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music is literally "soul-less". It is a huge irony that "beatboxes" came to dominate a type of music that once termed
itself "soul".
Second, both click tracks and drum machines force an inhuman straitjacket onto music-making. Much of the
prejudice against popular music that exists in the field of so-called "serious music" is based on a mixture of
ignorance, cultural brainwashing and an inadequate critical vocabulary with which to describe how popular music
achieves its greatest effects. But with regard to tempo, for once, the reaction of the classical musician is right on the
money. If you suggested to an orchestra that they could improve their performance of a Beethoven symphony or a
Rachmaninov piano concerto with a click track, so they would all be perfectly in time, they would fall off their
stools laughing. When they recovered, they would insist that your click track idea would, at one digital stroke,
remove all the expression from the music. In order for music to "breathe", performers must be free to pause slightly
before a chord or modulation or phrase. Classical scores are full of terms such as accelerando, ritenuto, rallentando,
a tempo – all of which indicate departures from strict time. In other words, "TPV" is an essential element of music
performance. Why should popular music be any different?
Since the mid-1980s, popular music has become increasingly mechanized. It has lost the beautiful rhythmic effects
achieved in a song such as 'Wouldn't It Be Nice'. If you want an example of the potential beauty of this, listen to 'I
Close My Eyes And Count To Ten'. It starts at approximately 106bpm, quickens to 111bpm and then, at 0:53 and
again at 2:06, all the instruments pull up sharply. Notice the emotional "weight" this gives the music, much like the
mild G-force you feel while standing up on a train as it brakes into a station.
One effective rhythm technique is to have an opening section in a kind of "free time" where the performer dictates
the length of phrases, as with 'American Pie'. Some records speed up deliberately, as with 'Goody Two-Shoes'.
Dylan's 'Tangled Up In Blue' starts at about 93bpm but ends at 100bpm. Siouxsie & The Banshees' 'Sin In My Heart'
starts at 120bpm, reaches 144bpm just before the vocals enter, moves up to 150bpm in the verse and by the end is
hurtling along at 162bpm. 'Stay With Me' starts at a fast tempo of approximately 164bpm, drops to 89bpm for its
verses and choruses and then goes back to the faster tempo for the coda. There are tempo changes in 'Fire', 'Here
Comes The Night', 'Question' and 'For Your Love'.
The Principle of Rhythmic Asymmetry
Inserting 3/4, 5/6 or 6/4 bars into a song can be an effective way of resisting the "tyranny of four", which in rhythmic
terms usually means the predictable symmetry of 4/4. As mentioned above, such inserted bars can be used to support
the development of the lyric, the melody or the harmonic progression, and to arouse or deflate expectation. A bar of
3/4 on the end of a verse will make a 4/4 chorus arrive one beat earlier than you expected.
Here are some examples of songs with "insert bars": 'All The Young Dudes' has a chorus that ends with a bar of 3/4;
this was copied by Oasis for 'Stand By Me'. 'I Love Rock'n'Roll' has a 3/4 bar in its chorus, and 'Strawberry Fields
Forever' has a 3/4 bar in its verse. 'Lily The Pink' includes a bar of 6/4 to illustrate a stammer. 'Ha! Ha! Said The
Clown' drops a beat in the verse. There are 2/4 bars in 'See Emily Play', 'Farewell, Farewell' and 'Ain't Nothing Like
The Real Thing'. Two bars of what Ian MacDonald vividly dubbed "hard-braking" 3/8 end 'I Wanna Hold Your
Hand'. 'Blackbird' has 2/4 and 3/4 bars in a 4/4 meter. 'If You Leave Me Now' and 'Pretty Woman' have 2/4 bars. The
choruses of 'Knowing Me, Knowing You', 'Jealous Guy' and 'Tragedy' have bars of 2/4. The Indian influences on
'Within You Without You' show up in its mix of 2/4, 3/4,