Songs that fool you about where the downbeat is.

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.

What ciderpress and Jordan and DJP said. Also, there is no 2/4 anywhere in the song. Chris Franz is playing the same 4/4 beat throughout, with no variation. The cymbals and toms are overdubs (that is, they aren't fills played by Franz).

xxp: It's syncopated, yes, with swung meter in the percussion. I don't know that that qualifies as polyrhythmic.

"DAYS" is absolutely on three, if the entire song is in unchanging 4/4. But it feels to my ears as if it's on the one, suggesting single 2/4 bars at the start and end of the chorus. If you parse out the trebly guitar riff on the chorus, it clearly is a pattern that cycles with the downbeat on "days".

I hear "how did I get here?" as a bar of 2, and the final "water flowing under..." as a bar of 2 (with the "...ground" being the downbeat of 4/4 again). I have to really concentrate to beat 4/4 and sing the chorus with "days" on three lol

What is interesting to me btw is that for all the bands that took cues from Talking Heads, very few bands actually came close to their rather insane level of rhythmic complexity. The bass line on "Born Under Punches" (I seem to remember reading that it is a punch-up of Tina and an uncredited session bassist) is the most bizarre and cool bass lines I've come across (and it's always bummed me out that Tina never plays it live the way it occurs on the record)... there's a series of dotted-eighths that descend across the downbeat without hitting the downbeat, it's so cool and nobody writes stuff like that

Honestly I think it's an interesting example of bi-meter. There is no solution. It could go either way. I mean, as mentioned above, the song sounds like it could be in two different keys already, with the bass line implying D-major (or even A-major!) against the Eventide-y high pad stuff holding a Gsus4.

It's syncopated, yes, with swung meter in the percussion. I don't know that that qualifies as polyrhythmic.

Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about beat divisions. Was talking about hearing the chorus with "DAYS" and the entry of the rhythm guitar on the one. So, it would be overlapping four-fours if we're saying the bass is on the one also.

That trebly guitar part comes in on '3', yeah, but it ends right on the downbeat of the next verse. I totally get where you're coming from, but hearing 2/4 bars in and out of sections is usually a cue for me that I'm hearing something wrong.

xp

Although this reminds me of an old ILM thread about 'Single Ladies', and that random acapella 3/4 bar right at the end of the bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_in_a_Lifetime_(Talking_Heads_song)

Oh I said Gsus4 up above but I mean Gsus2add6
Otm about "Single Ladies", that's the other song I hear shifting meters on and can't hear any other way

Oh shit, well there it is lol, explains everything

"Single Ladies" absolutely has a meter shift in it where there's either an extra 2/4 bar or a 3/4 bar at the end of the bridge, depending on how you're subdividing

well i'll be

Brian Eno introduced Fela Kuti's multiple rhythm music style to the band, and during production Eno used a different rhythm count for some members of the group than others, starting on the "3" instead of the "1." It gave the song what Eno called "a funny balance within it. It has really two centers of gravity: their '1' and my '1.'" This rhythm imbalance was exaggerated in the studio, and is present throughout the song. Jerry Harrison developed the synthesizer line and added the Hammond organ climax, taken from the Velvet Underground's "What Goes On".

As the song essentially consisted of a repetitive two-bar groove (with the pattern reversed between the verse and chorus), Eno decided to approach the production by allowing each of the band members to record overdubs of different rhythmic and musical ideas independently of each other, with each member being kept blind to what the others had recorded on tape. In the final mix, Eno faded between these independent ideas at different parts of the song. This is very much in keeping with his production technique of Oblique Strategies.

It's kind of hilarious that Eno did all of that and then mixed the entire thing down into a 4/4 shuffle beat.

Well, I for one very much enjoyed this discussion before we just looked on wikipedia.

haha same

^^truth bomb new borad description etc

We Will Rock You - Queen
Is it just me or does the accent on the down beat that is so prominent at the beginning fade away as the song progresses? I think the transition is most noticeable when the guitar comes in.

Aphex Twin "Schottkey 7th Path" – the bass drum sounding thing is on the offbeat, right?

you mean the persistent quarter note part? because i definitely hear that on the downbeat. where do you hear the synth part starting?

a few songs come to mind that may or may not fit this thread:

"Hold On To Your Genre" - Les Savy Fav, the way the drums come in, it takes a while to tell the snare is on the back beat
"Disko" - Komeda, down beat seems to change around :30
"Return The Gift" - Gang of Four, intro kind of fakes you out until drums come in
"You Hit The Nail On The Head" - Funkadelic, just a generally tricky groove during the intro

The "Meet you all the way" part of "Rosanna" by Toto

so many john lee hooker solo songs. he taps out an accent-free beat with his foot, starts lines wherever/whenever he feels like starting 'em, improvises as he goes, is awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwlg3m-7N64

Yeah, I think maybe that it's not just that he starts lines wherever he wants, improvising as he goes, but that there are also some "irregular" metric tendencies inherent in his music that are just not easy to understand or hear?

The second song on the video - It's a triple meter until he gets to the guitar line at 2:52. That line, to me, suggests an extension. He deliberately extended the bar for one beat.

The passage shortly after that I can't figure out at all.