Songs that fool you about where the downbeat is.

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.

lots and lotsa dance tunes which fade in

on the ma, right?

Well it's really just the guitar/kick drum intro that fools me but yeah.

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

I'm never able to make sense of the beat on Mary Margaret O'Hara's "Not Be Alright". For its duration all I can think about is why I can't make sense of it, and about whether I should be able to identify it as being in 17 / 9 time or whatever, and confusion curdles into disorientation and resentment, and I can't tell whether the nausea is an effect of my experience of the music, or of my awareness of my experience of the music, or of both, and then I conclude (not before time) that it really isn't worth it.

I believe the beginning of Styx's "Too Much Time On My Hands" qualifies for this thread.

Clipse "I'm Good"

a touch of this to Bruce Springsteen "Glory Days"

Alan Parsons likes to do this especially with his instrumentals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td56XAHxLpw

Skip to like 1:30 unless you dig intros

A lot of Aphex Twin songs are like this, off the top of my head "Heliosphan" from SAW 85-92, and the untitled 7th track from his Polygon Window album "Surfing on Sine Waves" does this super hardcore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLJgCHPO0ig

At about 4:22 the snare hits go away and you sort of choose to hear the song as having the downbeat on the snare or the kick.

Phil Collins - In the Air Tonight

up til where the drums kick in that is, after that he isn't fooling anyone

"Cannonball" by the Breeders.

^^^ in the intro, I mean.

other Breeders songs that fool me:
"Invisible Man"
"Glorious"
"No Way"

Metallica-Escape

Part of me thinks techno must be full of these tracks and part of me thinks that they could be hard to find (at least on 12" cuts) what with the tradition of starting with drum intro for easier mixing.

Here's one though: Hardfloor - Strawberry Maze. Another "lone rhythmic bass noise in intro is actually off-beat" entry, but I'm not quite tired of them yet.

The first few times I heard "Elevation" by GTO, I couldn't hear the synth riff on the correct beat so the entrance of the drums 4 bars later was always a surprise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Fh4M-Its4&feature=related

Small Faces "Afterglow" - no matter how many times I listen to this song (which is fantastic although terribly marred by shitty pseudo-stereo mixing. I would kill for a proper mono mix of this song...) I just cannot figure out what beat it starts on. by the time the drums come in everything is pretty simple, but the intro bars with just the acoustic guitars/singing/percussion is so very WTF

it starts on the & of 3

the downbeat is the second beat of the 4/4 measure. "She Said She Said"'s second section is in 3/4, btw. the technique used in the Beatles' "Everybody's Got Something to Hide" is turning the beat around, where you displace the usual accents in the 4/4 measure, same thing is used in the intro to the Attractions' arrangement of Costello's "This Year's Girl." the funniest example of a well-known critic not knowing this stuff occurs in a review of Al Green's "Call Me" when the writer refers to the "third-beat" emphasis of the Hi Rhythm Band, when in fact the writer is mishearing the eighth notes as quarter notes; the emphasis is just on the downbeat but the writer hears it as "one-two-THREE" when it's actually "one-and-TWO."

it starts on the & of 3

lol ask a drummer... I think its the handclaps that have always thrown me off too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGLKvDEq_Kk&feature=related

Part of me thinks techno must be full of these tracks and part of me thinks that they could be hard to find (at least on 12" cuts) what with the tradition of starting with drum intro for easier mixing.

Here's one though: Hardfloor - Strawberry Maze. Another "lone rhythmic bass noise in intro is actually off-beat" entry, but I'm not quite tired of them yet.

Here's another: Robert Hood - The Rhythm of Vision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07VVf77KVns

that one starts right on the downbeat

Another techno youtube - "What To Do" by Thomas Bangalter, off Trax on da Rox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyA5WnCfGKc

Doesn't quite match the thread title, starts with a very clear downbeat (your standard kick-hihat-snare-hihat drum-loop), then uses the samples to mess with your perception of where the bar begins. Awesome tune, but can be kind of difficult to dance to if you're thinking too much...

xpost

don't think so - starts on an offbeat ("&") - wait til the kick drum comes in around 1:10

The Robert Hood example does indeed start on a downbeat -- at least, if you count it this way...
http://sites.google.com/site/pnauert/rhood.png
... the kick drum entrance around 1:10 is in phase.

ha yeah, I was going to say, the tricky thing there is that the repetition can make you zone out and miss a beat

yeah, even if it starts on the 2 or something, it definitely does not start on an &

Fido, Your Leash is Too Long

Not a fool you about where the downbeat is example, but an example of something more syncopated and improvised then you would expect and hard to count is Anthony Jackson's bassline on "For The Love Of Money."

ok I believe you about the Robert Hood :)
it still surprises me when the kick drum drops!

Hardfloor - Strawberry Maze. Another "lone rhythmic bass noise in intro is actually off-beat" entry

Er, oops, it came up on random a while ago and I misremembered it (unless there's another mix). Starts with a pattern of stringy stabs an eighth note apart and your brain is like "ok, the second is probably the 1, but maybe the first" but you're actually listening to &2, &4...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUlYtICk8IE

Do not listen if you hate 90s acid techno which doesn't do anything.

you can still start on the downbeat and be fooled by where the downbeat is, iirc tbh

tho i def wasnt fooled by that example

the downbeat is the second beat of the 4/4 measure.

No it isn't!

^^ was gonna say