Let’s try something different.

Instead of SoundSlices with meticulously transcribed guitar parts, these Slices will focus strictly on counting the beat.

That’s because in this lesson, we’re looking at odd time & mixed meter.

• Odd Time: Sort of a catch-all term for music that’s not in 3/4, 4/4, or 6/8
• Mixed Meter: Anytime we use more than one time signature in the same piece.

But why spend time counting music? And why bother with notation?

Counting & clapping always conjures images of elementary school music classrooms.

I don’t mean to infantilize you. Far from it actually—this is designed to empower you.

Put in the time counting these and your rhythm IQ will grow by leaps and bounds.

As for notation, the goal isn’t to get you to learn to read it.

It’s just a tool that allows us to use your much-stronger eyes to develop your less-strong ears.

There’s a magic that happens when you:

• Listen to the music…
• …while watching the notation…
• …and count or play along.

Think of it like a convergence between sounds, symbols, and actions.

Let’s get to it.

2/4

This is sometimes called a “half measure,” for somewhat obvious reasons—it’s half a bar of 4/4.

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Hey Ya and Nice To Know You are examples where the 2/4 bar is baked right into the riff or phrase.

Another super common use is to give yourself an extra two beats of space in a break, like the end of the bridge of Whatever It Is:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Other times a 2/4 bar is used to accommodate the lyrics or the melody, like just before the second chorus of Everybody Talks:

https://www.soundslice.com/slices/sT4kc/embed-channelpost/Because we’re neatly dividing 4 into 2, these half measures rarely sound jarring. 

Oftentimes they sound like nothing at all—we don’t even notice them.

And sometimes—if it makes it easier to read, write, or think about—we’ll write a single bar of 6/4 instead of alternating bars of 4 & 2.

6/4

You could write the intro of Oh Pretty Woman as alternating bars of 2 and 4, but most people opt for the straightforward cleanliness of 6/4:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Another classic example of 6/4 is MGMT’s Electric Feel:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Alternating 4/4 & 3/4

This middle section from Blondie’s Heart Of Glass is an interesting case study.

They play the first 8 bars with alternating measures of 4 & 3, then play it again in straight 4.

1. the theme in mixed meter
2. two bars of 4 to set up the next section
3. the theme in straight 4/4

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Another tune that alternates 4 & 3 is Paul Simon’s Have A Good Time.

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

7/4

Of course, writing alternating bars of 4 & 3 is kind of an eyesore (not to mention a pain in the ass).

We already have 6/4, so why not 7/4?

Here’s Have A Good Time again, but counted & notated in 7/4:

And here’s the lyrics & melody from that excerpt, notated both ways:

• The alternating 4 & 3 method shown in (1) is super cluttered.
• But the 7/4 method shown in (2) might be actually be tougher to read (eg what beat does “birthday” start on? hard to tell at a glance).
• Ultimately, both methods are perfectly acceptable ways of writing the notation.

Yeah, sure, that’s fine Josh, but we don’t care about the notation. 

We want to know: is it in 7? Or is it alternating 4 & 3?

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

Why not?

Because most of the time we have an “asymmetrical meter” like 7, we count in subgroups.

Even if it’s written in 7, we’re going to count 4s and 3s.

• Maybe we divvy up that 7 into alternating 4s and 3s. 
• Or maybe we divvy up that 7 into alternating 3s and 4s.
• Mathematically it doesn’t matter how you arrive at 7.
• But musically it does.
• [4 + 3] ≠ [3 + 4]

I realize that sounds a little woo-woo, so let me prove it to you.

Here’s Donny Hathaway’s 7/4 classic This Christmas, counted *incorrectly*:

The phrase repeats itself every seven beats, but every time we get here:

…it feels like we’re counting against the music, not with it.

Contrast that with the same clip, counted correctly as 4 + 3:

Again: mathematically this doesn’t make sense—it shouldn’t matter how you arrive at 7.

But musically it makes a difference.

Dealer’s Choice

Blondie’s Heart Of Glass is an especially obvious case—they took a 4/4 riff, cut a beat out of every other measure, and arrived at something new.

Donny Hathaway’s This Christmas feels the same—he busted out his musical scalpel, trimmed away a beat, and made an already exciting riff even cooler.

To me, the Grateful Dead’s Estimated Prophet feels like the opposite of that. It feels like it’s mostly in 3, but then we added an extra beat.

My friend plays bass in a Dead cover band. When I asked him how he counts the intro of Estimated Prophet, he said alternating 5+2 and 4+3!

Here’s what that sounds like:

The point is—all my yapping about the “right” way to conceptualize This Christmas aside—do what works for you.

(And if you count your way through all of these examples, you’ll be in great shape to figure it out on your own anyway.)

