Songs that use 6/4 time

this video is sponsored by museversal stick around to find out how you could win the opportunity for me to play on one of your tracks if a song is in six four time that means that there are six evenly spaced beats in each bar a great example of six four is schism by two [Music] felon black days by soundgarden is in 6'4 [Music] and full stop by radiohead is also in six four times [Applause] to me 64 has a sort of odd and even sound to it it's obviously an even number six but i guess because we don't hear much music in six four it has the characteristics of an odd time signature having a slightly unusual slightly jarring meter to it on his famous meter obsessed album timeout dave brubeck recorded two songs in 6'4 time pick up sticks and everybody's jumping which switches routinely between six four and four four [Music] six four often feels like a bar of 4-4 followed by a bar of 2-4 so almost like the song is in 4-4 but every other bar is getting cut in half which lends a sort of forward momentum to the music like we're being propelled prematurely into the next bar for example if we look at galvanized by the chemical brothers which is in 6-4 time we could write it down like this with alternating bars of 4 4 and 2 4. this matches the meter quite neatly but of course the 6-4 time signature is going to be easier and more straightforward to read another 6'4 song that has this sort of 4 4 then 2 4 feel to it is enough space by the foo fighters just like before we could write this down in alternating bars of four four and two four and that can be a helpful way to think about six four the line between six four and four four can sometimes become a bit blurred for example damn that river by alison chains revolves around a 12 beat phrase during the intro section this 12 beats feels like two bars of 6'4 thanks to where the guitar riff repeats [Music] however when the vocal enters even though we still have 12 beats in each phrase the guitar is no longer enforcing that 6-4 fill so it now winds up feeling like 3 bars or 4-4 rather than 2 bars of 6-4 it's still 12 beats in a phrase but where the accented beats are falling changes our perception of the meter [Music] synchronicity won by the police is in six four time and coupled with the fast tempo the unusual meter gives the song a really frantic feel [Music] crippling self-doubt and a general lack of confidence by courtney barnett starts out in 6'4 for the verse however the chorus is in 4-4 time [Music] the switch from the slightly locked sided six four time to the well-balanced and typical 4-4 makes the chorus all the more satisfying as it is almost a relief to return to the old familiar 4-4 time [Music] [Applause] [Music] now as i mentioned at the start with the help of today's sponsor museversal i'm running a competition where you could win the opportunity for me to play keys on one of your tracks musivversal is an online service that allows you to record with top session musicians remotely over a video call museversal offers an amazing roster of musicians including strings players horns drums guitar bass vocalists keyboards plus mixing and mastering services so they have everything you need to create an amazing track as i said we're running a competition that will allow five lucky winners to have a music-versal recording session with me if you're interested in entering the competition then follow the link in the description and fill out the form the deadline is the 31st of august so make sure you enter asap i can speak from personal experience when i say that museversal is a great service and i'm really excited to play some keys on some of your guys tracks now something you may have been shouting at the screen for the whole video is hey isn't six four just two bars of three four stuck together what's the difference between six four and three four well you are correct that two bars of three four and 1 bar of 6 4 both contain 6 beats in total and technically any song in 6 4 could be forcibly transcribed as 3 4 but the reason a song would be in 6 4 rather than 3 4 is all about where the accented beats are in all meters the first beat of the bar naturally receives an accent so although two bars of three four and one bar of six four have the same overall number of beats which beats receive an accent is different if we look at schism again by tall the accents of three four don't line up with the song's rhythm making it a counter-intuitive choice of time signature for the song [Music] so although we can technically write down this song in 3-4 we wouldn't be doing the performer any favors if we did this because the accents of the song don't line up with the accents of the meter now schism is a good example of a song that fits well into 6 4 and not very well into 3 4 but some songs do sort of ride the line between the two choices and therefore sometimes get described and transcribed in either six four or three four for example i hear the verse of taking me to church by hozier as a bpm 6-4 time like this [Music] but on the published sheet music it's transcribed as a 63 bpm 3-4 like this it's the exact same music of course but depending on which beat you're counting as the main pulse you will perceive the song's meter differently similarly electric feel by mgmt is sometimes described as 3 4 and sometimes described as 6'4 have a listen and let me know which meter you think is a better fit [Music] [Music] [Music] and it's this uncertainty between whether a song is in six four or three four that means that you don't see six four very often unless a song is following a very clear six four meter people will tend to just default to writing stuff down and conceptualizing it in 3 4. however this avoidance of 6 4 meter is only true with modern music classical music is a different story and this isn't because classical composers were more edgy with their time signatures no it's because the way that we use and think about time signatures today is actually different to how they were used 100 plus years ago with classical music there's rarely if ever a debate about what time signature a piece of music is in and this is because the composer literally writes down the time signature on the sheet music themselves [Music] the default medium for published music in the time of chopin mozart and list wasn't a recording but a manuscript sheet music there is no debate to which time signature these pieces are in because the composer has literally written it there themselves and what's more they have chosen that particular time signature because they want that particular meter applied to their music by the performer it's a deliberate conscious decision so with chopin's nocturne opus 9 number one even though the music could have been written down with a 3-4 time signature chopin actively chose 6-4 because he wanted the particular accents the particular fill of 6-4 but today composers or songwriters don't publish their music as manuscripts they don't actually write down what the time signature is they publish their music as recordings and as we've discussed when you're listening to a recording there can be ambiguity and subjectiveness to what time signature we should describe the piece of music in of course these records do later get transcribed into sheet music where a time signature is dictated but this isn't tom york or dave roll writing the sheet music and specifying which signature they think will best achieve their vision for the piece no this sheet music is put together by a copyist who just listens to the music and then chooses to write down the music using whichever time signature that they think is most appropriate and because of that ultimately time signatures can be subjective of course you can't go around claiming that a song in 3 4 is in 4 4 but with signatures as closely related as 6 4 and 3 4 there's almost always some sort of argument for a piece of music being in one or the other [Music] i'll leave you today with this piece that i've written in 6-4 although i'm guessing that at least a few of you will say it's in 3-4 [Music] i found that finding examples of songs in 64 was certainly harder than finding examples of five four or seven four so it certainly seems to be a rare beast but if you can think of some more examples of songs in six four time i'd love to hear about them [Music] and as always a massive massive thanks goes to everyone who supports me on patreon including the names you see on screen right now and andre science diagram andy deacon andrew andrew brown andrew sussman austin barrett justin russell mckinstry whitney parker colin aiken chris cabal christopher ryan david rivers donald howard dr darren wicks elena scorchenko eugene leroy fd hodor greg kabovsky ilamo latona hamish brocklebank kutcher hugo miller ivan pang jake fisher james chao j.a hookensparker john dye josh zanderlin justin vigger lee lauritsen mark ziegenhagen max o'keefe melody composer squared melanie schoner michael vivian nancy gillard nathan lawrence nathaniel park paul middleton paul muller hazel richard watcher clay john kennedy steve dailey stephen lazzaro tim beaker home at haroni trisha adams tim payne victor levy flowers vladimir kodakov vaulty and whalen fairbanks [Music] [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 79,519

Rating: 4.9676847 out of 5

Keywords: 6/4, time signature, odd time signature, meter, metre, music theory, explained, songs in, examples of, how to play, what is 6/4

Id: lf3462eZemU

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021