I'm not a musician, and I'm not very familiar with musical terms, but considering the huge wealth of Prince material, it seems he uses 2/4 and 4/4 a lot. Listening to Glass Cutter recently, though, I realised that that song must have a very different time signature.

What other songs use a different / unusual time? Am I making a broad statement which isn't true? It's quite possible that I'm just not well trained, but this is something I'd be interested in finding out more about.

what signature is "ballad of dorothy parker" in? i seem to remember it being in a wacky time signature, but i'm listening to other stuff at work right now and i'm not able to map it out in my head...

What's up with that off beat horns part in Mountains? And babyGoGo skips, and there's a part in Extra Loveable that jumps..

Dorothy Parker is in 4/4 time. The percussion is in a schizo time signature, but Prince pulls it together to make the song standard rock/funk. The same with If I Was Your Girlfriend.

Glass Cutter is also just 4/4 time. I think non-musicians sometimes get time signatures confused with interesting and syncopated rhythms within the time signature.

How about Rebirth of the Flesh? The time changes when it goes into the bridge. Brilliant.

bryanpage said:

true

How about Power Fantastic?

"Curious Child" is in 3/4.

Power Fantastic is either 3/4 or 6/8. Most likely 6/8.

Pretty much all of Prince's songs are standard 3/4 or 4/4. Which is most of any popular musician's songs. One of the few exceptions I can think of is probably Sting, he uses all kinds of strange time signatures like 5/8 and 7/8.

Classical music is where you'd go to find the really unusual time signatures.

jtgillia said:

Funny you should mention Sting - it was one of his songs, Seven Days, that really got me thinking about this. I think Seven Days is written in 7/8 or something like that, and listening to that, I was thinking I wonder if Prince has written anything in that time.

I think 'She loves me 4 me' is in 6/8, right? At least somebody told me.

The correct definition of an "odd" time signature is one where the beats can't be subdivided in groups of two or three. For instance 5/4, 7/8, 11/8 etc. Therefore, 3/4, 6/8, or even 9/8 are not really odd time signatures, although they may be unusual in certain types of music.

As some of you have noticed, Prince sometimes use syncopated rhythms that might give the illusion of an odd time signature, when it's really in "regular" 4/4 time. The first example that comes to mind is "Schoolyard", which actually took me quite a while to figure out...

I wouldn't be surprised if some of Prince's more "progressive" rock material (such as "3 chains o'gold", parts of "Rainbow children" etc) has an occasional 5/8 bar here and there. But as far as I know, he hasn't written (or at least not released) any complete song in an odd time signature.

However, I read somewhere that he sometimes played Paul Desmond's "Take Five" in concerts a couple of years ago...that's in 5/4 swing time.

SCHOOLYARD ....superfunky !

booyah said:

I think the most bizzare Prince has gotten in terms of time signatures is a waltz that he has which is 3/4. I think it's called "A Place In Heaven"...off of Prince's Crystal Ball...not 's Crystal Ball


this is the edit:
I guess he has more, like others statted earlier in the thread. But 3/4 & 6/8 is all he's done besides 4/4. In terms of his time signatures, Prie isn't too avant garde...but them most Pop/Rock/R&B artist arent. It's hard to listen to music in weird time sig's anyway.
[Edited 12/4/04 19:06pm]