Moe
Suppoese that that bar of music from Here Comes the Sun is a Half-time (halftime feel) and you have simple triplet-eights fo rthe first three beats and then two eight notes, then back to the regular speed.
Or it could just be triplet-quarter notes for a bar and a half and two quarter notes at the same tempo.
Moe
Suppose that that bar of music from Here Comes the Sun is a Half-time (halftime feel) and you have simple triplet-eights for the first three beats and then two eight notes, then back to the regular speed.
Or it could just be triplet-quarter notes for a bar and a half and two quarter notes at the same tempo. But it all is probably in 4/4.
IIRC, according to my piano edition, Mussorgsky wrote the various “Promenades” in the compound meter to portray himself walking between the various paintings. I think he had a limp or was morbidly obese or something. I can look up the exact quote when I get home.
It’s not really popular music, but nearly everything by Dream Theater and Fates Warning is in a complex meter. Alternating measures of 5 and 4, or 7 and 6, or 12 and 3, and some stuff I still haven’t figured out.
“The Anvil of Crom”, the title track from Conan the Barbarian, is pretty much in 11/4. I arranged it for my college band, using 6/4 alternating with 5/4. Unfortunately nobody could conduct it reliably enough and we only played it in the stands once. Oh well…
Thanks, lightingtool, but that’s not it. I’m curious now; I’ll go do some searching…
OK, the song was Take Another Five by Grover Washington, Jr., and was (as near as I can tell from my searching) only released on the compilation album “I Like Jazz Two!”.
How about some compound time sigs? Stings “I hung my head” (an amazing song) is in 9/8…counted 1,2,3,4,5-1,2,3,4.
Or how about the Toadies “Tyler”. Odd measures are 3/4 and even ones are 4/4.
Just listened to it again. The “Sun, sun, sun here it comes” sounds to me like 11/8, then 15/8 (or 4/4 + 7/8). Tje beat subdivision from the the “sun, sun ,sun” part is “3+3+3+2 4+4+4+3.” Listen and count it out.
"123,123,123,12/123,123,
Ummm…never mind that last line…supposed to have been deleted.
The Isengard theme from the LotR movies is in 5/4. I fell out of my chair when I realized that my second time through the extended version of the movie . . . I think Shore even mentions it in the extras.
This is basically correct (though the section actually starts with the 7/8, then continues to cycle through the beats as you describe). However, in situations like this, compound meters like 11 are virtually never notated as such. The sheet music for “Here Comes the Sun” quite properly breaks this section down into bars of 3/8, 5/8, 4/4 and 2/4.
Speaking of Radiohead, has anyone tried to suss the time signatures of Pyramid Song? Oy, such a headache you’ll get!
Granted it all adds up to 16 beats, and indeed the official sheet music has it in 4/4, but that hardly does justice to the subdivisions and phrasing; I actually recently participated in a Radiohead tribute band and that tune in particular was quite the challenge!
Heck, I can hardly get my band to play the bridge in Heartbreaker (Pat Benatar) without screwups, and that’s just 4/4 with some syncopated accents. If you guys are playing “irregular” rhythms, you’re doing great!
Achernar
There really is no audible difference when listening to the music. They are both typically broken up into a group of 2 and 3 or 3 and 2 for beat emphasis. 5/8 may be played a little faster but that shouldn’t really make a difference. There is a similar problem with cut time and common time (2/2 and 4/4) especially when it is subdivided. However, the tempo of cut time would likely be a lot faster than common time.
If you have a mixed rhytmical piece though it is easier to spot. For example a 6/8 piece would more logically transform into a 5/8 piece than a 5/4 piece and a 4/4 piece would more logically go into a 5/4 piece but of course that rule isn’t set in stone, it would just be easier to hear it that way.
I beg to differ, dorkus. I think it’s certainly much more difficult to distinguish 10/8 from 5/8, but 5/8 and 5/4 generally are quite different. Look back and I explain the difference. Most music I’ve experienced in 5/4 has a duple meter feel, and not a mixture of 3s and 2s. For me, at least, I’ve never had problems counting 5/4, but it took me a little while to get used to 5/8. But once you deal with mixed meters, they are not at all that difficult.
“Take 5,” however, does mix triple and duple meter and is in 5/4. However, I have had teachers who claimed that “Take 5” is more accurately described as 10/8 or 6/8 and 2/4 alternating. Most 5/4 I have experienced is rhythmically on the lines of something like Juliana Hatfield’s “Spin the Bottle.” The basic beat is still the quarter and it sounds like an elongated 4/4 or something.
I understand your point pulykamell but for every instance of differences between 5/4 and 5/8 you will have something that goes against the grain and flip flops them back again. Most people will count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, there is no doubt, but there will be stresses most likely on 1 and either 3 or 4 depending on the piece in question regardless of whether it is in 5/4 or 5/8.
Reading through your previous example of counting’s in 5/8 vs 5/4 is pretty interesting but doesn’t include the natural subdivision of beat emphasis. Your counting example works well if the music doesn’t subdivide itself anywhere. However, it falls apart if it is in 5/8 but there are a string of 16th notes on any part or if it is in 5/4 and all 8th notes. I see your point though and while it is correct, it isn’t totally correct. Following your line of thinking a step further, if the composer put accent marks over the 3rd or 4th beat in the measure in 5/4 with a simile to continue it, then the piece should have really been written in 5/8 to start with. And if said composer wrote another piece in 5/4 and alternated putting accents on the 3rd or 4th beat in one measure and then accents on all 5 beats in the next measure, said composer would should change the root time signature of ?/4 altogether.
