Seal - A Kiss From A Rose

[Roy]

I will respectfully disagree that 3/6/9 8 are all the same thing. 6/8 and 3/4 may have the same math but have different feels and interpretations for a musician. (See: America from West Side Story)
As a listener, meh, it doesn't matter.
On paper, as a player it can make a huge difference. I think it's an important distinction.

For mixers? Does it matter? Maybe for delay times? I guess for this forum that's the choice bit. I don't know if I've ever cared what the time signature was of a song I've mixed. Maybe? I've found it interesting. I've gone "oh yeah, this is in 5/4". But did it have any impact on my mixing choices? Can it? Should it?

E: Page 2 Sniper....

[mikej]

I think you are perhaps missing something?

I hope I have this correct. It's more that you could notate 2 bars of 3/8 as 1 bar of 6/8. So for the Kiss From A Rose example, to add the 'extra' bar, I suppose you could write, 1 bar of 6/8 and 1 bar of 3/8, or instead write one bar of 9/8 - as per the transcription.

Cheers!

[Roy]

I think you are perhaps missing something?

I hope I have this correct.  It's more that you could notate 2 bars of 3/8 as 1 bar of 6/8.  So for the Kiss From A Rose example, to add the 'extra' bar, I suppose you could write, 1 bar of 6/8 and 1 bar of 3/8, or instead write one bar of 9/8 - as per the transcription.

Cheers!

I could always be missing something. I am not a smart person.

Yes, you could notate 2 bars of 3/8 as 6/8. And I've posited that you could write the 9/8 bars as 3/8 + 6/8.
That said, I've come around to view it as 9/8 because how that phrase is felt.

I don't play and instrument but I can see how one my approach music one way, seeing it noted as 3/8 and another way if if were 6/8.

[mikej]

Oh, I think I might see what you are getting at. Bear in mind my knowledge only spans a couple of days. I'm guessing technically it kind of doesn't matter how the bars are broken up. All the same, depending on the flow of the song, the phrasing of the lyrics and the note values you need in each bar - that notation wise it probably makes more sense musically to break up the bars in a certain way, in preference to another, ie in this case bars of 6/8 and 9/8 for the sections with the extra beat.

Cheers!

[yeroc]

This is all fair game as far as I'm concerned -- whether you consider it as (like I did) groups of 3/8 bars or as (like the transcription does) as a pattern of 6/8 and 9/8 bars is equally valid. In either case the notation is clearly following after the musical fact, so it's only ever a tool for helping analyse and question how the rhythmic/metric structure makes us feel. For me the purpose is always about using examples like these to expand my own conception of what makes musical structures work, and perhaps to inspire some new songwriting ideas. Or, to put it another way, I think it's a great song and just want to see if I can learn something useful from it for my own work.

Mike, meant to ask you about this line-

"One other little trivia nugget here: this song appears to be about 40 cents above concert pitch"

How do you hear this? Besides the obvious years of ear training that you've had, what is the giveaway in this song that perked your ears to this? Are there usually telltale signs for out of the norm arrangement pitches? Any other notable songs you can think of that are noticeably below or above convert pitch? I'm a total neophyte when it comes to this, any additional insight is greatly appreciated.

[mikej]

Mike, meant to ask you about this line-

"One other little trivia nugget here: this song appears to be about 40 cents above concert pitch"

How do you hear this? Besides the obvious years of ear training that you've had, what is the giveaway in this song that perked your ears to this? Are there usually telltale signs for out of the norm arrangement pitches? Any other notable songs you can think of that are noticeably below or above convert pitch? I'm a total neophyte when it comes to this, any additional insight is greatly appreciated.

I guess Mike S missed this question... I meant to post something here a while back but I figured I'd wait for Mike to post and it slipped my mind too!

I obviously can't speak for Mike S, but I find you can sometimes pick up on these sort of things if you actually sit down and try to transcribe the track via keyboard (or whatever), and you find the notes aren't quite lining up, or are a bit off.

As well as tracks being sped up to make them more exciting (or perhaps slowed down) back in the days of tape, I'm sure I recall hearing somewhere that Van Halen (band) tuned their instruments to whatever (state of) tune Eddie's guitar was in. I've not checked this myself - so I guess some of their tracks might not be exactly to pitch. I think I also saw somewhere that for some of the tracks the E or something on the guitar is tuned slightly off so certain chords sound 'right' (not drop D, but tuned slightly off pitch). Can't remember which track it was now though! Might possibly have been mentioned in a Rick Beato youtube video.

A somewhat related aside - one thing that I found interesting from recreating some early Madonna tracks for fun in the past, was how much was played down live, even though it kind of sounds sequenced. So, especially in the guitar parts, there are constant little variations - rather than the more sequenced, quantized and cut and paste approach today. Again I can't remember what track it was - perhaps Holiday or something? The guitar parts in the chorus I think are subtly different each time. Madonna's first tour had a live band - including synth bass played live, for example.

I'm not much of a musician, however if you have a musical ear and can pick up a little theory to be able to work out the key and chords - you can have a fair crack at looping up and transcribing tracks to midi in the DAW, for example.

Hope that provides some small insight anyway.

Cheers!

[Mike Senior]

Mike, meant to ask you about this line-
"One other little trivia nugget here: this song appears to be about 40 cents above concert pitch"
How do you hear this? Besides the obvious years of ear training that you've had, what is the giveaway in this song that perked your ears to this? Are there usually telltale signs for out of the norm arrangement pitches? Any other notable songs you can think of that are noticeably below or above convert pitch? I'm a total neophyte when it comes to this, any additional insight is greatly appreciated.

Apologies for the delayed reply -- didn't get a notification for this somehow! As mikej already correctly surmised, I noticed this because I was transcribing the harmonics by ear with the help of an A-440Hy reference piano instrument, at which point a 40-cent mismatch is pretty glaring!

Mike S.