Drums on Pink Floyd's "Mother"

Does he play fretless on Hey you from the wall too?

 

Probably.

 

Yup.

 

You've probably heard it on The Wall Live too. Although he did have a helping hand there.

 

Aside from the drums, that demo is kind of frightening.
It's almost like a Alice Cooper thing but with a deeper darkness.

 

Agreed, it's almost like a whole different song

 

The bottom number of time signatures doesn't actually imply anything about downbeats or phrasing, though. It just tells you "what type of note gets one count." There are various conventions for using different time signatures, of course, but (a) they tend to be pertinent to particular musical subcultures, and (b) the most popular conventions are simply (i) what a composer believes will best transmit his/her conceptual intentions for the piece (this stems primarily from the "classical" world, where the method of transmission is focused on scores), and (ii) what an arranger believes will be easiest to read/will result in the least mistakes during a rehearsal or session that someone is paying for.

It makes more sense to say that the top number of a time signature implies something about phrasing, although as I noted, you could really write anything in any time signature. But definitely, "Money" would conventionally be in 7 (sans the solo section, which would conventionally be in 4). The bottom number is just a matter of how one wants to think about or write it for various purposes, though. There's nothing musically to dictate that the bottom number should be 4 or 8 or 2 or 16 or 32, even. (Theoretically, by the way, you could have any number as the bottom number, but that gets into very complicated territory as soon as we depart from 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 . . .)

(Source: me, where my degrees, as well as my professional experience, trumps yours. ;-)

 

Next time you assert your authority on literacy, I recommend using a spell checker.

 

I'd say Bob Ezrin before Waters.

 

Actually the odd time in Money is indeed 7/4, or 4/4 + 3/4. Count it. One, two, three, four, five, six, sev. (Repeat)

 

Thank you. You beat me to the answer!

 

I am not very literate in english. Shame me on that if you like ;-)

 

It is a highly unpopular answer though. Specially if you put a bit of weight behind it.....

 

Ezrin doesn't guide. He snorts coke and demands things be a certain way... and insists on singing backing vocals on the stuff he produces.

 

The fretless on Hey You is definitely David. It's his bass even.

 

Agreed. I have a music degree as well, and it does give you an advantage (a big one) when analyzing music. There's no reason to attack what you've said, attack your spelling, call you narcissistic, or call you out for saying Gilmour is musically illiterate. I mean, he is. It's not a bad thing. He's an amazing musician. He's just not schooled in music theory, so when he speaks in those terms, he may not be correct.

 

He's in Denmark! He's actually better at English spelling than a lot of Americans these days.

 

It is just a normal 4/4 part with triolised (swing eights as we call it) 1/8 notes and a missing 1/4 every other bar. Try notating the other parts, specially the vocal melody, and see what notation makes the most sense. 7/8 or 7/4. If you write it as 7/8 you will end up with triolised 16th notes and if you listen to the feel of Money it sure isn’t that.

Same thing with Solsbury Hill. Also 7/4, not 7/8. People have a tendency to think that if it is an uneven beat it must be x/8 or x/16 even, and often uneven beats are, but these two arent.

7/8 also feels much more irregular than 7/4 which is probably the reason Money and Solsbury Hill are some of the biggest uneven signature hits ever.

Dance On A Volcano highlights the difference in a great way. The part at 00:40 is 7/4, the verse is 7/8

If anybody care to listen to the difference:

 

Gilmour is FANTASTIC.
Some of the best musicians i’ve worked never had ANY schooling.

Thanks. But my English is erratic at best, and could do with a spellcheck

 

I agree on Gilmour. He's one of my favorite guitarists of all time. Not being formally educated doesn't mean he can't be awesome (like you said).

I know Americans who are much more erratic with their spelling than you are.

 

Not a drummer myself but here are my two cents.

The song is based around the melody and Waters' acoustic guitar accompanyment, with its very idiosyncratic but interesting tempo changes.

The point, I think, is to come up with a nursery rhyme feel-turned-nightmare, so to speak

The drummer's role here is to follow what Waters is doing, rather than set up a basic rythm pattern for others to use as cue, as is usually the case in straight rock/pop songs.

Either Mason had troubles with the different approach or -- as many have pointed out here -- Waters simply didn't like what he came up with but, it is definitely a tricky song for a drummer to approach.

 

Not one for jokes, are ya?

 

Arrr sorry. I did put a ;-) in my post as i did find it funny. And you are right about my spelling skills anyway. I am aware of my limitation in these matters. No problem.

But perhaps a bit thinskinned after the “Kim is a narcisist” remark.

 

According to a Gilmour interview, Nick struggled with it and Jeff just sailed right thru its weird number of beats.

 

Have never heard the demo for Mother before, very interesting. Thanks for posting. Sounds like quite a different approach to the song, perhaps more traditional Floyd. The string and synth parts are really quite something, feel I should like them, but it was the right decision to streamline the approach to the song. I agree that Mason wasn't the guy to play on this song, but it's not really fair to judge the quality of his playing on this recording, the demo is quite different in spirit than the LP version.

Yes, indeed Jeff's drumming (as one drummer stated earlier) is humbling on this song. The press roll, the lyrical fills, his touch, the drum sound, pocket, it's all so ridiculously tasteful and perfect. The drum part most certainly needs to reflect the time changes. There's a reason why Gilmore used Jeff again so soon after on About Face. And a very, very big yes to Andy's drumming too.