Wednesday 17 January 2018

Schrödinger's missing beats

I haven't spotted any wonky timing in ages, but there is something wonderfully weird in a song from Keith Richard's last solo album.

Listen to the chorus at about 25 seconds in, the first "Trouble..." is on the last two beats of the bar (third and fourth), but the next "Trouble..." appears to be slightly too soon, on the first two beats (until the next bit makes it clear that they weren't, they were on the last two beats).

What actually happens is that the next bar (after the first "Trouble...") containing the line "... is your middle name" is actually six beats long, so the "Trouble..." still comes on the last two beats (in 6/4 time) but appears to come on the first two beats, if you have been tricked into splitting it into 4/4 and assume that the left over 2/4 bit is the first two beats of the next 4/4).

So are there two extra beats, or two missing beats? I'll leave greater minds than mine to debate that one.

3 comments:

Graeme said...

Do you want musicians or machines?

Graeme said...

In live performances, musicians make mistakes. The real pros recover so that few people know that something went wrong.

Mark Wadsworth said...

G, it's not a mistake, it is quite deliberate.