time signature choices

i'm usually pretty good at identifying time signatures, but i'm having trouble with this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrP1bspW7jQ

i have thoughts, but i'll wait til others weigh in

For some reason I can't play this video, so Sund4r to thread.

now it seems obvious, actually, and i feel foolish for even asking. but there was a longish facebook thread among friends with many varying opinions.

sounds like you've got it, but it's 6/8. it fucks with you because that 'beep bee' part that is foregrounded in the beginning is a quarter-note triplet, based on the 6/8 pulse.

Yeah agree with Jordan, although I'm tempted to call it 12/8 just because of the way the rhythmic phrase works out

like this record btw, best Shadow since Private Press imo

cool track. good job DJ Shadow!

i hear what you're saying about the phrase, but for some reason i never want to call anything 12/8. if it's kick-2-3-snare-2-3, then i always feel it as two phrases of 6/8. not like it matters what you call anything in terms of 2/4 vs 4/4 or 6/8 vs 12/8 imo.

which apparently is what i said FOURTEEN YEARS AGO. jesus.

yeah it's something about how the kick is syncopated in the second half of it that makes me hear it as 12/8, but as you say it really doesn't matter

i ended up at 6/8 as well (and also was tempted to call it 12/8), but for some reason at first i heard it as a really loose 4/4, 16th-based note groove, with an added 16th note of space added at the very beginning of each phrase (or the very end). i was somewhat confident about that and was praising dj shadow for coming up with something so fucking weird but without sounding too proggy, and then suddenly realized it was 6/8 and could never heard it the other way again.

2 x 6/8 vs. 1 x 12/8 is a feel thing for me.

wait is everyone talking about "Mambo" here? Hearing 9/8 (or 9/16) on this, basically like a 4/4 beat with one extra 8th note on the last beat. Unless I have the wrong song playing because my phone does weird things...

Hearing 9/8 (or 9/16) on this, basically like a 4/4 beat with one extra 8th note on the last beat.

that's exactly how i heard it at first! for a while i was looking up 18/8 time signature on wikipedia to see if it resembled what i was hearing. now i can only hear it as 6/8.

Yeah. Sorry Dominique, but if you're listening to the right track, you're hearing it wrong. Better to drop in at the end, like 2:38, and get the key to the track. The intro is just designed to be deceptive.

I couldn't get it from the intro either.

xp

wish we could have a skype on this.

I will have to work to hear this in 6/8 -- there are parts where a snare is laying down 8ths (or 16ths if I say 9/16), and the kick and main backbeat snare are landing on downbeats in 9. I can do this throughout, so still not sure how to hear in 6

If you're talking about the build about a minute it (before "ready, mambo"), that snare pattern is triplets over the 6/8 (so 9 hits per bar, or 18 if you're doing 12/8). same for most of the arpeggiated synth patterns.

I got you now -- basically, if I group all the things I'm hearing as 8ths into threes, it comes out like an even groove, maybe similar to that famous Bonham/Porcaro break groove. I just wasn't hearing them as triplets, but as straight 8ths

exactly!

"I Should Live in Salt" by the National might be the weirdest time signature for the simplest song. Like, 17/8 or something. What's the Mahavishnu Orchestra track with the unfathomable time signatures? Yeah, this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5XoNlcLEfw

I read that Billy Cobham used to practice drums by suspending coins on the wall with tight rolls.

https://theeconomyofmeaning.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/difficult-times.png

the mario kart 64 victory music time signature is unexpectedly complicated (i think it's in eleven).

9/8 isn't difficult. (xpost)

ya i play a few tunes in 9/8

sounds very jazzy

Back in the day I wrote a couple of songs in 9/8 by ripping off the first bit of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za2zHDM6g08

here's a track with a sick deceptive intro. it's just in 4/4 with a mostly triplet-based feel, but the first 40 seconds are hard to feel if you don't know what you're looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF_1LiZEm1w

it sound straightfoward to me now but i remember being thrown on first listen.

xp i ripped off a bert jansch track! who probably in turn ripped off davey graham?

"Turn It On Again" by Genesis is another stupidly simple song in a weird signature. "Eleven" by Primus, "The Eleven" by the Grateful Dead and "Take Five" by Brubeck all on the nose.

I read that Billy Cobham used to practice drums by suspending coins on the wall with tight rolls.

Uh, what?

Misread that as Billy Corgan for a second.

i didn't get the tight rolled suspended coins thing either

i thought tight rolls were what you did to your pants? and by that i mean you, reading this. i think you tight rolled your pants.

Oh man, that Mahavishnu track and "Turn It On Again" were important tracks to me as a teenage drummer.

The Mahavishnu track is in 19/16. Really, you can think of it (and, for most of the song, the band plays it) as a good ol' 4/4 with three extra sixteenth notes tacked on at the end.

"Turn It On Again"... well, I've never seen sheet music for it. I always thought of it as having a thirteen-beat kernel, but 13/4 is far too long for a time signature. Call it a bar of 6/4 and a bar of 7/4, going back and forth, until the "I can show you" bit, when it goes into 4/4 like it's been there all along.

xpost Billy Cobham would do a press roll on a quarter against the wall, fast and hard enough to keep it pressed flat against a wall.

That is, do a press roll against the wall. Now imagine where the sticks are hitting there is a quarter or coin, and that the roll is keeping it against the wall.

Oh, I gotcha. Dang!

Ah! (Had to google press roll though)

Just saw something yesterday about Mahavishnu final tour.

^got excited for a second, but it turns out it doesn't involve Cobham or any of the original lineup, just McLaughlin's current band.

i wanna try the coin thing at home but don't want to mess up my wall.