This is a neat little trick that you hear from time to time at the beginning of songs. The song starts out in 6/8, with an eighth note pulse implied by the only parts you can hear. However, when the drums come, they imply a different pulse and a new tempo, and that changes your whole rhythmic perception of the song. The drums play out in 4/4, but the original rhythm section continues on at its original speed, which creates a metric modulation. The former pulse of the song (the rhythm of the guitar), now sounds off as sextuplets in relationship to the drums.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.

Listen from 3'10" to 3'50".

Rhythmic variation is all too common, but this is a particular style of rhythmic shifting that I’m quite fond of, called augmentation. In this excerpt, the hi-hat keeps the beat with a consistent quarter note, while everything else plays a rhythm in unison that shifts over time. The rhythm in question starts on an off-beat and moves through various feels while retaining a similar character. From 8th note triplets (3 notes in the space of 2 8ths), it moves into a 16th note backbeat feel, to quarter note triplets, to dotted 8th notes. Each one of these rhythms extends the length between notes, all the while retaining the overall tempo of the track, creating a distinctive effect.

After the dotted 8ths, the band explores the same concept but shortens the divisions instead, going from 8th note triplets in groups of 4 (3 + 1), to 16th notes in groups of 5 (3 + 2). This final rhythm, being a 5 16th note grouping, implies a polymeter: 5/16 against 4/4. This is eventually confirmed when at the very end, the band cleverly uses the downbeat of the 5/16 pattern as the new quarter-note pulse, essentially slowing the tempo of the song down. If interpreted this way, they’ve created a metric modulation, a technique that if prepared properly can be quite effective. By carrying over an old rhythm, keeping the speed of that rhythm the same, but changing the pulse, the tempo has effectively changed while (hopefully) making it all feel a bit smoother than a direct tempo change would.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.