2 * 2 (in a bar) # 4 (in a bar)?

Bob-Dubery

So there's an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman and a Lithuanian in this bar....

No. I'm wondering about the difference (as it seems to me) between 2 bars of 2/4 and a bar of 4/4. I hear music that seems to spring a surprise on the listener by being mostly in 4 but then chucking a bar of 2 into things. Nick Drake does it on "Road" (IIRC), and it seems to be not unusual in Cajun and Celtic folk music.

Or listen to this extract from a song where Richard Thompson seems to be switching between 4 and 2 quite a lot
http://www.box.net/shared/35jcquqffsflh3s303v6

Let me explain. It sounds to me like most of the sung verse is in 4 but right at the end there's a bar of 4 that starts on the word "act" in the line "Can't act his way out of a paper bag" and then the verse concludes with a bar of 2. THEN the little instrumental motif that repeats throughout the song (and here prefaces the guitar break) is alternating bars of 4 and 2.

Or that's how I hear it. I could be wrong. You can count the whole song in 4 from beginning to end but it gets to be hard work. Counting in 2s through out is much easier but it seems more natural to count it in 4s and then accept the variation of a bar of 2 every now and then.

Which leads me to ponder how it is that a bar of 4/4 is not just simply the same as two bars of 2/4.

Bob-Dubery

Nick Drake: "Road"

deefstes

Changing the time signature for one or more beats is a fairly common device and used more frequently than one might think. If it's done well it almost slips by unnoticed. The Beatles experimented with it a lot. Almost every other song on the album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" has a time signature change of some sort. One prominent song of the Beatles (although from another album) in which they use this extensively is "All You Need Is Love" in which they switch between 12/8 and 9/8. If you try to count out the beats on the "Love, Love, Love" part you'll notice it immediately.

The song "America" from West Side Story switches between time signatures on every beat (toggling between 6/8 and 3/4). This is called mixed meter and the time signature is then written as follows:
6 3
8 4
As opposed to having to write the new time signature in every beat.

Here's an example of the the first phrase of the song:

Bob-Dubery

The famous Beatles time change I know is "We Can Work It Out".

But I'm particularly interested in this practice of slipping a 2:4 bar into a mostly 4:4 composition and why it's even noticeable at all. That it's noticeable says to me that a bar of 4:4 is not the same as 2 bars of 2:4.

deefstes

X-rated Bob wrote:But I'm particularly interested in this practice of slipping a 2:4 bar into a mostly 4:4 composition and why it's even noticeable at all. That it's noticeable says to me that a bar of 4:4 is not the same as 2 bars of 2:4.

Oh but it most definitely is not the same thing (which is why you're noticing it). There are two factors that determine the rhythmic feel of a song, the tempo (how long the duration of a note, let's say a crotchet, is) and the meter (how many notes, let's say crotchets, there are before the beat repeats).

You could slip from 4/4 to 2/2 unnoticed if you also double the tempo. In other words, you're halfing the meter but doubling the tempo. In the examples you've provided, the meter is halved while the tempo remains unchanged and consequently there is a clear difference. If you try to count out the entire song in 4/4 you'll find that after a while the beat keeps falling on count 3 and not on 1. That's because there was one bar of 2/4 beat which altered the meter. If there were two bars of 2/4 it would have been less noticeable and there would simply have been one pulse (on the count of 3) that would have been accentuated and slightly unexpected. But these songs that you pointed out intersperses the normal 4/4 time signature with only one measure of 2/4.

If the entire song was in 2/4 as opposed to 4/4, it would have had a completely different feel (more like a marching band song) so clearly two 2/4 bars are not the same as one 4/4 bar.

Bob-Dubery

Dewald "deefstes" Swanepoel wrote: You could slip from 4/4 to 2/2 unnoticed if you also double the tempo. In other words, you're halfing the meter but doubling the tempo. In the examples you've provided, the meter is halved while the tempo remains unchanged and consequently there is a clear difference. If you try to count out the entire song in 4/4 you'll find that after a while the beat keeps falling on count 3 and not on 1.

Correct. On the Thompson song that I gave as an example, where there are several such shifts, you can count it in 4s all the way through but it's hard work for the reason you give - the key accents in the tune move around.

Other songs where I'm aware of this it doesn't happen as often, so they were worse examples. EG The Drake number.

I have noticed this a lot in folk music, but only when I start tapping my foot. This interests me because some of these tunes may originally have been written as dance tunes and so the people dancing would have to be aware of the meter change or aware of the possibility.

Anyhoo.... thanks for the reply and the information. I think there is a penny tottering on the edge now. I hope that it will drop soon.

deefstes

X-rated Bob wrote:I have noticed this a lot in folk music, but only when I start tapping my foot. This interests me because some of these tunes may originally have been written as dance tunes and so the people dancing would have to be aware of the meter change or aware of the possibility.

That's a very interesting point. As exciting as a time signature change is in the sense of musical appreciation, it is the worst for dancing. I remember in my varsity days at the hostel bokjolle the DJ's would, for some reason, love to play Iris by Goo Goo Dolls ( While it's a good song it has this pesky time signature change where the song switches briefly from 3/4 to 2/4 between choruses. So you'd have an entire dance floor of couples waltzing elegantly around the floor and then all of a sudden the time signature changes to 2/4 and everything collapses into a clumsy mess of stumbling and tripping. Maybe that's why the DJ's played the song; it must have been very funny observing this scrum from the sideline. ?

However, once you've copped on to the time signature change and you anticipate it (and you practice it a few times), it actually feels great when you can dance through it and get it right. Maybe that's the whole point of having time signature changes in folk music. It might just be that ye olde folk dancers were less stupid than we might think ?

Also worth mentioning is that interspersing a 4/4 beat with 2/4 (as in your examples) wouldn't mess up your dancing as badly. It's a bit like being in a marching band and then discovering that the beat is now all of a sudden no longer on your left foot but on your right.

But yes, folk music often has way more complicated rhythmic patterns than just that. In Irish Dancing there is one style called the Slip Jig (one of the soft shoe dances) which is in 9/8 time signature. I'm not aware that it is common for the time signature to change in mid song but it is common for the accents to change from the 5th and 9th pulse to the 1st and 6th pulse. It sounds good but it is confusing as hell if you're trying to tap it out. Yet, it is a core element of Irish Dancing. The Scottish Highland dance called Scottish Lilt is very similar.