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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "Frank Padellaro" <kingradio@pumpingstation.com> |
| Subject | Re: What makes a great song? Poll!?!! |
| Date | Tue, 16 Sep 2003 23:05:15 -0500 |
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sake, does it ALWAYS have to be in 4/4?
>
>It's called imagination, people; use it for a change.
>
>Was that too "Lord"-like of a pronouncement? Sorry,
>but mincing words is not my forte.
erm. no. It was too silly a pronoucement. Are you calling for a cast of popsters to explore new and more interesting time signatures? Like some patron prince, commissioning art to suit your whims? Well, where is the money? I'll write you all the 6/8 masterpieces you want.
If you want to be truly sophisticated, then you should understand a couple of things.
1) Western pop music, for a hundred years, has been almost exclusively in 4 time, which you refer to as 4/4, although it is just as often 2/4, which I think you are including in your pronoucement as well. With the exception of the waltz, which may rear it's ugly head from time to time (see piano man, blue danube etc.), explorations of new and different time signatures are so infrequent (in ALL pop music) as to be rendered statistically insignificant. Yes, you can quote me charting songs from Take Five to Tom Sawyer, but the weight of material in the 4/4 camp makes all such suggestions novelties at best. This is not "power pop". It is all popular music. The only popular music that has given equal time to another rhythm is rap, which has completely embraced the 3 beat in the last decade.
You are like the newly elected dictator in "Bananas" insisting that the people's underwear be changed seven times a day. This is not the sort of change that can be mandated by your self-righteous plea. Where is your imagination? Where is your power pop song in five? People are moved by their muse, not by your exhortations to be "creative".
However, it must be stressed that there are many many beats that exist inside of the four time of power pop. The polyrhythm of Keith Moon contrasts wonderfully with the behind the beat shuffle of Ringo. Cultures that are far more rhythmically sophisticated than ours (South American, Indian, African) recognize thousands of rhythmic patterns within the same time signatures. They look at them much differently than just 4/4 or 2/4, but see the patterns that unfold over dozens of repetions of something we might say is a simple 16 bar pattern.
So your plea for sophistication might require you to start by doing a little more listening.
Frank.
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