There are a few pieces of popular music that break out of the strait-jacket of 4\/4 time, or its somewhat less popular cousin 3\/4 time. Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” comes to mind of course, the jazz classic that alternates between 5\/4 and 4\/4 time signatures.<\/p>\n
I recently realized that the 1981 hit Golden Brown<\/a> by The Stranglers has an intro in 13\/4 time. I can’t think of anything<\/i> else in pop music with a 13\/4 time signature.<\/p>\n In particular, the song’s instrumental intro is formed from sequences of four measures that have 3,3,3,4 beats, respectively, for a total of thirteen beats.<\/p>\n Very strange, yet it all works. When you’re just listening to the intro it feels oddly exotic, but completely right. I suspect that there might be some perceptual number theory working under the surface: Three groups of three-beat measures, and then every fourth measure having four beats. Perhaps the logic of this is so compelling that it trumps our cultural expectations.<\/p>\n And I love the fact that when you say the words “Golden Brown” out loud, the rhythm you hear is exactly the same as when you say “13\/4”.<\/p>\n It is wonderful when artists do something that according to conventional rules should not work — and then it does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are a few pieces of popular music that break out of the strait-jacket of 4\/4 time, or its somewhat less popular cousin 3\/4 time. Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” comes to mind of course, the jazz classic that alternates between 5\/4 and 4\/4 time signatures. I recently realized that the 1981 hit Golden Brown by … Continue reading “13\/4”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7491"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7498,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7491\/revisions\/7498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}