Good examples of songs with odd time signatures

[slask]

[Li Shenron]

 

The truth is, there are SO MANY odd time tunes or sections, it's sort of weird trying to think off the top of your head... I thin kthat the most important thing is to be aware of them when you hear them... Once you practice an odd time for long enough, it becomes internalized and you can FELL the pulse of it pretty naturally... Same for every other time signature... It's just a matter of paying attention and when something seems like it's not in a duple or triple meter, counting it out and seeing what it is exactly... I find the most challanging ones to be the 16th note subdivision ones, as, especially at fast tempos, they are hard to nail down with rhythmic authority....

 

 

Yes, they are countless, but I particularly want to mention here songs which (in my humble opinion) are "exemplar", in the sense that the musicians manage to make the odd time signature shine.

 

For example in the Wikipedia list there are many Stockhausen compositions mentioned because ONE bar uses a truly incredible time signature. Fancy, but also truly useless if nobody can "feel" what 142/8 really means. Very long time signatures pretty much end up either feel like "free time" or call for intermediate accents that make them almost equivalent to a set of alternate time signatures (it already happens for example with times of 11 and 13, so I am not even sure if I should have included these!). Also if a time signature lasts less than 4 measures (and this is still pretty generous...) then it's not easy to expect that the listener can "hook up" with it.

[GreenAsJade]

Yeah, I reckon you could almost restart the thread asking for "definitive examples" of interesting timesignatures.

 

For me, "Take Five" would be a definitive example of 5/4. If you don't know what 5/4 is after listening to that ... well....

 

Similarly, Money is pretty definitive for 7/4.

 

GaJ

[gennation]

This is a great site: http://www.italway.it/morrone/WBTG-scores.htm

 

Live there for a while and you'll get familiar with just about every odd time signature you'll ever find.

 

It's also interesting to note that you find time signatures v/s phrase signatures. A common thing found in sheet music is things wrapped up into longer time signatures as opposed to each measure having it's own time signature. So, even though something is written in 15/8, it's played as a bar of seven and a bar of eight. Or something written in 10/8 is played as three measures of 3/8 and one measure of 1/8. Or in the case of Dance of the Maya from that site 10/8 is felt as 3/8, 3/8, 1/8, 3/8

 

So, while you learn to play over odd, or lengthy, time signatures the feel you might need to use is smaller time signatures.

 

Just be aware of it. And some time spent at that site will show how to recognize these things.

[jonfinn]

I thought this video might be useful for this discussion:

 

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

 

enjoy!

[jeremy_green]

I was hoping someone would post that video!!! Ha!!!! That is too funny.

[3shiftgtr]

 

Some of the opening section is in 7, but most of the melody section and all of the solo sections are just in 4/4. It might actually be just easier to think of the melody section as occasionally having measures of 3/4 in it amongst a majority of 4/4 measures.

 

 

Thanks for the swat! U sir are correct as usual. I was thinking of the beginning of the head...