Songs that fool you about where the downbeat is.

Musicians, is there a word for this downbeat trickery?

This is my favorite element of "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)". I can never keep track of the snare drum!

ahh, I can add one definite example!

"Hands off, she's mine" The Beat.

I have a friend who can't ever hear Devo's "Satisfaction" on the right beat, because of the odd bass drum hit

ARGH! I have never heard this song properly because of precisely this issue! This downbeat thing has long been one of my favourite/most infuriating things about music.

I heard 'Dig for Fire' in the pub on Sunday and got to thinking about the trick again.

More please!

Is She's A Woman one of these?

yeah

Basement Jaxx's "Same Old Show" - the Selecter "On The Radio" sample is used in such an odd way, that it completely throws me off. I also used to get this a lot with techno/hard trance. There was one Dave Clarke track in particular... doh, no use, can't remember it...

Does it go "Barooo Ga!"

I posted a thread about this sort of thing using Vince Guiraldi's "Linus and Lucy" as an example - when I was a kid I thought the downbeat started an eighth note earlier than it does

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.

Besides "Wake Up", XTC also has "Millions" and probably others I can't recall. They seem like the type to do this sort of thing.

The intro to the Cars' "Since You've Gone" also used to get me, though it's pretty obvious once the kick and snare come in.

Basement Jaxx's "Same Old Show" - the Selecter "On The Radio" sample is used in such an odd way, that it completely throws me off. I also used to get this a lot with techno/hard trance. There was one Dave Clarke track in particular... doh, no use, can't remember it...

― mike t-diva, Wednesday, November 18, 2009 4:13 AM Bookmark

Probably cause it's in 7/8 time but doesn't really draw attention to the time signature.

This is my favorite element of "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)". I can never keep track of the snare drum!

― nicegeoff, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 10:31 PM Bookmark

co-sign

Oh yea, Millions by XTC always gets me, never comes together in my head until the skippy drum bit comes in.

"single ladies" has a super simple dancehall beat, but the song starts on beat 2 just to fuck with you

The best example of metric ambiguity in The Cars' JWIN isn't at the beginning, its at circa 2:03 in the video posted above by Pancakes. The snare drum flips from 2+4 (typical) to 1+3 (which tends to sound like a displaced 2+4). The protagonist's reference to losing his mind is an obvious motivation for this detail. Play from 1:56 (beginning of third verse) to hear it in context.

"California Girls"!

And also "I Can't Come" by the Snivelling Shits. Which actually does a breakdown and goes back to its introductory guitar riff partway through (in one of the two recordings), just so it can pull the where's-the-downbeat trick again.

The original 12" version of "Blue Monday" starts with beat 3 (the beginning of the budubudubudubudubum bit). On "Substance," the first two beats are there.

Thus Sang Freud is absolutely right about "I Want to Hold Your Hand." And every band that covered it for the six months after it came out thought it started on beat 4. It's kind of hilarious to hear.

"California Girls"!

What?

The Cars ref reminded me of a good one -- "Touch and Go"

Jordan: In addition to starting on the 2 beat, different sections throughout the whole song are going back and forth between starting on the 1 and 3 beats, to the point where it's hard to determine which is which, and the guitar lick seems to treat the 3 as if it were the 1. It's a lot more complex than you are giving credit for.

Actually it isn't. The only thing in the song that's complex is that the end of the bridge ends with a half measure; every time Beyonce sings the word "single", that's the downbeat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9xx5Ri278

Duh! Duh Duh Duh! (Doh! not yet!) Duh Duh Duh!

^^^^ you are terrible at music, I hope you realize this

Actually it isn't. The only thing in the song that's complex is that the end of the bridge ends with a half measure; every time Beyonce sings the word "single", that's the downbeat.

right (although actually i think the last bar of the bridge, the one where the drums drop out, is 3 beats long. then the drums come back in on the 2, right after she says "single" on the downbeat like you say).

The beat emphasis is weird there but if you count it out, it ends up ending on a 2/4 measure, not a 3/4.

got to disagree dan, the bar where she says "like a ghost i'll be gone" is 3/4 (then the drums come back in on 2 of the next bar).

lots of house does this to me when the 2/4 snares are playing before the bass beat kicks in

near the last climax of 'where you go i go too' by lindstrom. the beat drops out for a while and when the epic synth line fades in i have this simultaneous thing of knowing i'm nodding my head to the wrong beat and knowing where the downbeat is but not really knowing and it takes a second to click.

got to disagree dan, the bar where she says "like a ghost i'll be gone" is 3/4 (then the drums come back in on 2 of the next bar).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g

Nope. Skip to 2:20 and start counting. "Ghost" is on the downbeat of a 4/4 bar. "Gone" is beat 1 of 2/4. "Single" is beat 1 of 4/4. The only way it could fit if "Ghost" kicks off two 3/4 bars in a row; there are six beats between "ghost" and "single".

it's "fun" to keep track of the downbeat during like an autechre song x-post

dan, u crazy. if you starting counting from "ghost" (on beat 1), there are three beats until "single", not two beats. then the drums come back in on beat 2.

oh wait, you must be counting double-time compared to how i'm counting it! if that's true, you're saying the same thing (ie 6 beats how you're counting it = 3 beats the way i'm counting it. not sure how you're fitting 6 beats into a 2/4 bar).

so do you hear the snare drum on beat 4 of a two bar phrase, or on the & of 4? i hear it as the latter.

