Songs that fool you about where the downbeat is.

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

Sparks - Decline and Fall of Me. I also have this happen in my head with a lot of Ethiopian music where, if I concentrate hard enough, the entire mood and context of the song shifts.

Drive My Car intro
Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey intro

"I'm Free" The Who, back and forth verse and chorus are seemingly different downbeats

Devo "Satisfaction" is my favorite one listed here so far.. sooooo disorienting.

relax! it is survivor, not limp bizkit.

I prefer Limp Bizkit to Survivor fwiw.

Re: All Along The Watchtower, I haven't heard it incorrectly in so long, I forgot that this was one of those disorienting intros.. I recall being in 5th or 6th grade and forcing myself to hear it correctly.

The intro of "A Day In The Life" is like this also but only because the fadeout from "Sgt Pepper (reprise)" makes it difficult to hear where the song actually begins.. If you hear the version on "1967-1970" the downbeat is obvious.

"The Impression That I Get" intro, and prolly lots of ska

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

yeah, i think this is actually a super important musician skill. like if you're playing with someone and they do an intro that you know you're feeling wrong, being able to force your brain to shift to the correct downbeat.

the first note of the tuba bassline is on the & of 1 (or on the 2 if you're counting double time), used to be hard for me to feel it right away:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1LlnrL1Jis

still lolling at the double-time confusion, I usually don't do that

switch back and forth in my head
This is very easy to do when listening to reggae.

Metallica - Fight Fire with Fire
Metallica - Battery
Metallica - Blackened

Also: Immortal - Hordes to War, but that's just because it's such a perfect 'Fight Fire with Fire' rip-off.

still lolling at the double-time confusion, I usually don't do that

i think it comes up a lot with dancehall/clave-ish beats. i know different people in my own band count it differently, which can make for the same kind of fun when you try and talk about it.

super important musician skill
You will often hear people say about various cats "he plays all the syncopated stuff, but he knows where the one is at all times."

Also, in Latin music, everybody talks about the clave, but underneath even that is the downbeats, the 1 & 3, which some people call the pulse. In a typical performance, nobody is playing the pulse, maybe nobody is even playing the clave, but everybody knows where it is.

i think it comes up a lot with dancehall/clave-ish beats. i know different people in my own band count it differently, which can make for the same kind of fun when you try and talk about it.
Haha. I've heard this. That some people insist you count it one way and some the other and I figured some of them would be in the same band.

I imagine somebody like an Earl Palmer could just mentally keep clicking a little button and shift from hearing an 8th to a 16th to a 32nd to a 64th note.

the & of 1

This guy says you should think of an "and" as belonging to the beat that comes after instead of the beat that comes before. He says "you have to pick your foot up before you can put it down" or something like that.

I guess it's hard to see the link coloration for "This guy," who is http://www.michaelspiro.com/

Not sure if this counts but the chorus in Pet Shop Boys "King's Cross" comes one beat ahead every time it appears.

...actually I listened again and no, it's not every time, it's "right" the first time. And I think it's two beats, not one.

Beatles - "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey". Great beat that manages to fool me every time until the "take it easy" part

that's a good one. i managed to listen to the whole first track on Lindström - Where You Go I Go Too once with the beat all syncopated, it was cool

Syncopation rules the nation. You can't get away from it.

'"The Impression That I Get" intro'

Hey how many of you hear
"Never had to, knock on wood"
versus
"Never had to knock on wood"

also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9d4ESlpHY&feature=player_embedded

Blur - Beetlebum
Van Halen - Panama

Van Halen - Panama

on the ma, right?

The Shaggs, that's taking it to a whole other level.