Counting beats with Jasmine Myra

Continuing my occasional series of blogs¹where I note the time signature used in pieces, it is time to look at the music of Jasmine Myra. In instrumental music, the use of 34 time is far more prevalent than it is in vocal music and so JM has pieces in 3, pieces in 4, and there's even one piece in both, though obviously not at the same time*. As I noted before, my favourite piece "Knowingness"² begins in 34 time then moves to 44 for the second half.

Today her music was again playing in my headphones when suddenly I noticed that the piece "Words left unspoken" (written about not being able to part with her grandmother who died in hospital during the Covid-19 lockdown) is in 54 time - or at least, I think it is. It's very difficult to establish where the 'one' is, and without this, one can't determine the rhythm properly. Normally the advice given is to listen to the drums, and if that doesn't work, then listen to the bass, as one of these instruments will emphasize the first beat of each bar. In the studio recording of this piece, the string quartet's lines do not start on the one.

* Although this is possible - it's called a '3 against 4 polyrhythm'. I've done it in my songs a few times, but only for a few bars at a time, having six crotchet triplets in a bar of 44

Internal links
[1] 1686
[2] 1742

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Nightnoise

In the mid 1990s, there was a married couple on the kibbutz who used to run a cassette library on Saturday mornings (and at some stage I computerised their library and lending records). Although most of the cassettes that they had were classical, there were also some from other types of music. I used to borrow a few cassettes every week or so, hoping to find some new music to like.

And I did: 'The parting tide' by the American/Irish group Nightnoise. I imagine that it was shortly after hearing that cassette that I ordered the CD from Windham Hill (according to my records, 1 Oct 1995); I used to play it frequently. Eventually the penny dropped and I looked for other discs by this group - I found three more. I ripped one of the discs to mp3 several years ago and these tracks found their way onto my mp3 players, so I hear them every few months.

I even met the guitarist of the group, Mícheál Ó Domhnaill, when he and another musician (probably the violinist Kevin Burke) came to play a concert in Israel. At the time I was in my Irish music phase - along with Lunasa - so I was very enthusiastic. Ó Domhnaill signed the various cd sleeves and music book that I brought along with me.

For reasons of neglect, I haven't listened to 'The parting tide' for maybe twenty years, so the other day when I was digging through my archives for a certain disc to rip, I found this along with its siblings and ripped them all. I'm listening to 'The parting tide' now and really enjoying it.

And whilst not really paying attention, I noticed that one instrumental, 'The kid in the cot' was in 54 time; or was it? It seems that there are alternating bars of 54 and 64, although I wouldn't go so far as to call this 114. Very sophisticated. Like everything else these days, it's available for listening to on YouTube, apparently uploaded only a year ago. Listening to it again, it sounds now like a phrase consisting of four bars of three beats each, only that the second bar has dropped a beat. And almost without listening, I realised that the second part of 'This just in' from the 'Shadow of time' is in a rollicking 54 rhythm.

The genre of music that Nightnoise played is described as New Age Irish; most of the time one can hear the melodies of Irish traditional music filtered through the sensibilities of the digital age. Listen to 'The kid in the cot' - the first two minutes are Irish, then at 2:09 there's a very modern section that lasts until about 2:49. Then's it back to Irish themes.

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Counting beats with Van der Graaf Generator (3)

Twelve years ago, I wrote: "Yesterday, I heard "La Rossa" as a slow 12/8, and on that basis, the middle section became very interesting ("if we made love now..."): a bar of 3/4 followed by two of 4/4, repeated several times (that could be written as 9/8 followed by two bars of 12/8, to make the triplet beat clear)."

I was listening to the 2021 remix of the song (the only differences that I can hear is a guitar line in the introduction that isn't audible in the version familiar to me from 1976; along with one in the saxophone solo at the end where there are a few new phrases as well as some guitar 'chunks' at the very end) when suddenly I noticed yet another metrical peculiarity of this song, especially the middle section that I referenced above. This either displays metric modulation (three beats in the space of two) or something similar, but that isn't anything new for me.

What caught my attention was ironically the 'if we made love now' phrase at about 4:17 in the song: after having triplets and fours scattered around, that specific line (and its corresponding repeat at 5:22/3) has a five beat bar. The word 'now' is the first beat of five before the next chord change. The same thing happens at the end of the phrase 'it will change all there is yet to be': 'it will change' is one triplet, 'all there is' another triplet, and 'be' is the first beat of a five beat bar. Wow. 

