Dammit. The more I listen to it, the more I can go either way on it. It’s basically a guitar part of 3 1/2 bars repeating over a 4 bar drum pattern (Except for the chord change in the middle where it briefly deviates.)
Out of curiosity, I forwarded the songs to a classical and improvisational musician I know (played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has a degree in music performance, and plays in an improvisational world music/jass collective) who deals with odd time signatures regularly and asked him how he hears and would notate the first two songs.
Thanks for the answers. I guess each instrument can have a different time sig in the same song?
Yes, that is possible. I don’t think it’s necessary in this case (and, in most cases, it’s not), no matter which time signature interpretation you go with. I personally would write all the instruments in the same time sig for each song. I don’t see any compelling reason not to.
I bet that would be rare, because a conductor could not say “start at measure N …”. Instead, all points of interest would have to be notated with letters. (Notating with letters is common in any case, but why limit yourself to those locations?)
I suppose that for polyrhythmic compositions it may be useful to notate parts in different time signatures, but I suspect that more often it’s done using the least common multiple. In any case, polyrhythms don’t have to be split among instruments; a single player on a single instrument may need to play in different times at the same time. I had a friend who was a world-class percussion student, who all her life had drilled by playing N against M, where N and M went from 2 to some gawdawfully high number in the twenties or more. She could sit there and tap one thigh in 13 beats per measure and the other in 23 beats per measure, easy as pie, steady as a rock. It makes my head hurt just to think about it. (She could also make lovely music on a marimba, her specialty.)
In a discussion on a musicians forum, someone raised the possibility of setting up a digital audio workstation (DAW) to different time signatures for different tracks. Nobody could come up with an example of one that supports that natively. I challenged that there isn’t a very good reason to do it, and the response was polyrhythms, but IMHO there are better ways to skin that cat.
Regardless, there sure is music that sounds as though different instruments are playing to different time signatures. The posts above are examples, as is polyrhythmic music. In the former, the difference is in the number of beats per repeated theme, but with the duration of the beat being equal, so that the repeated interval is different between the two. With “systemic” or “cross-rhythm” polyrhythms, it’s a also different number of beats, but the duration of the beats is different, so that the length of the repeated units is the same.
That makes the quarter note twice as long as most people would use. That is, it’s around 50 BPM rather than around 100. But there’s no reason you couldn’t write it either way.
Yes. My interpretation was 3 bars of 4/4 followed by 2/4. His (the explanation you quoted) was listening to what I counted as eighth notes as 16th notes, so it works out to a bar of 4/4, followed by 3/4 with that count. Either way, they both work out to the same thing, and addresses why you hear an odd time signature in that and the second song.
That’s pretty amazing, but, yes, basic polyrhythmic beats like 3 against 2 (or multiples like 6 against 4) or 4 against 3 are relatively common. You need not two different instrumentalists to be playing in two different time signatures (although it will usually be notated in the same time signature.) Once you get to really odd rhythms like yours, yeah, that’s a whole different level. I remember looking at a Gonzalo Rubalcaba (Cuban jazz pianist) transcription of his work, and he had stuff that just seemed completely inconceivable to me, like 11s over 7s or something like that. I would have guessed there’s a bit of a fudge in the transcription, but listening to the recording, it sounded like a steady 11 over 7 (or whatever weird odd numbers it was.)
How about this song?
After a quick listen, I just hear 4/4 there.
Yup, but some serious syncopation making it ambiguous until the vocals come in.
Yes, there some syncopation going on there, but it’s nothing too weird. There’s a clear kick on one, and a clear snare on the “two” (or “three” if you’re counting in half-time), then the second half of the drum pattern has some anticipatory beats on the snare before coming back 'round to the first half of the pattern with the kick and snare anchoring the one and two (or, like I said, three, if you’re counting the ride cymbal pulse as eighth notes instead of sixteenth notes at a slow tempo.)
Here’s the basic drum part, just the ride, snare, and kick (no toms included):
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
(1 e & u 2 e & u 3 e & u 4 e & u)
R|x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
S|--------o-----o-|----o-----o-----|
B|o---o-------o---|--o---o-o---o-o-|