it on the accordion for a gig.

have a listen here:



Feels very "Rock School" to be talking so nerdily about X Ray Spex. Watch the video anyway, it's great...
 
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