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: