Weird Time Signatures

To start off, if you don't know what time signatures are, in music, I'll give you a brief summary. The time signature in a peice of music, identifies how many beats there are to a bar. For most pop music, you can count four beats per bar.

Now let’s talk about songs with weird time signatures. Although it is somewhat rare that these songs become popular, there are some exceptions. Of course there are songs by the Canadian Progressive rockers, Rush, who seldom use only a 4/4 in their songs. It is very common in Rush songs that they use many different ones.

Take the song Tom Sawyer for example. It starts off as a 4/4, as you can count 4 beats until the riff seems to loop. But at the keyboard solo (1:35 on the video) the time signature changes. It becomes a 7/8, if you count the beats at a constant rate; you'll notice that it starts over after 7 beats. Isn't that funny. This requires excellent musicianship as the musicians must constantly count in their heats in order to stay in sync with the rest of the band. Most popular musicians these days don't bother with these odd signatures for a couple reasons. Either they are incapable of performing music to these weird rhythms or they can't make it sound good enough to have their music appeal to an audience. Either way, when you hear a song with a weird sounding time signature, even if you don't enjoy listening to the music, you should respect the talent of the musicians creating the music.