With thanks to the online community, I received a pointer to a video of 1970 Fairport Convention playing "The Journeyman's Grace". This is a song written by Dave Swarbrick and Richard Thompson which was played regularly during 1970, but Richard left before it was recorded on 1971's "Angel Delight". Thus it is especially pleasing to see this video with Richard playing and singing.
Whilst the chorus of TJG is in straight 4/4, the verse is anything but. There are two bars of 5/4 followed by two bars of 4/4; two bars of 5/4, one bar of 4/4 and then one bar of 3/4 leading into the chorus. That 3/4 bar is a trick recycled from 'Now be thankful' and probably appears elsewhere as well.
Simon Nicol, then 19 years old, is blissfully unaware than in a few months he is going to become Fairport's sole guitarist as well as taking on a fair amount of vocals. In the video, he is hiding at the back, strumming away and seemingly oblivious to the peculiar rhythm.
Another song which I found on YouTube is Pentangle's "Light Flight". This was used as the theme music for a BBC drama called "Take three girls" which I remember watching, although I imagine that I was too young to appreciate fully what was going on. I have this song somewhere at home - probably a Pentangle collection - but I never listen to it as I don't find Pentangle conducive to my ears (don't know why). Anyway, this song is a masterpiece: the opening section is in 6/4. The verse alternates bars of 5/4 and 7/4, although I see this as two bars of 5/4 with a 2/4 bar thrown in to complicate matters. The middle section again is in 6/4.
I thought that I would check and see whether I have used any differing time signatures within songs. I know that somewhere I used the "3/4 leading into chorus" trick, but I think that was in some song which never received much listening time, so I can use it again without fear of sounding repetitive. I wrote a song called "Chance encounter" which has an intro in 5/4 which leads into the 3/4 verse. As it happens, this song was written in 1978 - the same year that I heard the Albion's "Lay me low" which uses the same transition - but I'm certain that I wrote my song before I heard the Albions. In fact, that intro probably derives from my discovering that Fairport's "Autopsy" was primarily in 5/4.
At the moment I'm working on a new arrangement of song which originally was called "Before noon" before transposing into "Morning man". This time round, I'm playing the song in 5/4, although somewhere a 6/4 bar crept in. The playout is in 6/4, again using that "Lay me low" trick. In order to upset the apple cart, at one point in the song there's a modulation; the bar prior to this is deliberately shortened to 3/4 whilst the rest of this section is in 5/4.
2 comments:
I think the Beatles used the 3/4 bar quite a bit as well for transitions.
Or maybe George Martin was careless with the razor blade...LOL!!
I'm not sure about using 3/4 transitions, but they certainly played around with time. Off the top of my head, "Happiness is a warm gun", "Two of us" and "Here comes the sun" (each song written by a different Beatle) have sections in changing meters.
Let us not forget Hatfield and the North nor bands of that ilk, but I was primarily writing about songs which are sung as opposed to tricky instrumentals.
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