TL:DR: 4 bars of Barracuda by Heart; one bar seems to be 5 beats long, or? Does this have a name?

Halp me, musically literate friends!

 

The way I understand and count the E minor section in the verse when I play it is 4/4 + 5/4, so I go " one, two, three four, one, two three, four, five" into the change of C major. I play the bass, so it's only nine E triplet figures up to the change to C. The drummer might count differently.

So here's the song structure of the verse (in my view):

 

Last edited: Nov 20, 2017

^
Thanks, sounds about right (it's one of those "just watch the drummer" things), was just wondering if there's some techy term for it / how to deal with it in a DAW (change the time signature for one measure?) I'm just figuring out how tempo mapping works in Ableton, didn't really expect to see this in a standard rock tune, thought this sort of thing was reserved for jazzers/metal drummers showing off :D

 

Well, instead of the 4/4 + 5/4, you could change one measure to be 9/4. That would cover the whole Em section of the verse. Yes, you do change the time signature your DAW. I hope it helps.

 

Totally agree. I'd say either way would be ok. In fact there is no rule - if you write notes, time signatures should help the performers understand, what/how to play.
If you want a techy term, it would be mixed meters

You can find plenty of examples in classical music of the 20th century and even before, like famous Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" (1874)



Or Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" (1913)... remember, at that time, most today's hard core drugs were over the counter medicines.. (can't play this one)

 

Not that many, apparently. 'Coz ...what are the odds?

Delving still deeper into the same learned tome:
"The suite is Mussorgsky's most famous piano composition and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists." -Wikipee
Which, at a glance, alternates between 5/4 & 6/4 throughout its [famous] Promenade movement.

While Heart's [famous] Barracuda is a showcase for the Wilson sisters (one of whom was sorta hot in a chunky way, way back in time, tho the years were not kind, and ...irrelevant) -- a straight-up 4/4 rock tune, changing its time sig in one measure.

One would think so, from ̶s̶h̶i̶t̶ well-researched quality reportage such as this



Sadly, one would be wrong.
Heroin was yet to be invented, and was not marketed anywhere, legally or otherwise, until the turn of the 20th century. By that time, Modest Petrovich was, alas, very much dead. Thanks to excessive consumption of organic solvents, namely ethanol. Which is available over-the-counter nearly everywhere, even as I type

Meth wasn't invented in time for either of these mixed-meter touchstones, so ...jenkem?

 

Last edited: Nov 21, 2017

3 bars of 4/4 and then 1 bar of 5/4

It's just adding 1 more beat to the last bar of a 4-bar phrase. Consider it a "device" to implement for "color".

They could have added 2 extra beats for a bar of 6/4, and everyone would've been ok with that too! :-D
(....drummer here)

 

I don't think that would work because it would cause the C chord change to fall out of place, on the downbeat. That'd be hard to count when performing. From a drummer's perspective it makes sense but not so much from the chord structure.

 

A vocal transcription has the following :

3/4 + 2/4 + 4/4 + 4/4 + 4/4

But, I transcribed this tune on drum kit in '07 to play live, and just went with 4+4+4+5. You could say that technically, with music, you don't need time sigs, bar lines, or key sigs. lol

 

I have a "mediocre" musical knowledge and I play piano.. but my older brother is a professor of harmony, counterpoint, orchestration (..and some other stuff) at the academy. When I asked him for the "technical term", he just said that I should look for the term "metrum", "mixed metrum" (and NOT "time signature") and said that there are "many" cases (maybe by not-so-famous composers), esp. in 20th century, mentioning Stravinsky as an example (boy, he was right;)).
He also said that there are even cases when left and right hand of a piano piece have different time signatures (Béla Bartók - not sure..) ..but I couldn't find an example.

I then googled/wikied this term and found the info that I posted, that way you got to the same point. But still ..you need the term to look for! ;) (it's my way of gathering information, hope not anything wrong with it)

*off topic
That thing about the drugs was obviously a (semi)joke (Freud's experiments with coke came to my mind, when I saw Stravinsky's score..), but if we are talking heroin "first synthesized in 1874 by C. R. Alder Wright, an English chemist working at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London" it was "Bayer (in 1895) that marketed diacetylmorphine as an over the counter drug under the trademark name Heroin."
It always makes me laugh that Aspirin was marketed for pain and Heroin as an antitussive. As Bayer was selling the drug at least 12 years (untill 1910+), it would be indeed possible Stravinsky had a bottle of "cough-suppressant" at hand, when he was writing The Rite of Spring, published in 1913.
Bayer's commercial.. send for samples!

 

the 2nd bar has the 5 beats, right???

 

I would've also attached the mp3 file for this section too, because the way you have it is a little confusing.