Solsbury Hill

The official poster child for 7/4 is Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill.

It’s got a killer backstory, an awesome guitar riff, and it just plain gives you the feels.

But another thing that makes Solsbury Hill so cool is that it switches:

1. It’s in 7,
2. and we count the opening riff 3 + 4.
3. But then we count the verse 4 + 3,
4. then there’s two bars of 4/4…
5. and that bring us back to the 3 + 4 of the guitar riff.

Let’s count our way through it:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

5/4

If Solsbury Hill is the poster child of 7/4, then the Mission Impossible Theme is the poster child for 5/4:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Although I don’t know—maybe Take Five is the poster child of 5/4:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Jethro Tull’s Living In The Past feels like a rock version of Take Five:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Radiohead’s 15 Step has both live & programmed drums, a slippery guitar riff, and vocals that fit like a jigsaw puzzle:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Here’s Sting’s Seven Days, with Vinnie Colaiuta casually throwing down killer drum fills across the 5/4:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

12/8 & 9/8

We said “odd time is a catch-all term for music that’s not in 3/4, 4/4, or 6/8.”

But 12/8 and 9/8 aren’t usually considered odd time signatures.

That’s because most of the time, 12/8 is ~the same as a 4/4 shuffle.

4/4 with a played (or implied) triplet on each beat is a shuffle:

That one is written in 4/4, but it’s just as accurate to notate it in 12/8:

Putting it in 12/8 allowed us to get rid of the 3s over the triplets… but now there’s dotted quarters in the kick/snare (and we gotta count up to twelve).

You win some, you lose some.

The 4/4 vs 12/8 decision is mostly based on what’s easier to read.

And even when we write it in 12/8, musicians will still default to talking about it in 4/4. 

For example: the drummer would *never* count you in with “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12,” let alone continue to think that way for an entire song:

Instead, the drummer counts to four while playing the subdivision (usually with stick clicks):

Similarly, the theoretically “correct” way of counting Curtis Mayfield’s Fool For You is 123456789:

But no one does that. Instead they count it as if it’s in 3/4. 

https://www.soundslice.com/slices/BQ4kc/embed-channelpost/Most of the time, it’s easier to write in a simple meter like 3/4 or 4/4, then write “shuffle” or “12/8 feel” or use this symbol:

But of course there are exceptions.

Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo A La Turk is in 9/8, and it’s definitely not a shuffled 3/4.

It’s asymmetrical—that 9 is 2+2+2+3:

At this tempo, you could try to count to nine, but I don’t think you’d be successful.

In fact, even the robot voice can’t keep up.

Instead, I count this using Takadimi:

In the same vein, if I were trying to count The Allman Brothers’ Whipping Post, no way would I try counting to eleven.

Instead, I’d count it with Takadimi:

If you listen for the snare drum, you’ll hear the same rhythm I’m Takadimi-ing (with a couple variations).

7/8

The main riff from Led Zeppelin’s The Ocean features alternating bars of 4/4 and 7/8:

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

At the synth break, Rush’s Tom Sawyer goes from 4/4 to 7/8:

The same thing happens here: our “measuring stick” goes from the quarter note to the 8th note.

Sometimes this can be jarring, and we unintentionally speed up at the switch.

To minimize this, you can start counting 8th notes in the measure before the switch: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +.

• Count along OUT LOUD.
• “View full version” to open in a new tab (where you can loop it, slow it down, and/or add a count-in).

Recap:

• Odd Time: Sort of a catch-all term for music that’s not in 3/4, 4/4, or 6/8
• Mixed Meter: Anytime we use more than one time signature in the same piece.
• We’re counting these out loud in order to arrive at a convergence between sounds, symbols, and actions.
• 2/4 is often referred to as a “half measure.”
• “Asymmetrical meters” like 7/4 are often counted in subgroups.
  • Sometimes those are clear-cut & obvious (like Have A Good Time or Solsbury Hill).
  • Other times they’re ambiguous (like Estimated Prophet).
  • Sometimes we write it in seven…
  • …and other times it makes more sense to write it with alternating bars of 4 & 3.
• 12/8 & 9/8 are *usually* 4/4 & 3/4 (respectively) with the triplet feel superimposed.
• In those cases, we talk about them using the simple meter versions:
  • eg it might be written in 12/8, but the drummer will count it off in 4
• Other times, an X/8 time signature will have different groupings (like Blue Rondo a la Turk‘s 2+2+2+3)…
• …or the parent feel is truncated (like how Whipping Post‘s 11/8 is three beats of 12/8 feel with a shortened fourth beat).
• In time signatures like 4/4, we’re counting quarter notes…
• …while in time signatures like 7/8, we’re counting 8th notes.
• To smooth the transition between them, count 8ths in the measure before the switch.