Songs With Ambiguous Meter

Those songs played in such a way that your brain can't choose between one time unit and the next one up or down. Such as "Papa Was A Rolling Stone." The sheet music says the bass is playing eighth notes but in many ways the feel is more of sixteenth notes. Believe this is often due to the drums not playing a backbeat on the snare. Know we have discussed this before, particularly with Jordan, especially in regard to Reggae, will try to go through archive and see if I can find the previous mentions to link to.

There is some kind of weird Vertigo effect that occurs, by which I mean an audio version of a specific camera trick Hitchcock used in that film. If you think of the beat as a sixteenth note instead of a eighth note then the number of bars gets halved. To visually represent Jimmy "Scotty" Stewart's vertigo, Hitch would have the cameraman dolly while at the same time zooming the camera in or out appropriately, iirc. So you are conserving one mathematical constant but at the same time making an "uncanny valley" type alteration of the two multipliers that comprise it.

Ah, okay here is related thread: double time/half time

Searching Posts with

text:"double time" AND displayName:Jordan

got me lots of good stuff, including this post: I Need the Help of ILM Jazz Fans

and this thread: Songs that fool you about where the downbeat is.

I get this with a lot of the ECM stuff that Jack DeJohnette / Jon Christensen play on. I mean, I know there's gotta be a 'one,' but hell if I can figure out where it is. It's one of the qualities I really love about that stuff

also, a lot of the old Greek music I've been listening to on those Dust To Digital / Christopher King comps. I know a lot of those guys played in 9, but when I try to count it, I get lost. Wonderfully lost!

Aww thanks for this (although I feel embarassed about that post about jazz from when I was a college student).

This is the one where we were breaking down that DJ Shadow track recently: time signature choices

This Senegalese track is one of those optical illusions where you can hear the pulse in a couple different ways. There's another version with a backbeat that makes it super clear, but without it, the sabar drums make it feel more ambiguous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ4nhubDwdI

Dude, I loved your early posting style. Also like your stealth posting on ILB.

Tell me if this is problematic - I think about it in terms of how the drummer would count off the song. I don't think it's a good idea for the drummer to count "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" off at 62 BPM and a much better idea to count it off at 124 BPM.

Same.

(and thank you James)

That Jeri-Jeri track is brilliant thanks - bypasses conscious mind. I can only hear one pulse and it's overwhelming for most of it, although it seems to phase a bit around 3:40 at the windup.

I know I had trouble counting it at 62BPM myself

Might think a properly trained drummer could do it but apparently there is expert testimony to the contrary. *ducks*