Future challenge ideas

March 1, 2013 12:31 PM

Not sure whether this has been done before, but how about songs that aren't in 4/4? Or not in 4/4 from top to tail (this leaping immediately to mind). Additional kudos to whoever can handle the weirdest time signature. I was in a prog band millions of years ago that did a track - I kid you not - in 13/8. I still have nightmares. Another idea is to cover a track by a non-Western artist, maybe from a particular continent (Africa gets my vote). Something that might well have a rock and/or roll influence but which has a very distinctive non-Western flavour.
posted by Hoops McCann (13 comments total)

This is a good one -- my similar idea was "do a song in a time signature you've never done a song in before." So people who knock off waltzes every day will have to move on to something else, but someone who's never made a song before could go ahead and do one in 4/4.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 5:24 PM on March 1, 2013


We have a song in 15/8 and another in 7/8, both fine and fun to play and both posted here previously.

I think the time sig idea is a good one, especially if it stretches to include taking a song and modifying the time sig. I've been super happy about the way the major/minor thing has played out and this seems in a similar groove. I'll post it tomorrow (sorry, Feb got away from me).
posted by unSane at 8:43 PM on March 1, 2013


I always wanted to do a song in 1/4. Just remove any mooring sense of bars, make it feel like a toddler having a tantrum one footstep at a time, BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM.
posted by cortex at 3:21 PM on March 2, 2013 [3 favorites]


wouldn't people just hear that as 4/4, though?- people tend to impose their preconceptions on things they aren't familiar with and stuff in 4 is a fairly widespread preconception
posted by pyramid termite at 3:44 PM on March 2, 2013


That's part of why I've always wanted to try it, to see how far you'd have to go to undermine the tendency to hear stuff in four when not otherwise prompted. Avoid repeating structures on even divisions, avoid letting a heavy vs. light beat pattern coalesce.

I wonder if anything sufficiently blatant in its rejection of a multibeat meter would sound basically like a CD skipping.
posted by cortex at 4:00 PM on March 2, 2013


Posted. I've thought about 1/4 too. But how do you subdivide the 1? Whatever you do it has to have equal emphasis or you've just sped it up.
posted by unSane at 6:14 PM on March 2, 2013


Over The Ice by the Field has an oddly metronomic metre.
posted by unSane at 6:15 PM on March 2, 2013


(And sounds a lot like a CD skipping, in a good way, which is exactly what it is)
posted by unSane at 6:28 PM on March 2, 2013


Cortex: please do do this! I want BAM BAM BAM
posted by greenish at 9:46 AM on March 4, 2013


I gotta finish up the Taylor Swift / Star Trek parody I'm recording first. But I've been neglecting my drumming lately so it's kind of turning out BAM BAM BAM itself.
posted by cortex at 10:06 AM on March 4, 2013


Ok well, I wouldn't be able to decide which of those I wanted more anyway, so you just cruise right ahead.
posted by greenish at 10:14 AM on March 4, 2013


I've clearly posted at least one track that's in 1.
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 6:00 PM on March 4, 2013


The problem with stuff nominally in 1 is that the ear desperately searches for patterns of emphasis, so unless you're doing it mechanically, it always ends up sounding subdivided, even if the subdivision is unconscious or even random.

I say 'problem' but really that's as much feature as bug.
posted by unSane at 7:21 PM on March 4, 2013


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