Obviously, it's a straight 4/4 ("Common Time")[0], with some swing and played tempo rubato ("robbed time")[1]. This is where the time allocated for the various beats is pushed around a bit by the performer to add character or emotional qualities. Very often, when the phrase "..with feeling!" is really speaking about rubato (or conversely, any "mechanical" quality a performance may have). "Stop playing it like a robot; now stat again, with feeling this time!"
So many people have a hard time picking out the meter, because they are still using an incorrect assumption: that time (meter/tempo/beats/etc) in music is regular/consistent - or even well-defined in the first place.
The important part to remember, when speaking of time-signatures, meter, and music theory in general, is that what's written (or even what was intended by a composer) is only a guide. They've drawn a model on the page, that is intended to help express how you go about playing a song, but just as "the map is not the territory", a quarter-note is not necessarily 1/4 of a measure in time[2].
This used to be more explicit in the Baroque era: you would see very simple notation on the page, and the performer was supposed to infer (and ad-lib their own) "embellishments" or "ornaments"[3] as they played.
This doesn't apply to all music, and some songs would not work without their strict, mechanical interpretation of meter. Of particular note is "martial music"[4], which is often quite regular/low-rubato, and the Terminator theme has some march-like qualities such as its iconic sharp-beats. Martial music could be appropriate for Terminator's subject matter, too. Instead, we get a really-modern[5] song that was likely performed directly, skipping the sheet music step entirely. That's the thing about music; you can't really shove it all in to nice, neat pidgen-holes, and if you could, some artist would just go and write a song that broke everything, for the lulz.
As the article mentions a Prophet-10, you also have to take into the considerations of the hardware involved, and how that influences everything, in large and/or subtle ways. If you're interested in the topic of how hardware and creativity are intertwined, LFT (Linus Akesson) gave a very interesting talk on the subject: "Poems for bugs"[6].
[0] There are other acceptable interpretations, of course, but that makes no difference.
That's a bit of a stretch (pun intended). This is clearly electronic music, or at least a consistently looping sound of some sort. Robbed time implies a live performance, and each measure definitely wouldn't be tempo shifted in exactly the same way.
About the impact of hardware on creation, Jay Dee (famous hip hop beatmaker) started creating musing by recording samples over tapes. I recall an interview he had to sync things with a pencil. Same result, weird swing, odd pulsing time. People even rejected it at first because it was too strange.
I'd maybe agree with you if this was organic music played by real people, but it's all electronic, so you can guarantee someone entered 13/8 into their sequencer's time signature.
The history of [digital] electronics does not fit with our modern neat notions of how things exactly must be. I've been there, seen the extraordinary contortions taken to make things work at all on equipment we'd consider completely incapable thereof; explaining why things worked out a particular way requires explaining how bad things were (relative to our norm) and, given such atrocious platforms, what mentally painful rationalizations gave rise to what needed doing - and the strange artifacts which accompanied those achievements.
The composer didn't "enter 13/8 into the sequencer's time signature." He recorded a sequence, then hit "repeat" at an inopportune moment which, serendipitously, led to the effect he was looking for. We take for granted setting time signatures as an absolute act framing the subsequent content inserted therein; wasn't so neat & tidy back then.
Because we take certain automatic framing processes for granted (to a near-exestential degree), we cannot create such art without great deliberative effort, and have great difficulty understanding why such art happened when it did.
As the article clearly says, the piece was never explicitly composed for any specific time signature; the signature it ended up with was almost an accident.
Wow, It's so weird to read this well articulated, seemingly well informed response and then listen to the piece. I can feel 7 grouped as 2 2 3 pretty comfortably, though I guess that gives it an extra 16th note. "Obviously its straight 4/4" is so wrong, my god- I'm sorry, you cant defend that as an "interpretation"
Your first sentence is simply incorrect. The time signature is not 4/4; it is 13/16. The author of the article even states this at the end. Several HN commenters with a music background also independently and very quickly came to this same conclusion themselves.
The rest of your comment has nothing to do with the article or the song. It's just you rambling on an unrelated tangent about music theory in general.
Back before formalised sheet music we had a better timing resolution apparently. Lots of music was lost in the adoption. Some folk players I know tend to avoid formalising anything and just playing entirely by ear with no sense of timing at all. Always sounds good.
Personally my timing is awful. Whether or not that sounds better or not is up to the listener to decide :)
Comments
Obviously, it's a straight 4/4 ("Common Time")[0], with some swing and played tempo rubato ("robbed time")[1]. This is where the time allocated for the various beats is pushed around a bit by the performer to add character or emotional qualities. Very often, when the phrase "..with feeling!" is really speaking about rubato (or conversely, any "mechanical" quality a performance may have). "Stop playing it like a robot; now stat again, with feeling this time!"