The resources available to me now are more extensive than they were 12 years ago, and I'm going to try and bring this song to the interest one of the YouTubers who relish odd rhythmic constructions.

By chance, today is Peter Hammill's birthday.

Counting beats with Van der Graaf

I had a long drive yesterday to the north of Israel, and took with me a few disks to listen to on the way. Coming back, I played Van der Graaf Generator's "Godbluff" and "Still life" and for want of something better to do, I started counting beats.

People have always ragged VdGG with their weird time signatures, but I've never really noticed and always assumed that those people were just tarring VdGG with the time signature brush, whether it's true or not. If you want real funny time signatures, listen to National Health....

So: "The undercover man" starts in 3/4 for two verses and then moves to 4/4 for the rest of the song. "Arrow" is in 4/4 throughout. "Scorched earth" is a different kettle of fish, though. The opening statement is three bars of 4/4 followed by one of 3/4. The verse has lines of 4/4 and lines of 5/4. The closing riff sequence is mainly in 5/4. There's a restatement of the riff at one point in 6/4. There's one section which seems to have 5/4, 3/4, 4/4 in successive bars. I also counted some bars as 7/4. That's fun for all the family.

Over the years, I haven't listened much to "The sleepwalkers", so this was quite a metric shock. I haven't figured out yet in which time signature the opening verse is - this will have to wait for another time. After the middle "if I only had time", there's a long riff section of 18 beats per repetition, which is probably three bars of 4/4 and one of 6/4. When the final verse comes in, the main structure of the vocal lines is 4/4, 2/4, 4/4, 4/4, with the instrumental bits in 3/4. I wonder whether the song was originally written like the final verse but became "tarted up" during the arranging process, during which beats were lost forever.

I listen to most of "Still life" quite frequently, but there are still some interesting things to be heard. The opening two tracks, "Pilgrims" and "Still life" seem to be totally in 4/4. Yesterday, I heard "La Rossa" as a slow 12/8, and on that basis, the middle section became very interesting ("if we made love now..."): a bar of 3/4 followed by two of 4/4, repeated several times (that could be written as 9/8 followed by two bars of 12/8, to make the triplet beat clear).

I noticed a few weeks ago that "My room" has a similar metric structure to the final verse of "Sleepwalkers" - 4/4, 2/4, 4/4, 4/4. If we take the first line, "Searching for" is a bar of 4/4, "diamonds" is a half bar of 2/4, "in a sulphur mine" is two bars of 4/4.

"Childlike faith in childhood's end" has most of its verses in 13/4 (or 4/4, 4/4, 5/4)!

Buy me a metronome for Christmas.

More songs with odd time signatures

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.

Rise up like the sun

Before I get started on the real content of this entry, I just want to note that I spent about 30 minutes writing a blog entry, saved it and then ... poof! It's gone. Blogger prides itself on automatically saving entries so that if something happens during the writing process, the entry is still saved. So much for that. Anyway, as I always say to someone at work after they delete something that they've been working on for the past hour, it's always easier the second time round.

I am also going to type this in Internet Explorer. I don't like IE very much and try to avoid it. At work I use Firefox, but for some reason I was unable to install it at home, so I tried Opera. This is more like FF than IE, but has its differences. It also caused formatting problems whilst writing the blog (the previous entry shows a few lines extending too far right), and it was these problems which caused me to "save" today's entry, in the hope that saving the entry and starting anew would cause these problems to disappear. Some hope. So anyway, here we go again....

I try to vary the music to which I listen at home, instead of grinding the same few discs into dust. For example, today I was listening to June Tabor's 1996 "Anthology" compilation, which is a low-key but pleasant collection featuring a few gems (such as "Verdi cries" and "The band played waltzing Matilda"). I haven't listened to this disc in years, so it was a pleasant surprise.

Anyway, a few weeks ago in preparation for my trip up north, I loaded into my mobile mp3 player the Albion Band's quintessential 1978 album, "Rise up like the sun". I bought this shortly after its release and considered this to be second only to "Liege and Lief" in the folk-rock pantheon (an opinion which I still hold). The cd release includes four bonus tracks, only one of which - the world premiere of Richard Thompson's "Rainbow over the hill" sung by then-wife Linda - is equal to the original tracks.

