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ivan@stellysee.de
From | "Michael Bennett" <mrhonorama@hotmail.com> |
Subject | 4/4 or Fight (was Re: What makes a great song? Poll!?!!) |
Date | Wed, 17 Sep 2003 07:20:31 -0500 |
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1. Maybe we should get together a power pop tribute to U.K. -- they proudly
noted all the difficult time signatures they played in.
2. What was your point # 2??? Perhaps it was the difficulty of playing 4/4
with a typewriter?
3. Excellent post.
Mike Bennett
Record reviews and more at http://fufkin.com
>From: "Frank Padellaro" <kingradio@pumpingstation.com>
>Reply-To: audities@smoe.org
>To: <audities@smoe.org>
>Subject: Re: What makes a great song? Poll!?!!
>Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 23:05:15 -0500
>
>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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