Odd time signatures | Fab forum

I was flying back to the UK from Berlin last night and began singing Two Of Us to myself ("We're on our way home, we're going home"), and started thinking about the unusual time signature changes in the song. Most of it's in 4/4, but with the odd bar of 2/4 and 3/4 dropped in. For example:

• when they sing "someone's", "arriving", "letters", "latches" etc, it's a bar of 2/4.
• The "We're on our way home" section is mostly in 3/4, but has a 2/4 bar for "we're going home".

It got me thinking about other Beatles songs with odd time signatures. The obvious ones are Happiness Is A Warm Gun, which I daren't try and untangle, and Good Morning Good Morning, which is all over the place. I've also written before about the bar of 2/4 that's in Revolution and Revolution 1 ("We-eel you").

Are there any others?

(For those who don't understand time signatures, try tapping a steady beat of 1, 2, 3, 4 during Two Of Us. You may find that it doesn't follow a straight sequence, and occasionally goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4. In basic terms, a 1, 2 bar would be 2/4, and 1, 2, 3 would be 3/4.)

Ah yes, in Across The Universe there's a bar of 5/4 just before 'Pools of sorrow, waves of joy'. 'Possessing and caressing me' is also a bar of 2/4 and one of 4/4 (or even a single bar of 6/4). They do the same in the final verse ('Inciting and inviting me').

The second verse is more conventional, but has an extra beat before the chorus. I think irregular songs tended to come more from Lennon than McCartney, in part because he often wrote his lyrics first and fitted the music around them. Across The Universe is a prime example of that, as is Good Morning.

You're right about Here Comes The Sun too. It's a bastard to play the drums on Rock Band during that song, as it stops following a regular 4/4 beat. They must have been incredibly intuitive musicians to all make that work.

I forgot to mention Rain, which has a bar of 2/4 just before the first chorus. I still don't know whether they did this on every take of the song, or was a one-off that was performed on the released version. I don't think I've ever heard any outtakes of Rain.

I guess some of this is less about time signatures as such, and more about odd beats that were thrown in or removed on an irregular basis.

One other song that I'll mention here is A Day In The Life. In the introduction The Beatles do a very interesting thing, where the second chord on the guitar is almost played for an extra half beat (the third beat in the bar isn't emphasised), and the piano and bass are also on the off-beat (they appear on the first 'and' if you count a '1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and' rhythm). The first few times I heard it I found it quite hard to follow. The version on Anthology 2 is the same, although the on/off-beats are less pronounced.

Was the other one Money by Pink Floyd?