At the time, I was aware of some of the metrical sophistication displayed in songs like "Lay me low", which basically is in 3/4 time. Its chorus (three repeats of the line "Lay me low") is, however, in 5/4 time, which is obtained by taking two bars of 3/4 and chopping a beat off the end. It sounds quite natural although slightly odd. It's difficult to imagine unaccompanied singing in 5/4, although Fairport play "Sir William Gower" in this time signature, as does Eliza Carthy with "Adieu, adieu" on her 1998 "Red" album.

This time around, my ear caught some games being played in the opening calling-on song, "Ragged heroes"; specifically, the bar prior to the chorus is often truncated to 2/4, whereas the song itself is in 4/4 time. Anyone looking for a precedent for this can look at John Lennon's "Bungalow Bill" which displays the same trick, although I doubt that this was the inspiration for the Albion Band.

But the real ear-opener is what was the closing track on the vinyl album, the epic "Gresford Disaster". John Tams set the words of the broadside ballad to a hymn tune, and the result, in lugubrious 4/4, is definitely reverent in memory of the 266 men who died. After several verses, a few ringing guitar notes are heard, and the song enters its contentious instrumental section. Taking the prosodic approach, this section represents the miners' families wailing at their loss, although I take a more musical approach. I write "contentious", as many people find this section exceeding long and unlistenable, primarily because of Ric Sanders' cosmic violin noodling (I can take it or leave it). Let me note the excellent drumming by Dave Mattacks, who is instantly recognisable due to his fills. When viewed as a whole, this section displays fine dynamics, starting with virtually nothing and finishing in a fine climax.

What caught my ear especially was the rhythm of this instrumental section. Two bars of 4/4 were easily identifiable, but after that came ... what? At first I was counting it as five beats (which would make each cycle in 13/4), but I wasn't sure of myself. I decided to contact Ric Sanders who is listed as the composer of this part (in one of the few composing credits on the album, an omission I find strange); at the time (about ten days ago), he was touring North America with the three piece acoustic Fairport Convention, and so communication was a bit difficult. Gracious as always, this is what Ric had to write -

I'm writing this in JFK so don't have the recording to hand, and it's a long time ago!! But I can tell you that The Gresford was put together by all of us arranging different bits - especially John Tams, Graeme Taylor, and myself. The middle (blowing) section is in fact a composition that I had written completely separately, called "Singing, Ringing", which just happily fitted. Its rhythmic cycle is 2 bars of 4/4 followed by 1 of 9/8.

Now I know what it's supposed to be, it makes it much easier to count the rhythm. What threw me was that in the 9/8 bar, the beats were played faster - obviously as they are quavers and not crotchets. This section mutates into a 3/4 portion led by Graeme Taylor's guitar, and of course it is easier to move smoothly from 9/8 to 3/4 (they're essentially the same) as opposed from 5/4 to 3/4. This section is terminated by John Tams singing two verses (starting with the one about the Lord Mayor of London collecting money) over that same 3/4 rhythm, before closing down and reverting to the initial 4/4 time.

However one wants to look at this song, it is a rhythmic tour de force.

After having deciphered all that, I thought that I would look again at "Liege and Lief" to see whether it contained any metrical sophistication. The first four songs are all in 4/4, so the first side is extremely conventional. "The deserter" is in 3/4, which brings a pleasant change. The instrumental medley starts in 12/8, moves to 3/4 and then finishes in 4/4, so that is definitely more interesting for drummers. I'm not too sure how to count this, but "Tam Lin" varies between 3/4 and 7/4; this is caused by verses having 4/4 bars inserted in the middle, whereas the instrumental sections are all in 3/4. "Crazy Man Michael" closes things down in 3/4. So yes, "Liege and Lief" is also fairly sophisticated in this respect.

"Now be thankful" is basically in 4/4, although its verse has a few 2/4 bars and the bar leading up to the chorus has been shortened, creating a 3/4 bar. A few songs on "Angel Delight" also contained some odd signatures, and of course Maartin Allcock had some great lopsided instrumentals during his tenure with Fairport - check out "The noise club" on "Red and Gold", which is basically in 5/4 with a middle section in 6/4. On the final verse, it sounds to me as if Maart is continuing to play in 5/4 whilst DM plays in 6/4. Who knew that such polyrhythms lay at the heart of such music.

Latter day Fairport is unfortunately very four square in this respect, which is one subliminal reason why I find their current output uninteresting.

OK - enough for today. Must take the dog for a walk.

Shabbat Shalom.