Hi everybody.
I've organized a session to talk about non-common time signatures and unusual meter changes for all of my students interested on that stuff, specially for those ones who haven't had any contact with something different to 4/4, 2/2, 3/4, 2/4 and 6/8. I've selected some recordings for auditioning and transcribed the relevant sections from them, going from simple stuff like the meter changes in "Good Golly Miss Molly" and Outkast's "Hey Ya!" to really complicated material (for non-experts, of course), mainly from Rush and Zappa recordings.
From the beginning, I had clear that Rush's "Limelight" should go into the list, since it's a great example of different meter changes within a song. I just wanted to select a short section at first, but listening again, I decided to use it in its entirety and started to transcribe it by myself, since I've never had a transcription of that piece.
So, the job is done and I'm pretty sure that, in real life, the transcription is accurate, but the meter changes are my sole interpretation and I'd like to hear from the experts about it. Again, the transcription
definitely works
in real life (try it with the recording), but I want to know if there's something
theoretically wrong with it. I'm talking specifically about the 6/4 sections. All of them also work in 3/4, but I put them in 6/4 because dividing one single 6/4 measure in two 3/4 measures results in the bass drum hitting the downbeat in the first measure and the snare hitting the downbeat in the second, so that "problem" is solved by joining both 3/4 measures into one 6/4 measure. Now, I perfectly know that the effect in the second part of the guitar solo is that the drums play in 4/4 while the other instruments play in 3/4, which is technically a polyrhythm. So the bassline may be written in 3/4, but I think that the player should be aware of what is really happening in the song, and that can be achieved with a 6/4 meter that perfectly matches the bass drum with the downbeat.
So, having put all in context, here's the transcription:
My point is, if there's something wrong with the meter changes I've chosen, I'd like to hear about it with supported facts since I'm going to show this at a class in an university. Regarding pitches and rhythms, I can tell you: This is 99.9% accurate (In case that some of you who know the song wonder about it, Geddy plays
those notes in the break before the guitar solo -first measure of second page-. He doesn't go exactly with Alex and Neil). Needless to say, hope this will be useful for you fellow TalkBassers. And one thing's for sure: The guys from Toronto are true geniuses!
