Is this in 3/4 or 4/4?

TheBlueWolf

I'm hearing 12/8 too

Clarky

MatthewShreddery said:

Either 12/8 or 6/8 doesn't really matter
No need to overanalyse 

there's a difference between them, just as there's a difference between 2/4 and 4/4
2/4 sounds more 'urgent' because beat 1 should have the strongest accent and so be be heard more often..
also it will have a shorter phrase length
the difference is quite subtle, but it's there...

viz

It's definitely subtle and could be scored both ways (and doesn't matter much as Matt says!)


In favour of 6/8:

- The tick-tock sound, like a slow pendulum. Listen to the bass drum kicking the pendulum one way and the rim shot returning the kick. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. One-TWO. One-TWO.

- Slower tempi tend to support shorter bars because a very slow 4/4 is unwieldy and difficult to carry; this song seems about a beat per second and doesn't have quite the same convincingly long melodic lines as, say, the largo in Vivaldi's winter, which is a slow 4/4 but has a very strong melody spanning the entire bar. 


In favour of 12/8:

- the length and flow of the vocal lines and rhymes particularly in the chorus. You could argue that 6/8 would be chopping the melodies in half, and in the verse you could avoid the slightly clunky alternating bar shapes (the rest-sing, and sing-rest you'd get from 6/8). 

- you could argue that the first two beats are more prominant than the second two, making the rim shots land on 2 and 4, and the kick's volume different on the 1 and the 3, as per Clarky's first message. 


Depsite this I would still plump for 6/8, though there's nothing wrong with 12/8 - it's perfectly feasible especially during the solo where the momentum does allow the long bars to carry.

beed84

6/4 for me. 

Great song and great album too.

MatthewShreddery

Clarky said:

MatthewShreddery said:

Either 12/8 or 6/8 doesn't really matter
No need to overanalyse 

there's a difference between them, just as there's a difference between 2/4 and 4/4
2/4 sounds more 'urgent' because beat 1 should have the strongest accent and so be be heard more often..
also it will have a shorter phrase length
the difference is quite subtle, but it's there...

The differences are only mathematical. Time sigs don't dictate how the music will sound. You can write the same musical information a number of ways and get the same overall effect. It's just that some ways make more sense than others. 

Danny1969

To me the heaviest down beat interval dictates the time sig, so it follows that playing in 6/8 will sound different to to 12/8 in terms of overall feel

Take something like U2's "Where the streets have no name " intro and outro. I hear that in 6/8 and that's where I push it but to some people it's 3/4 and their push is different ... had a big ol argument at rehearsal once about that  

MatthewShreddery

It's pretty easy to just work backwards from where the beat drops in that U2 song and figure out what the pulse is, which would come out as 3/4. That would be the logical thing to do surely. Regardless of how you hear it, this is all proving my point that the time signature is irrelevant because you might call something 6/8 that someone else would insist was 3/4, therefore both sounding the same :-)

EDIT - sorry, just realised I sounded really pompous the way I worded that post. I'm not trying to prove a point etc. Just having a good chat about music :-)

Clarky

MatthewShreddery said:

Clarky said:

MatthewShreddery said:

Either 12/8 or 6/8 doesn't really matter
No need to overanalyse 

there's a difference between them, just as there's a difference between 2/4 and 4/4
2/4 sounds more 'urgent' because beat 1 should have the strongest accent and so be be heard more often..
also it will have a shorter phrase length
the difference is quite subtle, but it's there...

The differences are only mathematical. Time sigs don't dictate how the music will sound. You can write the same musical information a number of ways and get the same overall effect. It's just that some ways make more sense than others. 

they do make a difference because of the accents
4/4: 1 = strong, 2 = weak, 3 = strong [but less strong than 1], 4 = weak

2/4: 1 = strong, 2 = weak

it's not just math

viz

MatthewShreddery said:

It's pretty easy to just work backwards from where the beat drops in that U2 song and figure out what the pulse is, which would come out as 3/4. That would be the logical thing to do surely. Regardless of how you hear it, this is all proving my point that the time signature is irrelevant because you might call something 6/8 that someone else would insist was 3/4, therefore both sounding the same :-)

EDIT - sorry, just realised I sounded really pompous the way I worded that post. I'm not trying to prove a point etc. Just having a good chat about music :-)

No prob

Yep, 3/4 is completely different from 6/8 for example, because one's in 3 time with an oompapa sound, the other's in 2 time with a tick-tock sound and triplets.

good banter. 

Clarky

viz said:

MatthewShreddery said:

It's pretty easy to just work backwards from where the beat drops in that U2 song and figure out what the pulse is, which would come out as 3/4. That would be the logical thing to do surely. Regardless of how you hear it, this is all proving my point that the time signature is irrelevant because you might call something 6/8 that someone else would insist was 3/4, therefore both sounding the same :-)

EDIT - sorry, just realised I sounded really pompous the way I worded that post. I'm not trying to prove a point etc. Just having a good chat about music :-)

No prob

Yep, 3/4 is completely different from 6/8 for example, because one's in 3 time with an oompapa sound, the other's in 2 time with a tick-tock sound and triplets.

good banter. 

ah… I missed that..

