I think that the “I, I get so lonely” part is in “13” as well, but with different emphases (3+3+4+3?).
It’s sure not in 4.
ISTR seeing an interview with Mike Rutherford in which he said that it was Phil Collins (who ought to know, being the drummer and all) who pointed out the unusual time signature (I suppose they didn’t write their music out when they were composing it). I certainly seem to hear an extra 13th beat in the initial guitar figure.
I’m not sure which book you have, but I have the big phonebook-looking thing, that has the full score to every Beatles’ song written, and sure enough they notate no time change at all, just triplets. I’m willing to concede that you could write it the way you mentioned, but I just don’t see the need. Playing 12 triplets in a row is a hell of a lot easier than changing meters and trying to keep the same tempo.
I guess I’ll try again before I break down and start another thread. While we’re all here, what is the time signature to “Hashpipe”? It sounds like it’s 4/4 but the hook would sound more natural in 4 + 4 + 4 + 3 /4.
Sorry, I neglected to mention that the book I looked at was The Compleat Beatles. I agree with you, and I would have notated the part in straight 4/4 with triplets myself, but the Compleat notation does make sense in a way, reflecting how the whole band shifts to a 3/4 feel (as opposed to a three-against-two triplet feel). I mean, listen to Ringo–the dude’s sitting in the Biergarten playing an oom-pah-pah Walz for four bars. And the “half = dotted half” notation is really just another way of writing “everything after this point is triplets” without sticking brackets all over everything.
I’ve seen an arrangement that varies between 5/4 and 4/4.
The Chipmunk Song (“Christmas Don’t Be Late”) is a waltz. Very unusual for a #1 hit in 1958.
There are a bunch more Beatles songs with changing time signatures: “Good Morning, Good Morning,” “She Said She Said” “Within You Without You” (instrumental section is in 5/4), “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Happiness is a Warm Gun” (nice bit in the middle where the band goes into 3/4 but the drums stay in 4), “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” “You Never Give Me Your Money”, etc. I can’t think of one that stays in an odd time throughout, though. Alan W. Pollock explains a lot of it on this website, and more than you want to know besides.
There are a ton of Burt Bacharach tunes with odd time signatures. No one’s mentioned Yes, either.
I found an interesting Wikipedia page on iregular time signatures, but can’t vouch for it’s accuracy (especially where it gets up into the 27/11s and the like).
When I learned the opening melody to Tubular Bells (the full song is about 30-minutes long) I imagined it alternating between measures of 7/8 and 8/8 - with two notes per beat. Not that it matters much, just sayin’.
I’ve been playing this on piano for 32 years and I’m convinced that Biffy has this right.
Yeah, I can totally see where you’re coming from. Just further proof, I guess, that music isn’t an exact science! I can see it working both ways. For clarity purposes, though, I still prefer the triplet method.
“Cattle & Cane” by the Go-Betweens is in 5/4 time. I’d hate to even hazard a guess at the time signature(s) involved in some Burt Bacharach songs like “Promises, Promises” and the little coda at the end of “Raindrops keep falling on my Head”
“Getting Better” by the Beatles has oddly timed bars thrown in everywhere, as does “Happiness is A Warm Gun”.
There’s a few mid 60’s Miles Davis tunes - “Black Comedy” for Miles In The Sky, “Masquelero” et al, where Tony Williams was really wailing, where the time signature shifts and blurs to almost incomprehensibility.
Oh, and Bob Dylan originally wrote “Like A Rolling Stone” in 3/4 time. Imagine that!
I’m not saying Oldfield didn’t compose it that way, just that I’ve seen sheet music with a 5/4 - 4/4 arrangement.
Understood. Perhaps likewise, I’ve seen sheet music for Steely Dan’s Aja written in C, when (I think) it’s in B. For pianists, of course, C is a much easier key to play in. I wonder if that explains the 5/4-4/4 thing as well?
I don’t have my original sheet music of that song in front of me, but I seem to recall it was the same time sig throughout.
Just because the accents shift doesn’t mean the time sig must change, and it usually doesn’t for this kind of rhythm. 6/8 can be subdivided as 3+3 or 2+2+2 without any special notation, although some composers will helpfully indicate (3+3)(2+2+2) as a sub-sig at the start of the piece if every 2 bars will repeat the rhythm every time.
How the composer notates such rhythmic complexities is often a personal choice. If the sig changes from x/4 to x/8, he will have to tell the performer what is constant, that is, does a quarter note retain the same time value in each sig, or does an 8th note take on the previous value of the quarter?
Sometimes there is a change in feel to 3 notes in place of 2 (a triplet). While a time sig could be used for this, it is a lot easier to use a 3:2 notation over the 3 notes (a bracket or slur with “3” in the middle, the “2” is assumed). This makes more sense if the change is infrequent in the tune. However, I have seen the 3:2 notation used for every single measure in a song, either out of ignorance or misplaced notational exuberance.
I once had someone tell me to use that clumsy notation for a song when 6/8 would have been the “right” way to most musicians. The reason given (it was the person who hired me, so he got to decide) was that no amateur musician could read 6/8, and would reject the sheet music the minute he saw the unfamiliar sig, but they could read 4/4 with a forest of triplets and would buy it.
And if the “composer” was the kind who doesn’t write (on paper) music, the person who wrote down what you buy for sheet music may have been a scribe who was given the recorded music and told to write it out. In this case, what you see on paper may not be what a more classically-trained musician would write. However, in the case of any Sondheim/Bernstein work, I strongly suspect it was written down exactly.
If anyone recalls Henry Mancini’s big band version of “Green Onions,” that is an interesting example of the triplet feel. The entire song is in a swing 4/4, but the last 16 bars suddenly switches to a strong triplet feel and never switches back. Did Hank write that in 3/4 or just use quarter note triplets? Dunno – I didn’t work for Hank until years later, so I haven’t seen his original score and it could work either way.
Actually I think this one is pretty clear, and jjimm is right. My West Side score has it notated as 6/8 (3/4), and if you listen to the song it’s clearly bum bum bum bum bum bum BUM BUM BUM, bum bum bum bum bum bum BUM BUM BUM.
Okay, kind of difficult to demonstrate without sound, but I agree with jjimm.
Exactly the same is true of Ron Goodwin’s movie theme for 633 Squadron.
It’s not an unusual time signature, of course, but I like the rhythm played by the strings in the “Morse” signature tune: dah dah / dah dah dah / dit dah dit / di-di-dit; dit/. Or as it’s otherwise known, – — .-. … . 
I think so.
BTW: I was a little off; it’s actually 4/4 4/4 4/4 3/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 3/4, which makes more sense.
At least it adds up to the right number of beats in the end, even if it puts the “one” in all the wrong places. The Tubular Bells piano sheet music book I have has even more bizarre notation: the opening theme, for right hand only, is notated as a pattern of three bars of 7/8 and one bar of 9/8, which is all well and good, but then the countertheme enters in the left hand, and is notated as 3/4, 4/4, 3/4, 5/4…sharing the same barlines as the 7/8 and 9/8 measures in the right hand!!! Consequently, notes are shown aligned vertically that aren’t actually played together. What a mess!