A hub for Mark Weber’s musical work and updates.

Dark, moody horizontal band of soft clay-model shapes in deep charcoal and muted teal, evoking an abstract studio scene at dusk.

Ten songs that quietly rewrite their own rhythm

Growing up in suburban Sydney, I biked to the local record store on Parramatta Road with whatever pocket money I could scrounge. Some weeks I came home with a Triple J Unearthed CD, other times a battered prog rock cassette my older brother had recommended. The common thread became the songs that pulled the rug out from under my foot tapping. When a track jumps from four-four into seven-eight and back, the whole room notices. When it happens well, you find yourself nodding along before you have clocked what just hit you. This list gathers ten such moments, spanning jazz, progressive rock, alternative, and heavier territory, where the band plays a trick on the downbeat and most listeners never quite catch it.

I should be clear that this is not a survey of every technically adventurous song ever recorded. A few worthy candidates did not make the cut. What I wanted were songs where the meter shift is load-bearing, where the track would not work the same without it. You will find canonical picks, a few curveballs, and several songs that fly under the radar unless you are already a fan of the genre.

The jazz standard that reached every lounge

When Paul Desmond wrote "Take Five" in 1959, the five-four feel was considered unusual enough that some radio programmers asked the Dave Brubeck Quartet to record an alternate version in a more standard meter. They refused, the track became the best-selling jazz single of all time, and a generation of listeners learned to nod along to an odd time signature without knowing it. The melody rides on top of a brushed snare pattern that swings harder than the math suggests, and the saxophone solo turns the oddness into elastic logic.

What I love most about the track is how often it appears in unexpected places. Australian jazz clubs from Melbourne's Paris Cat to the Brisbane Jazz Club have programmed it, and I have heard buskers play it on the Esplanade in Cairns. It has become so thoroughly absorbed into the culture that hearing it no longer feels like a lesson in rhythm, just a good piece of music. That is the highest praise for any song that takes a rhythmic risk. The risk becomes invisible.

The Pink Floyd progression that became a hook

"Money" from The Dark Side of the Moon opens with a bass line in seven-four so instantly recognisable it could almost stand alone as a riff. The sax solo, written by Dick Parry, wanders through the bar in a way that highlights the unusual grouping, and when the band finally drops into the chorus, the return to four-four feels jarring by comparison. Countless drummers have cited the track as their first encounter with anything other than the usual suspects, and it is easy to hear why.

The first time I paid attention to the time change was at the Sydney Opera House, during a tribute concert, when the band behind the original lineup pulled off the seven-four opening and the room tilted. The bass line still does what it has always done, which is to make seven sound as natural as four. That is the quiet achievement of writing for an odd meter without letting the oddness dominate.

Tool and the sharpened edges of odd math

If Pink Floyd eased you into the idea of an unusual time signature, Tool will throw you in. "Schism" from Lateralus shifts between so many groupings that fans have built spreadsheets to map every bar. The track opens with a seven-eight verse that resolves into a five-eight middle, and Adam Jones's guitar work hides each shift behind syncopation rather than calling attention to it. It rewards the listener who pays attention and forgives the one who does not, which is part of its long-term appeal.

What makes the song stick is the way the changes feel structural rather than decorative. The shifts carry the emotional content of the lyrics, and the polyrhythms in the drum parts are doing real work. Tool have always been a band that respects the listener's intelligence, and "Schism" is the clearest example of that philosophy in action. You do not need to count along to enjoy it, but you can if you want to.

Rush and the Toronto airport code

Neil Peart was famous for writing drum parts that tested the patience of his bandmates, and the title track from YYZ is a perfect example. The main riff is built from the Morse code for the Toronto airport identifier, and it sits in a shifting sequence that moves between four-four, five-four, and seven-eight sections without warning. The track has become a staple for bass players who want to show off, mostly because Geddy Lee has to keep switching grips on the fly while the bar count keeps changing underneath him.