So many people have a hard time picking out the meter, because they are still using an incorrect assumption: that time (meter/tempo/beats/etc) in music is regular/consistent - or even well-defined in the first place.
The important part to remember, when speaking of time-signatures, meter, and music theory in general, is that what's written (or even what was intended by a composer) is only a guide. They've drawn a model on the page, that is intended to help express how you go about playing a song, but just as "the map is not the territory", a quarter-note is not necessarily 1/4 of a measure in time[2].
This used to be more explicit in the Baroque era: you would see very simple notation on the page, and the performer was supposed to infer (and ad-lib their own) "embellishments" or "ornaments"[3] as they played.
This doesn't apply to all music, and some songs would not work without their strict, mechanical interpretation of meter. Of particular note is "martial music"[4], which is often quite regular/low-rubato, and the Terminator theme has some march-like qualities such as its iconic sharp-beats. Martial music could be appropriate for Terminator's subject matter, too. Instead, we get a really-modern[5] song that was likely performed directly, skipping the sheet music step entirely. That's the thing about music; you can't really shove it all in to nice, neat pidgen-holes, and if you could, some artist would just go and write a song that broke everything, for the lulz.
As the article mentions a Prophet-10, you also have to take into the considerations of the hardware involved, and how that influences everything, in large and/or subtle ways. If you're interested in the topic of how hardware and creativity are intertwined, LFT (Linus Akesson) gave a very interesting talk on the subject: "Poems for bugs"[6].
[0] There are other acceptable interpretations, of course, but that makes no difference.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_rubato
[2] Also measures/bars don't necessarily have the same time either, and the frequency of a note (on instruments that allow it) can vary as well.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_%28music%29#Western_cl...
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_music
[5] "Is it modern?" ~Emperor Joseph II, in Amadeus
[6] http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/poems-for-bugs/index...
That's a bit of a stretch (pun intended). This is clearly electronic music, or at least a consistently looping sound of some sort. Robbed time implies a live performance, and each measure definitely wouldn't be tempo shifted in exactly the same way.
About the impact of hardware on creation, Jay Dee (famous hip hop beatmaker) started creating musing by recording samples over tapes. I recall an interview he had to sync things with a pencil. Same result, weird swing, odd pulsing time. People even rejected it at first because it was too strange.
I'd maybe agree with you if this was organic music played by real people, but it's all electronic, so you can guarantee someone entered 13/8 into their sequencer's time signature.
The history of [digital] electronics does not fit with our modern neat notions of how things exactly must be. I've been there, seen the extraordinary contortions taken to make things work at all on equipment we'd consider completely incapable thereof; explaining why things worked out a particular way requires explaining how bad things were (relative to our norm) and, given such atrocious platforms, what mentally painful rationalizations gave rise to what needed doing - and the strange artifacts which accompanied those achievements.
The composer didn't "enter 13/8 into the sequencer's time signature." He recorded a sequence, then hit "repeat" at an inopportune moment which, serendipitously, led to the effect he was looking for. We take for granted setting time signatures as an absolute act framing the subsequent content inserted therein; wasn't so neat & tidy back then.
Because we take certain automatic framing processes for granted (to a near-exestential degree), we cannot create such art without great deliberative effort, and have great difficulty understanding why such art happened when it did.
As the article clearly says, the piece was never explicitly composed for any specific time signature; the signature it ended up with was almost an accident.
Wow, It's so weird to read this well articulated, seemingly well informed response and then listen to the piece. I can feel 7 grouped as 2 2 3 pretty comfortably, though I guess that gives it an extra 16th note. "Obviously its straight 4/4" is so wrong, my god- I'm sorry, you cant defend that as an "interpretation"
Your first sentence is simply incorrect. The time signature is not 4/4; it is 13/16. The author of the article even states this at the end. Several HN commenters with a music background also independently and very quickly came to this same conclusion themselves.
The rest of your comment has nothing to do with the article or the song. It's just you rambling on an unrelated tangent about music theory in general.
Some good points there.
Back before formalised sheet music we had a better timing resolution apparently. Lots of music was lost in the adoption. Some folk players I know tend to avoid formalising anything and just playing entirely by ear with no sense of timing at all. Always sounds good.
Personally my timing is awful. Whether or not that sounds better or not is up to the listener to decide :)