Dan, I think you are counting beats at twice the speed everyone else is. The way I'm counting it, the claps are 8th notes, in which there are three beats between "ghost" and "single".

haha xps

I just realized my last sentence makes little sense.

"^^^^ you are terrible at music, I hope you realize this"
relax! it is survivor, not limp bizkit.

Jordan made the point I was trying to make re: counting tempo better than I did.

Anyway, the guitar line and the "whoa-oh-OH!" sections and the "now put your hands up!" that appears a couple times all emphasize the 3 more than the 1.

Anyway, the guitar line and the "whoa-oh-OH!" sections and the "now put your hands up!" that appears a couple times all emphasize the 3 more than the 1.

it's true that they come in the middle of the bar instead of starting on the 1. just listen to the drums i guess.

Yeah, not arguing there, they just create some ambiguity until you figure it all out.

kinda hard to hear on tinny computer speakers, but I love the way the bass line inverts on live skull's "mr evil" when the band comes in 1 beat early

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR8YzP-dKbc

this is my white whale btw (michael jackson's rock with you). it starts in a totally clear way (four beats and you're in), but the bassline (and some of the other parts) always makes me want to hear the 1 on what is really beat 3. always have to concentrate, which of pisses me off because it should be a simple pop song.

haha yes the issue here is that I'm counting each clap as a quarter note, not an eighth note, so basically Jordan and I are saying the exact same thing only I'm expressing it as 4/4 + 2/4 and he's expressing it as 3/2

carry on

beatles "got to get you into my life"

that intro has always confused me. the tambourine comes in on the downbeat but there's no way of knowing that until the singing starts two bars later.

Welcome back, fact checking cuz!

thanks!

lots of house does this to me when the 2/4 snares are playing before the bass beat kicks in

ah, I used to enjoy this with electro sometimes, especially since a lot of that stuff is so blocky and grid-like that you can pretty easily will yourself to just keep hearing it the wrong way around (snares on 1 + 3, etc) all the way through, with no great conflict. for some reason I always found it fun to try and do that, then switch back and forth in my head, like you do with one of those drawings that's two things at once -- you know, how fast can your brain flip back and forth from interpreting it the right way to the backward way

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

Do any Grateful Dead songs have a downbeat?

oh and by the way: I think one main place you see this often -- from the early 90s through the present -- is in loopy electronic music, for reasons having to do with the recording process, and the way that "writing" and "production" are the same step. if you're toying with loops or arranging a song and you solo a particular track, you might suddenly hear some rhythm in it that's counter to the rhythm of the whole song (especially with things like fluttery loops or three-step delays or arpeggios, etc.), and that becomes really easy to play with. so I feel like in a lot of (say) early-90s loop-based electronic stuff, you'd get people who'd bring out something like that and then switch the beat around -- and these days you get the same thing from acts like the Field, where there are lots of rushy loops and delays going on that could be placed against the downbeat on whatever rhythm you wanted.

that same tracking process seems like a thing with rock bands, too -- basically anyone who writes/assembles music using a computer is going to be that much more likely to solo one instrument, notice another way it could fall against the rhythm, loop it, think about it, and maybe write a bit into the intro or something that toys with that.

Do any Grateful Dead songs have a downbeat?

― Meade Lex Louis (James Redd and the Blecchs)

As far as the intro to"Just What I Needed," you want to hear the big chord as ONE. I listened to it all the way through several times and tried to count it out and when the downbeat came I knew I was off but my brain immediately corrected so I didn't know how far off. So finally I just backtracked a few seconds and then I was immediately able to tell that the big chord was on FOUR or FOUR,FOUR-AND.

This commercial fools you into thinking that the keyboard part is on the downbeat until the rest of the instruments come in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQwdfhwYdS0

Lennie Tristano - Line Up

http://www.google.com/url?url=http://popup.lala.com/popup/360569458054722392&rct=j&ei=Jd4ES7-mFo7ilAelwvSjDA&sa=X&oi=music_play_track&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=2&ved=0CAgQ0wQoADAA&q=lennie+tristano+line+up&usg=AFQjCNH0UyDyrjCBMH_aa_fHfDjbIlHkbQ

I have actually spent YEARS trying to understand all of the faux-shifts in this, and I still can't figure out what's going on from about 1:10 to 1:28