Rush were never a huge commercial force in Australia in the way they were elsewhere, but their albums showed up in the right record stores. I remember finding Moving Pictures in a suburban Adelaide shop and being warned by the bloke behind the counter that the drummer was a maniac. He was not wrong. The track is a workout, but it never loses the groove, which is the trick that separates clever songs from a great song.

Classic rock odd times that turn the tables

"Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin is one of those songs that everyone knows without quite knowing how it works. The main riff is in seven-eight, but the vocal phrases are arranged so they start and end in unexpected places, giving the whole track a lurching quality that has fooled drummers for decades. John Bonham plays with the bar lines, and the shift back into four-four in the middle gives the listener just enough familiar terrain before the seven returns.

Australian audiences have always had a soft spot for Zeppelin, and their songs turn up everywhere from pub cover sets in Fremantle to the late-night programming on community radio. I once heard "Black Dog" blasted out of a boat radio in the Whitsundays, the seven-eight wobble bobbing along with the swell. That is when a rhythm truly becomes part of the air.

A different flavour of odd time came from Focus with "Hocus Pocus." The track opens in five-four and moves through several groupings before resolving into a more straightforward feel, and the yodelling vocal parts and organ work keep the listener off-balance. The odd meter gives the song its bounce, and once you have heard it, you cannot imagine the riff in four-four. Focus toured Australia in their heyday, and the song remains a fixture of festival sets as far apart as the Gold Coast and the Pilbara.

Modern stadium shifts and crumbling structures

"Knights of Cydonia" by Muse opens with a four-four rock groove that feels suspiciously normal before the main riff kicks in and the meter shifts into seven-eight underneath the vocal. The change is so smooth that most listeners do not realise they have moved into odd time, which is the entire point of writing it. Matt Bellamy's vocal sits on top of the meter shift in a way that disguises the change as part of the song's natural momentum.

The song became a stadium staple, and Australian crowds at the band's Sydney and Melbourne shows have always responded to it. There is a small tradition of audiences clapping along during the seven-eight section, which suggests the meter has become intuitive rather than foreign. That is the achievement of a well-written odd-time song. It rewires the audience without their consent.

A few years earlier, Radiohead had done something similar but more dramatic with "Paranoid Android." The track is built from four sections, each in a different time signature, stitched together so seamlessly that the seams disappear on first listen. Most listeners describe the song as chaotic without being able to point to why, and the meter shifts are part of the answer. Radiohead remain a fixture on Triple J playlists and at inner-city venues in Collingwood and Newtown.

Prog pyrotechnics from Yes to Dream Theater

"Close to the Edge" by Yes does in eighteen minutes what most bands cannot do in three. The track is built from shifting meters, with vocal phrases weaving between sections that sit in four-four, five-eight, and eleven-eight groupings, sometimes within the same phrase. It is dense, layered, and unusually listenable, which is the Yes gift. Australian prog fans have always taken the band seriously, and the music still sells at specialist shops in places like Melbourne's Greville Records. A small but devoted crowd follows Steve Howe whenever he tours the country, ready to count bars along with him.

If Yes pushed the form, Dream Theater took it somewhere entirely different. "The Dance of Eternity" from Scenes from a Memory cycles through so many time signatures over its six-minute run that even the musicians have admitted to needing refresher runs before recording. Each section lasts only a few bars before shifting again. Dream Theater have toured Australia several times, and watching a Sydney audience follow the song through its many shifts is a small lesson in how odd time has become a shared language rather than an obstacle. The song is harder than anything else on this list, but the principle is the same. A good meter shift is one you stop noticing after the first few listens.

Listening notes worth keeping in mind

The lasting takeaway is that the best odd-time songs are the ones that forget they are supposed to be clever. Once you have spent enough time with them, the meter stops being the headline and starts being the bed. The tracks on this page have all become part of that bed for me, and they fit together surprisingly well on a single playlist, even though they span half a century of recording. If you are on the Esplanade in Cairns, sitting on a tram in Adelaide, or driving through the Pilbara at the right hour of the evening, they all work. That is the highest praise of all.