Ruminations on the state of music, bands, technology, town and country and anything else that takes my fancy
Thursday, 27 June 2013
Time Signatures and The Classical Popular Crossover
Well there's a mouthful , and it's sort of as a result of a chat today that for some reason wandered on to time signatures in music , originating from the fact that all formalised dance is done in 8 bars. I said that nearly every pop song is in 4/4 time , notable exceptions being Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit in Waltz time which is 3/4 , Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill which is in 9/8 time , Dave Brubeck's Take 5 which is in 5/4 time and Unsquare Dance which in god knows what time.
Anyway that got me on to Malcolm McLaren who had some mad ideas such as his Opera / Hip Hop album Fans and the mad collaboration with Bootsy Collins and Jeff Beck taking on Strauss Waltzes resulting in the impossibly awesome House of The Blue Danube , which should not possibly work but it does:
Oh and here's the whole of the Fans album - pure brilliance: