i personally never been interested in mechanical plain odd time signatures for the sake of playing "odd" im more interested in the hidden subtle "blended" ones
this is why i love them within song context,because they still have to be appealing;-)
ok so lets name some of the most memorable tunes or hits that have odd time signatures!
(an odd time hit is a good sign because it means that the average western 4/4 listener probably isnt even aware of the time signature and still dances drunk to a normal 4/4:-)
ill start with one of my old time favorite:
"Solsbury Hill" - Peter Gabriel, The song uses a 7/4 time signature in most of the song but the last two measures of each chorus are in 4/4
"Black Dog" -Led Zeppelin- well this is a real mess;-) 3 bars of 4/4 and one of 5/4 ,then i think in the second part it goes into 10 ive never been completly sure what the hell is going on here (please refer to Rick for this one)
i still cant understand how this one even got any radio play (warning: dont try to dance this one with a girl)
"Thela Hun Ginjeet" - king crimson,i rember hearing this one often in the radio,most instruments on 4/4 but the riff is in 7/8
feel free to add!
cheers
LuisOn Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 1:37 PM, mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com> wrote:
On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 1:24 PM, andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
mark francombe wrote:
clever to me, and Im very impressed with the head patting tummy stroking IS 7 beats against 5 a pleasant "musical" sound, if you remove the er... 16ths.. well not 16ths... but you know what I mean?
The trouble with odd times is that people tend to think that getting the notes in right place is *success*,
and leave it at that.
My point entirely!
As a musician I canīt help but be a bit impressed by clever and physically ambidextrous guitarist doing impossible things on a guitar, hell I once looked up on YouTube how to do a shredders sweep... but musically, these performances do tend to make me be a little sick in my mouth.
I actually often LIKE the sound polyrhythms make, but the fact that a musician is doing it .. alone changes what I hear in it, suddenly Iīm hearing technique and "clever clogs-ness".
Are they playing an instrument, or are they doing 50 push-ups?
If only one could cheat and NOT really do it, but somehow use technology to achieve the same sound, so anyone could do it, if only there was a device that could , oh I dont know, record what you play and repeat it at odd timings, so you didn't have to... that would be wonderful!
--
mark francombe
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