biggest hits which are not in 4/4 time?

thisisguitar

@Teentonetal

Sting is playing nylon string on it I think, Eric does an electric solo. 

Seven Days - 5/4

I Was Brought To My Senses - 7/4 (from Verse)

Straight To My Heart - 7/4 

Love Is Stronger Than Justice - 7/8 (verses)

St Augustine in Hell - 7/8 (Drummer plays 7/4 on the ride cymbal)

I hung My Head - 9/8 (played as odd time, not compound. Think 5/8 and 4/8 in sequence)

The Police 

Syncronicity 1 - 6/4

Teetonetal

Thank you! Seven days was it!

vasselmeyer

Clearly not a hit but I was pretty sure that there was a song on The White Album which was constantly shifting time signatures. A quick listen through and I remembered correctly; it's "Happiness is a Warm Gun". The entry from beatlesbible.com tells us it took them 95 takes and they still spliced it together:

* She’s not a girl who misses much… (0:00-0:14):

o 4 bars of 4/4.

* She’s well acquainted with the velvet touch… (0:14-0:45):

o 1 bar of 4/4

o 1 bar of 2/4

o 5 bars of 4/4

o 1 bar of 5/4

o 1 bar of 4/4.

* I need a fix cos I’m goin’ down… (0:45-1:13):

o twice through a 3 bars/4 bars/4 bars series of 3/8 (i.e. 22 bars of 3/8).

* Mother superior, jump the gun… (1:13-1:35):

o thrice through a bar each of 9/8 and 10/8.

* Happiness is a warm gun… (1:35-2:43):

o 4 bars of 4/4

o 3 bars of 12/8 (with the drums doing 4 bars of 4/4 and 1 bar of 2/4!)

o 5 bars of 4/4 (the final bar entering free time)

o 1 bar of 2/4 (in free time)

o 5 bars of 4/4

ICBM

I didn't realise Duran Duran's Ordinary World was in an odd time signature until I heard their new guitarist trying to play it on that TV show last night...

seany65

Some Pretenders' stuff is in 5/4 and so on. Don't ask me what though, I have enough trouble with 4/4.

Cirrus

ICBM said:

I didn't realise Duran Duran's Ordinary World was in an odd time signature until I heard their new guitarist trying to play it on that TV show last night...

What was the show, think I'll be able to find it? Sounds funny! I'm a big fan of songs where the time sig isn't OBVIOUSLY strange/ odd - where it just happens to be what the melody does, rather than sounding like it was forced from the beginning.

ICBM

Cirrus said:

What was the show, think I'll be able to find it? Sounds funny! I'm a big fan of songs where the time sig isn't OBVIOUSLY strange/ odd - where it just happens to be what the melody does, rather than sounding like it was forced from the beginning.

Duran Duran - One Night Only. ITV, Wednesday 25th March 11.05pm. It was a repeat so it may have been originally shown a while ago. (The week before it was Spandau Ballet too!) Warning: the presenter is massively irritating .

I don't know who the guitarist was - they didn't even bother introducing him - but he had neither the aggression of Andy Taylor or the technique of Warren Cuccurullo.

I genuinely don't know if Ordinary World is in an odd time or not, I've never given it that much attention before, but he mangled it so badly it sounded like it and that he was struggling to make it fit...

fretmeister

Beatles "Blackbird"

Main part in 3/4 with the rest in 2/4 and 4/4

Grunfeld

There's a bar of 5/4 in "Rockaway Beach" by The Ramones  [/scraping the barrel]

BenSirAmos

I cant think of any others - but I might with a little help from my friends (12/8)

thisisguitar

Ordinary World is in 4/4 - I'll assume @ICBM was taking the piss out of how bad the guitarist was on that show.

PolarityMan

Anyone think of any popular songs that do the alternating time-sig thing? It's one of my favourite rhythmic devices, so like say a bar of 6, then a bar of 7 repeated. Good examples for feel would be the end of For whom the bell tolls by Metallica or the end of Davidian by amchinehead.

I really love the way it makes the riff feel like it's growing and shrinking and use that device myself all the time...but does anyone have any example outside metal?

steamabacus

Hello Hello by Caravan kind of does that. The main riff is in 7 (which you could count as alternating bars of 3 and 4) and then the choruses are alternating bars of 6 and 5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3qgJ883hss

ICBM

thisisguitar said:

Ordinary World is in 4/4 - I'll assume @ICBM was taking the piss out of how bad the guitarist was on that show.

Yes .

Although his timing was so awful it really did make me wonder for a minute whether it was actually in some clever time that doesn't sound obviously so until you try to play it. And that given the original guitarist was Warren Cuccurullo, it wouldn't actually have surprised me - anyone who's played with Zappa would be entirely comfortable with that.

steamabacus

45 years on from Caravan but also from Canterbury, a slightly more modern smorgasborg of groovy time sigs ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsuB4IXEJz8

viz

Rachmaninov uses 5/4 in Isle of the Dead to symbolise the motion of rowing across the river Styx, and he switches between 2+3 and 3+2 throughout which to me signifies the boatman switching his rowing rhythm.



And my personal favourite, the 2nd movement of Tchaikowsky's 6th, also in 5/4 - it's SO natural that it actually sounds like it's in something more standard like 4/4. I think it's one of the most sumptuous things ever written; the slow part in the middle is just gorgeous.

Zodiac51

Paramore The Only Exception is in 12/8 & gets double points for a slightly funny tuning too

https://youtu.be/-J7J_IWUhls 

Axe_meister

Foo Fighters Times like these goes from 7/8 to 4/4 and back.

Cream White room starts in 5/4