It’s not like deadmau5 to ever back down from a challenge, even one given slyly on Twitter.
@deadmau5 challenge: 7/8 3/4 13/16 alternating bar groove. Must be listenable.
— Jez Biggs (@clebmurderparty) July 28, 2015
Challenge accept! So… 7/8, 3/4. 13/16, 7/8, 3/4, 13/16 and so on… I'll try it out. https://t.co/tocoJvtds3
— Goat lord (@deadmau5) July 28, 2015
Time signatures in music are fun to play with, considering that so many popular songs are confined to a very small set of “natural” signatures. They’re also not easy for the casual listener to understand or pick out, so here’s a brief explanation; the most common signature is 4/4:
A time signature of 4/4 means count 4 (top number) quarter notes (bottom number) to each bar. So the pulse, or beat, is counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. That means all the notes in each bar must add up to 4 quarter notes. Any combination of rhythms can be used as long as they add up to 4 quarter notes.
So the signatures that deadmau5 was given are … definitely unconventional. Check out the finished version below.
For a track that was created in under two hours, it has some solid bones and we’d love to see a final version – though we’re not sure how likely that is. Maybe Deadmau5 was inspired to experiment with more time signatures, who knows?
Source: UKF