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Comment by spenuke | Hacker News Reader

Duke Ellington routinely gave his audiences a lesson in his inimitable style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPcZ5ex2t-g

Harry Connick Jr. didn't bother educating his European audience with any explanation. He simply skips a beat, and then they're clapping on 2 and 4. It happens after the first sung chorus. You can see the drummer raise his hands in joy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD3iaURppQw

And, of course, the great Slim Gaillard was so saturated in swing, his predominantly white 1950s television audience SPONTANEOUSLY clapped on the 2 and 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKdrnTTDTqo

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The switch happens around the 0:40 mark, for those who may have thought that they missed it (as I almost did)

I think he did it more towards 0:36, just after the verse.

Edit: after reading the comments it seems everyone agrees with you... for some reason I'm able to count the claps on 2 and 4 before then, though.

I was under the impression that it happens at 0:40, when he pulls the left hand off the stride pattern. When it comes back in, the beat is corrected.

I hear it clearly at 0:40.

You can even hear the audience falter on a clap when he switches

How can you tell he skips a beat? Or for that matter the difference between beats 1 and 3 vs 2 and 4? Music is such a mystery to me. :/

You know how in every electronic song the beat is going: Boom CLAP Boom CLAP Boom CLAP? The idea is that you clap on the CLAP sound (snare drum), not the boom (bass drum). 1 (bass) 2 (snare) 3 (bass) 4 (snare). To skip a beat you'd probably play the rhythm for a bit normally, then leave out all the bass drum kicks so that the audience only hears the snares. Then that would be the only thing they could clap to. Then you put the Bass back in. Dunno if that helps!

>To skip a beat you'd probably play the rhythm for a bit normally, then leave out all the bass drum kicks so the audience only hears the snares....then put the bass back in

While this might get your audience to switch over, this is trying to get your audience to skip (or add) a beat, rather than skipping or adding a beat oneself. You never actually described skipping a beat.

The vast majority of music has what's known as a meter, which is a cyclical pattern. Just like we can think of time in terms of a neverending stream of occurrences, or choose to think in terms of a 7-day week, we simplify the understanding of musical events by counting in a regularly repeating meter.

This song's meter is in 4/4, which means you count 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4, etc. along with the very pulse you feel. Tap your foot. Count "1" when he says the word "Come [with me]". You'll find that they clap every time you say 1 and 3.

What he does is the equivalent of cutting out, say, Sunday from one week of the calendar, and so their regularly repeating clap now falls on a different day than it was falling on before. Does that help?

After reading your comment, I realized that I was counting at half the speed I was supposed to.

Only for common (4/4) time. That's the most popular one though. ;)

I like the days-of-the-week analogy, but in this case he adds a fifth beat to a bar, so it's like he's adding a fifth day to an otherwise four-day week, as follows:

  1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
  C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C

…so the claps (C) move from the 1 and 3 to the 2 and 4. That fifth beat occurs at the 40-second mark, and can be spotted because he stops playing with the left hand and the right hand simply repeats what it played in the previous beat.

You know how the rhythm to "We Will Rock You" by Queen goes

    Stomp Stomp Clap, Stomp Stomp Clap

The "Claps" are on 2 and 4, the first stomps of the pairs are on 1 and 3. Now imagine some boob wearing his sunglasses like a hat and a popped collar starts clapping on 1 and 3:

    Stomp Stomp Clap, Stomp Stomp Clap
    Clap              Clap

That'd be annoying. The looks on Harry Connick Jr.'s face before he fixes the clapping tell it all.

IMO, that's 3/4 time. Just because it's confusing.

no, it's clearly a duple meter. boom boom clap <rest> boom boom clap <rest>

No it's not, the "stomps" are halves.

The claps are half notes.

It would be 3/4 without the comma. It's:

    Stomp Stomp Clap <pause> Stomp Stomp Clap <pause>

Not:

    Stomp Stomp Clap Stomp Stomp Clap

Beats me. (pause)

I could hear no difference before or after the switch -- in fact I couldn't hear any beat other than the clapping.

I'm gonna try to explain this as best I can through text which is pretty difficult but we'll see how it goes.

We can identify beat 1 by listening to where Harry generally starts his vocal phrases. Right a the beginning he sings "Take me home, I'd love to be invited". The words "take" and "i'd" are both on beat 1. Now we have our reference. Count along while listening now if you'd like, it's fun!

The beat switch happens around 0:43 but if we listen to the solo section in general we can dissect it. He plays a repeating bass line with his left hand throughout. It is very audible from 0:50-0:53. He is doing some fancy work in the higher register but the bass line is anchoring it. There is a strong beat in this bass line. You can probably hear it naturally. It is the third note he plays in the sequence. This third note is again beat 1.

The bass line leads into beat 1 like so: "and-a-ONE". Sing along in your head. Now sing along with the bass line as he goes into his solo. You'll notice that right around 0:39 he stops playing the bass line for a moment. This is where he 'corrects' the audience. After this point the "and-a-ONE" of the bass line is no longing in unison with the clapping. If you kept your count going you'll find that it no longer matches the bass line. After he does this the clapping is now on the TWO and FOUR relative to the bass line.

Hope this helps some people. It's pretty damn cool what he did, and so smooth!

Harry Connick Jr's beat switcheroo is masterful.

Goodness yes, I've listened to it a bunch of times and the pre-switch and after-switch difference is obvious, but the transition is like magic to me - I can't hear it, I can only realize that it happened.

It didn't catch the transition the first time around either, but a 2nd listen I heard it. Pure evil! Thanks for the vid, I didn't know that HCJ had such piano chops. I remember when he burst on the scene with his singing but it seems he disappeared a few years thereafter and I rarely hear of him. Great music.

To me it sounds like it's when "suddenly" the bassline matches the clapping but he hid it under the treble-only riff on the piano. Pure magic. It just flips like a switch.

Wow, that Gaillard piece is awesome. My sense of time improved immeasurably when I switched the metronome from counting on 1 & 3 to 2 & 4. It's now one of the first pieces of advice I give to budding musicians. That, and learn everything you play in all 12 keys.

What do you play and who instructed you to set the metronome to 1 & 3? (I'm a percussionist who's always used a quarternote counting metronome)

The Harry Connick Jr clip was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this thread - love it!

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