Songs that fool you about where the downbeat is.

Never had a problem with "Walking on the Moon", but "Spirits in the Material World" still trips me up from time to time if I hear it wrong. So much emphasis on the off-beat, kick used as a snare.

This just happened to me with "Spirits" for a few seconds....

Sorta kinda in this vein:

Thomas Dolby's "One of Our Submarines" fades up on a vocal loop that sounds like "singmiss singmiss singmiss." Then he starts singing over it "One of our submarines is missing," and you suddenly realize the loop is saying "missing missing missing."

The beginning of "Car Wash" is like this.

Super Furry Animals - Pan Ddaw'r Wawr is a GREAT example of this. Unites the horn-march and the beat for the final chorus too.

Ha came here to say "walking on the moon" and discovered I already had. The Police were buggers for doing this a lot. "Spirits in the Material World" is another one.

"Satisfaction" already mentioned - I don't think I'll ever hear this one properly, afher countless hundreds of listens. By contrast, "All Along The Watchtower" I eventually came to understand, but only after hearing an early, long-unreleased mix without so much disorienting reverb on the percussion.

Faust - "So Far"; its written like a 4/4 jam, but it's actually in 7/4, so each measure kind of flips the beat (I think..not really an expert here). Once you notice it, you can't stop hearing it

new entry - radiohead 'little by little'

Fucking so disorienting ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jdkj5FerdU

... really?

The radio edit of the Who's "You Better, You Bet" still throws me off.

xp listen to more than just the first 10 seconds

I listened to the whole song, it seems very straightforward and predictable in its beat

Okay.. To me that's not a typical intro.. The first count is not the downbeat, and neither is the one after it... It's like 5 counts away, and I can't figure it out without starting the song in the middle and concentrating.

The fourth kickdrum you hear is the downbeat; the previous 3 are pickup notes, basically a 16th note and two 8th notes. Furthermore, the pattern is repeated at the end of every measure, so even if you miss it the first time you hear the song you get calibrated almost immediately.

Am I right that some of the songs mentioned here don't have a downbeat? Like the Grateful Dead's "The Eleven"?

― Mark, Thursday, 19 November 2009 01:46 (1 year ago) Permalink

Do any Grateful Dead songs have a downbeat?

I can't figure out wtf either of these are supposed to mean. I challenge anyone to find any song without a downbeat (that's not an ambient piece or somehow otherwise rhythmless). Everything with a meter has a downbeat.

And on The Eleven, the downbeat is really heavily emphasized on every bar!

There are tracks where it sounds super complicated on first listen but then you realize it isn't, like Green Velvet's "The Stalker".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_fiBk3BH1Q

But the weirdest example of this isn't so much "I don't know where the downbeat is" but more "I don't know where the start of the phrase is" and that's Talking Heads "Once In A Lifetime".

I hear the beginning of each four-bar phrase in different places on the chorus and the verse. "with a BEAUT-iful house.. and a BEAUT-iful wife" -> "letting the DAYS go by".

If the chorus were to have the same 'starting point' as the verses for each four-bar phrase, the weighting would be "let the water hold me DOWN.. water flowing underGROUND" I can't train my ear to hear it this way though.

If Q. = dotted quarter, E. = dotted eighth, and S = sixteenth:

In the Green Velvet, are you hearing Q.-E.-E.-E.-S?If Q. = dotted quarter, E. = dotted eighth, and S = sixteenth:

In the Green Velvet, are you hearing the bassline as Q.-E.-E.-E.-S?

Whoa wtf

lol

XTC - 'Millions' (took me years to realise where the "one" was supposed to be)

Paul Weller - 'Into Tomorrow'

Mentioned a bunch of these on Music Theory thread instead of here because I forgot about this thread.
"Appetite," by Prefab Sprout has a tricky beginning.
"Esto Es El Guaguanco," by Cheo Feliciano has a slick intro with lots of syncopation that tries to throw you off before the song kicks into the regular part. "Gracia Divina," by The Larry Harlow Orchestra featuring Celia Cruz has some syncopation in the middle where you can get lost. Don't know if I mentioned "Across 110th Street," but that can also be a tiny bit challenging to count.

Sorry if I neglected to use Royal Canadian QUEES notation.