3/4 is simple time: 1 and 2 and 3 and
6/8 is compound time: 1 and a 2 and a

viz

^ yep beautifully put

MatthewShreddery

Sorry, I'm not sure if the last couple of posts were for my benefit or not. Just want to clarify that I know the difference between compound and simple time. It's sometimes hard to get your points across properly on forums, which is why I usually avoid the music theory stuff on here as it often opens up a can of worms!

Clarky

MatthewShreddery said:

Sorry, I'm not sure if the last couple of posts were for my benefit or not. Just want to clarify that I know the difference between compound and simple time. It's sometimes hard to get your points across properly on forums, which is why I usually avoid the music theory stuff on here as it often opens up a can of worms!

to be honest.. music theory really shouldn't need to open up cans of worms at all..
there are of course a couple of schools of thought that can be a little at odds in places..
mostly between the folks that learnt jazz / contemporary and those that learnt classical music..
those debates can be a real ball ache.. but it's mostly personalities in combat rather than the knowledge itself
the fundamentals though are well established..

the big prob with the web is that everyone that logs in becomes a self appointed teacher..
no matter if they know what they're talking about or not
that's fine if the original question simply needs an opinion..
not so fine if there's an answer that is an absolute..

with respect to the piece being debated here though, having listened to it a few times now, I'd be inclined not to score it in a single time sig throughout.. because in this case, one size won't fit all that well..
there are very specific rhythmic changes going on, and that is most likely at the heart of the indecision within this debate..
time sigs absolutely have a 'feel' of their own due to accents, phrase length, when chords change and don't [can be emphasised more obviously when you hear the piece hit an important chord - like the one that starts / ends the progression, etc]…
this is why 2/4 and 4/4, or 6/8 and 12/8 exist.. because on the surface one looks like it's simply twice the size of the other, but there's a little more to it than that… in contemporary music these subtleties can almost, but not quite, vanish, to the point where often the artist simply writes a song that sounds cool to them and they just count it the way that it makes sense to them - which could in truth be right or wrong..
in orchestral music the difference is more pronounced because of the dynamics employed during the performance [orchestral musicians are generally schooled to be more sensitive to this stuff] and the locations of specific 'moments of importance' like cadences..

I do agree with you that getting a point across in writing, especially with respect to something you're hearing, can be a total nightmare.. lol..

MatthewShreddery

Clarky said:

viz said:

MatthewShreddery said:

It's pretty easy to just work backwards from where the beat drops in that U2 song and figure out what the pulse is, which would come out as 3/4. That would be the logical thing to do surely. Regardless of how you hear it, this is all proving my point that the time signature is irrelevant because you might call something 6/8 that someone else would insist was 3/4, therefore both sounding the same :-)

EDIT - sorry, just realised I sounded really pompous the way I worded that post. I'm not trying to prove a point etc. Just having a good chat about music :-)

No prob

Yep, 3/4 is completely different from 6/8 for example, because one's in 3 time with an oompapa sound, the other's in 2 time with a tick-tock sound and triplets.

good banter. 

ah… I missed that..

3/4 is simple time: 1 and 2 and 3 and
6/8 is compound time: 1 and a 2 and a

Just to clarify, the post of mine I've quoted is misleading - I don't mean to say that 6/8 and 3/4 are the same thing.
I was talking about the U2 song Danny mentioned, and how one person might hear the intro bit as 6/8 when someone else might hear it in 3/4. Nothing musical has changed, only the listeners' perceptions of where the pulse is.

MatthewShreddery

Clarky it'd be major overkill to use more than one time sig in a song so simple as this! Majorly overcomplicating things.
(I haven't listened to the end, so forgive me if there's a prog middle section in 7/8, though I highly doubt it)

viz

^ Ah!

robinbowes

MatthewShreddery said:

Clarky it'd be major overkill to use more than one time sig in a song so simple as this! Majorly overcomplicating things.
(I haven't listened to the end, so forgive me if there's a prog middle section in 7/8, though I highly doubt it)

But if the music is in more than one time signature then that's what you must use to notate it.

Considering the original piece, I hear it go from 12/8 to 6/8 at 0:42 and back to 12/8 at 1:15, for example.

R.

MatthewShreddery

IMO it sits happily in 6/8 or 12/8 and there's absolutely no need to change that at the chorus. It just bounces along nicely as it is. I think the syncopation in the lead vocals at the chorus gives some tension, but doesn't warrant a time signature change.

Not that any of this matters. 

Danny1969

I think of it as rowing a boat ... you dip your oar in and pull against it then dip in again etc. So to me on the Streets into I dip my oar in an pull for a count of 6 then dip in again ... not a count of 3. I put emphasis on the 1 after every 6 ... not after every 3 ... that's the difference. 

I realize I might be wrong, but that's how I see it 

merlin

Definitely 6/8.