I’ve been trying to figure this one out for a while: is the Mission: Impossible theme’s time signature in 5/4 or 5/8? I’m not exactly sure how to count this… can any musically-inclined Dopers help me out?
Also, as a bonus question… what’s the deal with 12/8? I can seem to count it in a 6/8 feel or a 4/4 feel… I’m so confused!
Personally, I’d guess 10/8 time, rather than 5/8, because the whole thing works as a single bar for me, rather than two smaller pieces.
As to 12/8, I can’t help you. I spent several years as a percussionist and can read music and identify rythms, but never have problems with time.
Good point with the M:I signature…
About 12/8… I mean to say, I can count the triplets in between, which could be counted as 3 or 6, or I can kind of ignore the triplet feel and count a straight 1-2-3-4. And yet, it’s neither 6/8 or 4/4. Someone told me to count the taps as 1-4-8-12, but you could do that with any 4/4 rhythm as well.
You cannot really have a “correct” time signature without checking the way the original piece was written. Even then, the time signature was chosen so as to be easily recognized by musicians to aid in their playing. Time signatures and measure lengths are purely for aesthetics; the real point is how fast you play the notes.
M:I theme is written as 5/4. (So is Mission: Accomplished by Oliver Nelson, the same composer.) You could certainly chart it as 5/8 if you wanted to at half the tempo, but that would give you 5 eighth notes to a bar, which isn’t illegal but is much weirder than 5 quarter notes.
12/8 is interestingly ambiguous, and most blues songs have this feel. An excellent example of this is the Allman Brothers’ performance of Stormy Monday on Live at the Fillmore. Most of the tune sounds like a lazy 4 with an undercurrent of triplets. Then when they hit the organ solo, it sounds like 6/8. Many people get the feeling that the time doubles or something during the organ solo, but it is still the same time sig & tempo, they just play every beat of the 12.
Big whoops. Lalo Schifrin wrote the M:I theme, not sure why I thought it was Nelson, who indeed wrote M.A. and recorded it on the Stolen Moments album.
No that’s not right, there is a correct time signature for a piece partcularly to do with the length of each phrase. Also your meant to put a slight accent on the first beat of each bar.
And let’s not even mention hemiola…
Can you explain this? How could you tell the difference between 5/4 and 5/8 without looking at the sheet music?
On the latest CD I bought, there’s a song in eight and a half beat time. I have no idea if those are marked as eighth-note or quarter-note beats.
Oh No!! not the hemiola!:eek:
Actually, when I think of how a song is played, I usually just think of whether it’s in 3, 4, 5, 7, etc.
I agree with Dread Pirate Jimbo about the feel. If I had to transcribe the M:I theme and didn’t know any better I’d probably do it in 10/8. To me the groove breaks down into a group of 6 and a group of 4 but I’d keep it all in one bar.
||:1-2-3-4-5-6**-7**-8**-9**-10 :||
I agree with cooking with gas about 12/8. It’s basically 4 with a triplet feel, and you don’t have have write all that triplet-y stuff when you transcribe it.
Also, some composers use time signatures that are more complex than they have to be to deliberately stress out the players so tension is added to the music.
Some Preparation-H should reduce the swelling.
As I said before there should be a slight accent on the first note of the bar and I was always taught to give an even slighter accent for each note that fell on a beat. Obviously 5/4 and 5/8 time is very simlair and I personally would not be able to tell the differnce between the two, but I’m sure my music teacher who had a very, very godd ear would.
well, I guess it’s moot now with all the responses but here’s the response I made last night at about 4am which the hampsters had their go at:
You sorta answered your own question. If you can count the triplet subdivisions, the bottom number is 8.
12/8 is really 4/4 but with triplet subdivisions. (4 beats, each divided into 3).
Likewise 6/8 is 2/4.
If the subdivisions are duple then the bottom number is 4.
Of course, Phage makes a good point. There are conventions that have evolved over many years, but there really is no absolute rule. Time signatures, and notation in general, are merely ways for composers and musicians to communicate, and composers simply choose the way that they feel would make the most sense for someone to read.
IOW, any 12/8 can certainly be written in 4/4, but who wants to deal with the mess of all those triplets? It just reads easier in 12/8.
Moe, I still disagree you couldn’t write a 4/4 piece in 12/8 time and have it sound excatly the same, because the slight accent for the first beat of the bar would of changed postion.
From my wife, who is a music professor at UCLA:
The TV series had a time signature of 5/4 (that is, five beats to the measure and the quarter note gets the beat), which is very very very unusual and distinctive. The “normal” meters are all either duple (2 or 4 beats to the measure) or triple (3 beats to the measure), with the funkiest variant being compound duple (6 beats to the measure, organized as two groups of three). These are all known from the fourteenth century, btw.
In the 1960s, several “avant garde” composers began playing with atypical meters, including having 5 beats to the measure. The most famous example in popular music is Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” (1959), which became the first million-seller jazz hit in history. Brubeck (born 1920) is a west-coast jazz pianist and composer, who studied composition with (among others) European modernist composer Darius Milhaud, then teaching in California.
The TV theme was written by Lalo Schifrin, one of the most important TV composer from the 60s (active for several decades afterwards too – check IMDB for more details).
The MOVIE theme was massaged to fit in a standard 4/4 which is, of course, an abomination. But it’s much easier to dance to (which I imagine was the point).
There was a recent thread in the Cafe about time signatures. There are some interesting discussions posted there as well.
The album that Brubeck’s Take Five appeared on is chock full of funky variations on timing. The album is named, appropriately, Time Out. The other hit off the album is Blue Rondo a la Turk, which is in 7/8 time. Other songs alternate two bars of 4/4 then two bars of 3/4, plus all kinds of variations. A favorite of mine is when Dave is playing piano over a 3/4 bass line, and the drums playing in what sounds like 2/2. I listen to this album very frequently, BTW.
MC, I still don’t understand how you can tell the difference between 5/4 and 5/8. Whether a beat is transcribed as an eighth note or a quarter note, the song would sound the same.
And what, no questions about the song in eight and a half beat time?
I don’t know about that. The best demonstration I can think of is on the first Beatles anthology. The song “I’ll Be Back” was originally written to be 3/4 time, but when you hear Lennon trying to sing it as a waltz, it just doesn’t fit right. In fact, he breaks down and says something like “it’s too hard to sing!” On the next track, it’s played and sung in 4/4 time, and sounds way better. The 4/4 version was what was recorded for the album A Hard Day’s Night.
CurtC if you transcribed a song 5/4 song into 5/8 you’d either lose a slight accent on the first beat of the bar or the beat would fall differently on the notes.
Curt, C also I don’t get what you mean by ‘eight and a half beat time’, you can only have a whole number of beats in a bar.