One of my favorite tracks on Bonnie Rait’s Souls Alike album is her cover of Lee Clayton and Pat McLaughlin’s “Two Lights In The Night Time”.
I don’t have the cd jacket handy, so I don’t know who is playing drums, but I have always been captivated and awstruck at his/her talent and ability to provide such intruiging and asynchronous beats/percussion to the song.
Though I am very much not a drummer, I have always envied their skills. But this sort of stuff takes it to another level. I simply cannot comprehend how anyone can deliver enough synchronicity to support the song yet still come across as so random and unpredictable.
Does anyone know if this particular style or technique has a name? Does anyone know of any other songs off-hand that also showcase it?
Without having heard the song, I would guess that’s the drummer is working in a different time signature that occasionally synchs up with the rest of the musicians. If they’re all playing in 4 and the drummer is in 5, they’ll meet up every 20th beat.
I think one of the classic examples of this is Black Dog by Led Zeppelin. The drums and everything else don’t match. I remember reading that they had a hard time counting it out, but eventually John Bonham just said, count it like it’s 4/4.
I’ll have to count it out a few times on my morning train commute and see if that’s what they’re doing. There are an area or two of the song when I can catch 4 consecutive snare drum beats that seem to be in sync with everyone else, and a few other times when the cymbols are predictable, but every time I try and pin anything down it is only for a moment or two.
That’s a great example, and of course I’ve heard it many times, but without keying in on or appreciating that particular aspect.
You’re talking about syncopation here, and what you’re interested in is the lack of it. Talking Heads were noted for using non-syncopated beats, but I can’t point to any specific examples.
Well, I hate to rain on your parade, here, but I’m not hearing anything unusual in that clip.
I’ve certainly heard music that sounds like what you describe, but your clip doesn’t sound like what you describe (to me, at least).
When I think of “asynchronous beats/percussion,” the first thing that comes to mind is gamelan music from Bali, and various other Indonesian places. It’s not so much asynchronous rhythms as multiple rhythms all going at once in multiple time signatures.
One of my favorite musical duos uses this technique to astounding effect: Steve Tibbetts and Marc Anderson. Not only are there multiple simultaneous time-signatures going on, but they change and ebb and flow constantly. I can’t even begin to comprehend how they manage to perform this stuff, but they do. It’s astonishing. Do an Amazon search on “Steve Tibbetts.” There are lots of sound clips to listen to.
Yeah, that’s a pretty standard (if engaging) 4/4 rhythm played in a Dixieland/New Orleans style. Check out the Dirty Dozen Brass Band sometime. It’s not asynchronous.