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Comment by tmm | Hacker News Reader

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. :/

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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!

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 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.

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.

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