Again, this is not completely written in stone as some composers will want to emphasize the off beats. If the composer wrote his music with “sans accent” or something avante garde like that then there wouldn’t even be a point in having the music in a time signature as it wouldn’t have a point to differentiate the 1’s from the 2’s.
I am not familiar with the song you mention at the end but you said “The basic beat is still the quarter and it sounds like an elongated 4/4 or something.” 4/4 has an off beat emphasis on 3. The above point is that 1 (downbeat emphasis) 2, 3 (off beat emphasis), 4 (typical ending in 4/4), 5 is still subdividing out the piece into groups of 2’s and 3’s. You can come up with a similar problem with 7/4 vs 7/8 where there will be a combination of groups of 3’s, 2’s, and even 1’s in the count depending on how it is subdivided. One is just more apt to subdivide it properly in 5/8 because of the barrings.
So in essence, there is virtually no difference between music in 5/4 and 5/8 but we can likely argue this until the cows learn to fly and milk rains from the heavens. I have had teachers in the past on the same side of the fence as you where 5/8 should be a duple. However, every teacher I have had regardless of their beliefs in that have also said that one should place a lesser emphasis on off beats in virtually all musical time signatures.
OK, I see your point, but I guess I’m not entirely convinced. 6/8 and 6/4, for instance, are two quite different meters. So are 6/8 and 3/4. If you wanted to, you can write 3/4 as 6/8 and vice versa, but in my opinion, the two describe quite different feelings.
A song like Pink Floyd’s “Money” to me sounds very obviously 7/4 and NOT 7/8. I play commonly in 7/8 and it describes quite a different feel to me than 7/4. Just like cut time and common time (2/2 and 4/4 for those keeping score) describe quite different feels. Even if you sped up Pink Floyd’s money, the feel is still 7/4 to me, and not 7/8. I’m not sure if it helps clarify the issue, but regardless of beat subdivision, I head “Money” as “ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR and FIVE and SIX and SEV and” whereas a typical 7/8 piece is usually “ONEtwothree,ONEtwo,ONEtwo” or “ONEtwo, ONEtwo, ONEtwothree.” The pulse of 7/8 feels like dotted quarter, quarter and quarter or quarter, quarter, dotted quarter to me, whereas 7/4 has a straight quarter feel to me. Obviously, there will be an assymetric distribution of accents, but the feel is quite different. Maybe it’s something I can only explain by actually playing examples in the two time signatures.
5/8 duple? Hmmm…I’ve never heard that before, and I can’t possibly see how 5/8 can be written out as duple. Maybe with subdivisions of 16ths, but this feels weird to me.
As for placing less emphasis on off beats, well, that’s primarily in the classical tradition. Jazz and rock all get their drive by placing the accents on off-beats. They both emphasize the 2 & 4, NOT the 1 & 3; furthermore, jazz accents the second eighth of a two eighth note figure. This is primarily where the “swing” develops from, in addition to stretching the first eighth and shaving the second. You certainly can make a song swing in straight eighths.
Actually, dorkus, on further reflection, you do have a point. Something like 9/4 would normally be subdivided into 3 dotted halves, and 9/8 as three dotted quarters, which can boil down to the same thing. So I’ll basically just agree with you and call it a day. 
With all the talk about the Beatles, I’m surprised that people are largely confining themselves to “Here Comes the Sun”. From Revolver onwards, the Beatles, and especially John, were notorious for fiddling with their time signatures, often in subtle ways. Lennon’s “Yer Blues” is in 6/8 with the occasional extra beat thrown in at the end of the verses; the same effect is used in “The Ballad of John & Yoko”, “Don’t Let Me Down”, “She Said She Said” and “I Am the Walrus”. In his “All You Need Is Love”, successive measures in the verses alternate between 4/4 and 3/4, giving it a distinctly “limping” feel. Something similar is employed in “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except for Me and My Monkey” (4/4 with the odd 3/4 measure). As someone else has pointed out, “Good Morning Good Morning” is full of unpredictable timing: the verses are difficult to partition into measures but have phrases anywhere from 9 to 14 beats long. “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” alternate between 4/4 and 6/8. “Two of Us” slides in and out of 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4, while “Happiness is a Warm Gun” has odd time signature changes which defy my amateur analytical abilities.
Harrison, too, was not afraid to experiment with time signatures, as witnessed in “Within You Without You” (4/4 and others), I Me Mine (4/4 and 3/4), and of course the previously-mentioned “Here Comes the Sun” (4/4 with 11/8 and 7/8 sections).
One of my favourite late 60s/early 70s bands, Captain Beyond, are also famous for their inventiveness for time signatures; they took this practice to a much greater extreme than the Beatles ever did, yet they do it so effortlessly that one doesn’t notice the odd rhythms upon first hearing their albums. (And I do mean albums – this was a group that did not construct individual tracks, but rather feature-length medleys of interwoven songs.) They influenced a generation of space rock and prog rock groups, including Monster Magnet, who are also known for interesting musical effects.
Oh, and ditto to whoever pointed out Andrew Lloyd Webber’s work on Jesus Christ Superstar. Some really enjoyable and complex rhythms there!