Electronic tracks with rogue time signatures
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Djrum – Blue Violet (15/8) From a Facebook post by the man himself:
Lots of people have asked me about the time signature in this track - and there's a discussion about it in the YouTube comments - so I thought I'd shed some light. You'll notice that the synth pattern that starts the track consists of 10 notes of equal length; so at first you may hear it as 10/4. However when the marimba part becomes audible it creates a polyrhythm. Now it should sound more like the synth is playing in triplets, so the 10 notes spread across 30 beats (16ths) making a time signature of 15/8 The marimba pattern is made of two bars at 15/8, but the bars split the 15 beats differently. The first bar splits into 4, 4, 4, and 3 The second splits into 4, 5, 4, and 2 Phew! So if you wanna dance to it, try counting in 15s. Or don't bother nerding out and just go with the flow.
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NN – Deception (8/8). Deployed to great effect in DJ Stingray 313’s Boiler Room (watch from around 15:45 onwards)
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Lucy – Ter (8/8). Credit to Upsammy for IDing this for me from her set at Strom 2023
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33EMYBW – Arthropods Continent (8/8)
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Venetian Snares - Szamár Madár (7/4). Funny use of the Elgar cello concerto
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Actress – Lost (6/4)
Honourable mentions
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Rrose, Bob Ostertag – Pointillism - Variation Two. Can’t figure out the time signature but there’s some fuckery going on
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Jon Hopkins – Light Through The Veins. The main drums are in 4/4 but there are some cool polyrhythms going on (was also sampled on Death and All His Friends, for the Coldplay scholars)
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Autechre – Fold4, Wrap5. I think it is in 4/4, but the tempo is very messed up (Risset rhythm and that)
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clipping. – Story 7. Not really electronic music but insanely cool rhythms – changes time signature about a million times (clipping. are great for stuff like this). Allegedly it goes 15/16 -> 21/16 -> 42/32 -> 4/4 (???)