Tigran hamasyan is my latest and greatest listen from a few years back, he uses crazy time signatures like 21/16 or 28/16, 15/16, etc.
His album Mockroot is a must listen, incredible pianist and musician
I like odd when it has an easy flow, bouncy in a way, so stealthy that a non-musician might not even notice. Sting's Seven Days is a good example. The lyrics about the days of the week would be lame if the song weren't in 7. https://youtu.be/pG7_gceIFL4
EDIT @domzy Yes. In TIOA it's more of a theatrical effect (layperson paying attention would know instantly), like bouncy punctuation ehehe
RE-EDIT The song is in 5, not 7. I didn't even notice it was an odd signature!
So I guess the lyrics are a bit lame after all.
I especially love the ones where it doesn't feel like an odd meter, and I only realized it when I tried to count it. "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" is a great example of one that just grooves so well that I didn't realize it was in 7 for a long while.
Just a few of my other favorites are:
"Solsbury Hill" - Peter Gabriel (7)
"Whippping Post" - Allman Brothers Band (intro riff in 11)
"Turn It On Again" - Genesis (varies, but the main riff is in 13)
"Dance Of The Maya" - Mahavishnu Orchestra (I love the 20/8 shuffle section)
"Freewill" - Rush (varies)
"Going For The One" - Yes (varies, but I love the instrumental intro best -- what is it? 15/8?)
“Here Comes The Sun” - Beatles (the middle section uses various TS brilliantly)
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Tigran hamasyan is my latest and greatest listen from a few years back, he uses crazy time signatures like 21/16 or 28/16, 15/16, etc.
His album Mockroot is a must listen, incredible pianist and musician.
Yes, he is good. A bit too "on the grid" prog-type of odd times.
Have you herd about Armen Chakmakian?
I used to listen to his album "Ceremonies" (feat. Djivan Gasparyan) a lot when I was a teenager (very late 90s).
This opening song... odd meters, typical ethno-jazzy piece.
Coily by the Ozrics. People say its 17/16 I have no idea how to count it, pretty disorienting groove and a glorious jam.
That sh¡t is really good.
Reminds me of Steve Lukather's "Party In Simon's Pants" - probably one of the first song I ever attempted at drums as a teen... and never truly managed to learn it.
"Odd" time signatures are common in folk music too. Here's Donal Lunny (a legend in Irish music). Just one guy but it is mesmerisisng I think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i5LRydfRJM
Bruford is drumming in 17/16
Fripp and Belew both start in 5/8, then switch to 7/8, 14/15, or 9/8 at various points. Sometimes one is playing 7/8, whilst the other plays 14/15.
Levin plays in 4/4 throughout.
Seems like it a recipe for a disaster, but the result is sheer perfection.
In Metal there are quite a lot of bands in the so called prog-genre where they apply some grid-cuts and such: Meshuggah, Dream Theater, Panzerballet, Blotted Science\Spastic Ink, Mars Volta,
And then there are these guys:
once you get beyond the weirdness of the clean vocals for such music, the beats are just incomparable to any other band...
The drummer Steven Sheldon is like a master painter using each drums and cymbal: crazy chokes and fills right where you do not expect them
In Metal there are quite a lot of bands in the so called prog-genre where they apply some grid-cuts and such: Meshuggah, Dream Theater, Panzerballet, Blotted Science\Spastic Ink, Mars Volta,
And then there are these guys:
For sure, they were contemporaries. One might say FNM + Green Jellö with a dash of Anthrax = Scatterbrain
I don't know all those bands, but I'd call Mars Volta prog-punk before anything to do with metal. I don't recall a single riff that involved chugging on the low E.
When you say prog and metal in the same sentence though, I immediately think of Cynic. OK, yea it's probably post metal or even post-death-metal....genre shmenre...
I was gonna post a link to Focus, but now I see they made a new album in 2021...cool!
for posterity, though, since the new one is so far seeming more jazz than metal (kill jazz before jazz kills you ):
EDIT:
But the more I try to count out this new one, the more it seems like it's ordinary time sigs but with non ordinary divisions and chord changes. Like instead of trying to do odd time sigs that sound normal, they're doing normal time sigs that sound odd. Just me? Like I said, I can't count.
But the more I try to count out this new one, the more it seems like it's ordinary time sigs but with non ordinary divisions and chord changes. Like instead of trying to do odd time sigs that sound normal, they're doing normal time sigs that sound odd. Just me? Like I said, I can't count.
Yeah, the bits I listened to were mainly drums accenting 4's, but polyrhythms and polymeter stuff going on as well, like the guitar playing in 5 near the beginning.
4/4 can sound super weird if you subdivide it all the wrong ways...
In Metal there are quite a lot of bands in the so called prog-genre where they apply some grid-cuts and such: Meshuggah, Dream Theater, Panzerballet, Blotted Science\Spastic Ink, Mars Volta,
And then there are these guys:
once you get beyond the weirdness of the clean vocals for such music, the beats are just incomparable to any other band...
The drummer Steven Sheldon is like a master painter using each drums and cymbal: crazy chokes and fills right where you do not expect them
That drummer is amazing, but he is making the rest of the band sound lazy for not being as inventive as him! His drumming is really screaming out for more interesting music to my ears.
Coily by the Ozrics. People say its 17/16 I have no idea how to count it, pretty disorienting groove and a glorious jam.
Great band. Saw them live in 90 in Bristol!
It strikes me as remarkable theres probably twenty songs in total I can think of in unusual time sigs.
Compared to how many in 4/4?
Quite a ratio
I only have 1 in my entire repertoire ,which I wrote when I was a young lad and interested greatly in such things ..and thankfully,for posterity I made a video for it too..on Super 8!
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I only have 1 in my entire repertoire ,which I wrote when I was a young lad and interested greatly in such things ..and thankfully,for posterity I made a video for it too..on Super 8!
The song may be from the Super 8 era, but the recording-mixing sounds quite a bit younger!
Some of my favorite songs by Soundgarden used odd time signatures:
- Limo Wreck is in 15/8 time.
- By Crooked Steps is in 5/4.
- The Day I tried to Live alternates between 7/4 and 4/4
- Black Hole Sun is in 4/4 and 9/8
- Mailman is all over the place with combinations of 4/4, 3/4 and 2/4