One I still can't get is "Your kiss is sweet" Syreeta. The 'movin on/won't lie' bit seems half (or quarter) a beat off. Is it?

solange's "rise" throws me at the end of every verse with a huge accent on the word "rise," which falls on the three, but the accent makes you think they've dropped a couple beats and you're now back on the one, but you aren't, and it takes a couple of bars to figure that out.

That is a great description of what it feels like when you lose count. Like the magician/hypnotist/pickpocket has distracted you and then removed a beat or two during the split second you weren't looking.

At one point I realized, but always have to remind myself, that when you can't figure out the meter it is good to keep counting to a higher number rather then resetting based on a low number such as 3,4,5,6 or even 7 or 8. By the time you hit 12 or 14, 15, 16 you may well figure out if something is in, say 6/8 but with a syncopated part alternating with a less syncopated part, or really in 7/8, or has an alternating structure, a bar of 3/4 then some bars or 4/4 or is just in 4/4 but with the accents all on syncopations.

Michael Jackson 'Rock Your World' is one of these for me. It seems so simple at first, but it's been the subject of some fierce debates about where the start of the phrase is. I know consciously that it starts with a four beat kick drum count-off, and that the word "life" falls on the downbeat, but something about the bassline and the phrasing of everything else makes me want to think that beat 3 is actually the start of each measure. That would make the intro unnecessarily weird though, and add a weird 2/4 bar going into the bridge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1kHeeEMe-s

"perfect stranger" by katy b/magnetic man, at least the version I have, the intro's like a damn magic eye thing as to where the downbeat is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46WSFuvWfuc

That one makes sense to me, there are some crashes on the downbeat (0:28) that confirm that the downbeat is where I thought it was before the main beat comes in. But I know this stuff can be maddeningly subjective.

Oh yeah, this Lorenzo Senni track...I know where I think the downbeat is (basically the first big stab comes in on the "&" of 4), but in a sense it doesn't matter, because the pattern just repeats the whole song. The only clues you get are around the breakdown in the middle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2AEex59eVM

@ sund4r

I have puzzled over "The Stalker", opened it up and made beat-maps to it, and my conclusion it's somewhere between Q.E.E.E.S and Q..E.E.ES, played by hand to be placed squarely in a green velvet pocket

Can somebody talk to me about "Once In A Lifetime" though

Are you not totally hearing 2/4 additions and elisions

Does or does not the synthy-guitar solo at the end feel like it comes in two beats early

I was listening to it. There's definitely a 2/4 addition somewhere prior to the first chorus (presumably at the very beginning of the song?).

Once in a Lifetime is insane, it's in two keys simultaneously

For 'The Stalker', I hear the last note leading up to the downbeat as a triplet (but the two before it as dotted 1/8th notes, like you say, although you can almost hear them all as shuffling triplets...now I kinda want to program it too, to see if it's actually on the grid or not).

That guitar part toward the end of "Once in a Lifetime" does come in before the downbeat but it's not right on the three. Could just be an anacrusis.

Re: 'Once in a Lifetime', I hear it as pretty straight-up. I guess what you're hearing as the downbeat ("DAYS"), I hear as the 3. So each line of the chorus starts on the "&" of 1. Just like the bassline.

But that's basically the same difficulty I have hearing that Michael Jackson song.

Totally disagree about it having a 2/4 before the chorus!

"DAYS" really does not sound like the three to me. I think the bass is on the three.

Count from the beginning, though. There has to be a measure of two somewhere.

Basically the chorus melody follows my favorite clave, five dotted 1/8th notes starting on the first upbeat of the phrase.

The bass is in a two bar loop, where it starts up on the first upbeat of the first bar, then on the downbeat of the second bar. The count makes sense to me from the beginning.

i've alwyas heard it the same way as Jordan, straight up. 'Letting' is on the 2 and 'DAYS' is on the 3.

Would that suggest that the rhythm guitar enters and exits on the three, then?

Yeah, I'm not hearing how "Once In A Lifetime" could be misinterpreted rhythmically.

I think a case could be made that it's polyrhythmic.

There are no abbreviated measures inserted before the verse and the verses/chorus are standard 8-bar constructions; I'm not hearing where people are getting thrown off.