time signature choices

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.