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Mike Portnoy going over the time signatures to "The Dance of Eternity". Or as it's called among the band, just another Dream Theater song.

"At this very moment, on stage, we have drummer A playing in 7/8, drummer B playing in 3/4, the bass playing in 3/4, the organ playing in 5/8, the tambourine playing in 3/4, and the alto sax blowing his nose."
Frank Zappa on "Toads of the Short Forest" – Weasels Ripped My Flesh.

In music, the most encountered time signature is 4/4, boring old Common Time. There's also 2/4 and 2/2 ("cut time"), which aren't much different - all the bars still divide evenly into two, which makes these useful meters for marches; two beats per measure equals one measure per pair of steps. 3/4, sometimes called "three-quarter time" and the canonical meter for waltzes, is also fairly intuitive - if you've ever been taught to waltz by counting "step, two, three, step, two, three" then you know how it works. Regular time signatures are divided into the categories of 'simple' and 'compound' time. Simple has each beat divide into two, compound has each beat divide into three. 4/4 is referred to as 'simple quadruple time' (4/2 would also be this), 2/4 is 'simple duple' (along with 2/2, 2/1, 2/8, you get the idea); 6/8 is 'compound duple' (equivalent to 2/4 in simple), 9/8 'compound triple' (equivalent to 3/4) and 12/8 compound quadruple (equivalent to 4/4). Note that 9/8, depending on how it is divided, can be either an example of this trope or compound time.note within a note

Music in Uncommon Time, however, does away with regular meters, and instead opts for totally unconventional rhythms that are often based on higher prime numbers, or at least that are not divisible by two or three. This can be done by choosing an oddball time signature such as 5/4 or 7/8 (most common of the irregular meters) and/or by switching time signatures rapidly. It can be done throughout the length of an entire song, or used as an effect in an otherwise common-time song.

Still confused? Let's relate it to Poetry Forms. Poetry typically has "meter," described as the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in the verse's "feet" — for instance, the "iambic" in Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter is a "foot" of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllables: "I want to be the one who licks those frogs. I've learned I hate the taste of cats and dogs." Uncommon Meter is when the number of syllables-per-feet changes over the course of the line: "Will you be my running mate? It would help me concentrate." In poetic terms, this would be two trochees followed by a dactyl. In musical terms, this would be 7/4 or 7/8, depending on how precisely the composer decided to engrave the work. (This is why 9/8 only sometimes counts: it can be three dactyls ("I do not understand music stuff") or three trochees and a dactyl ("It is going to drive me up the wall, then I'll lose my balance and then fall").)

For those who have difficulty determining the meter of a song, try paying attention to its percussion track: In many songs the bass and snare drums are perfectly timed with each beat, because this establishes a metronome that the other singers/players rely on to keep their parts of the song in sync to. This, of course, does not help when the song uses polyrhythms (that is, having different instruments playing in conflicting rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter), as bands such as Meshuggah are known for.

This trope is heavily associated with the Math Rock, Progressive Rock, Progressive Metal, and Technical Death Metal genres, to the point where there are only a handful of prominent acts in any of these genres who have never used it. It is also common in modern Classical Music, which is often credited as being due to the influence of Igor Stravinsky, particularly in The Rite of Spring. (Stravinsky was a rather large influence on many of these prog groups as well). By virtue of being strongly influenced by both progressive rock and classical music, it's also noticeably common in video game soundtracks.

See also Wikipedia's list of musical works in unusual time signatures.

    Useful Notes 
  • The "top" number of a time signature indicates how many beats are in a measure, and the bottom number indicates the length of the beat, as determined by how many multiples of the beat make up a semibreve (whole note). For example, a 4/4 time signature means "four beats per measure, counted in quarter notes/crotchets." As such, the top number is usually what makes a difference: a song that's in 4/4 will sound more-or-less the same as a song that's in 4/2 because both of them go "one two three four", even though it'll look longer on paper. Likewise, a song in 4/4 is not the same as a song in 2/2, because while each measure has the same "duration" (4 x 0.25 versus 2 x 0.5), a 2/2 song only has two beats ("One, Two, One, Two..."). (And "duration" is a relative term anyhow since a song in 4/4 can be played super-slow and a song in 2/2 super-fast, or vice-versa.)
  • Time signatures are conventionally divided into simple, compound, and irregular. In a simple time signature, each beat is subdivided into two — thus, a simple duple meter might be 2/4 (1 and 2 and) and a simple triple meter might be 3/4 (1 and 2 and 3 and). In a compound time signature, each beat is subdivided into three — compound duple meter being 1 and a 2 and a, complex triple being 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a, etc. These time signatures are often written as 3/8, 6/8, 9/8, etc, which may seem somewhat counterintuitive; a 6/8 bar is the same length as a 3/4 bar and may look visually similar, but they sound nothing alike (6/8 is broken up into 3+3, while 3/4 is broken up into 1+1+1). For audialization purposes it might help to divide top and bottom of a compound time signature by 3 — 6/8 is more properly understood as 2/2.666..., but fractional notation never caught on.
  • Irregular time signatures are those that are not evenly divided. For example, 5/8 can be divided into 2 + 3 or 3 + 2. As a rule, any time signature where the top number is not a multiple of 2 or 3 will be irregular*. There are, however, a number of regular-looking time signatures that are often irregularly divided: 8/8, for example, is commonly divided in folk music into 3 + 2 + 3 or 3 + 3 + 2. Sometimes these will be notated in the score, e.g. as 3+3+2/8, to avoid confusion. Only songs with irregular time signatures qualify for this trope, as do...
  • Irrational time signatures. These are time signatures in which the beat is a tuplet — i.e. an equal subdivision of the semibreve that is not divisible by two. For example, a piece may call for 4/5 — four quintuplet crotchets (where five quintuplets equal four regular crotchets) per bar. Since this in practice means simply a brief increase in tempo by 120%, irrational time signatures are only useful as occasional, brief "metric modulations" and rarely show up outside the most esoteric works of experimental music. There would be no point to writing a whole song in 4/5; you could as easily notate it in 4/4 at a hundred and twenty percent of the speed and without giving musicians huge headaches.
  • And finally there is music in no time signature at all (in "free time"), mostly written before time signatures were invented in 1600 or so. Another reason for lacking time signature is when music belongs to Ambient genre.

It should be pointed out that this trope only documents measures with unusual time signatures. It does not cover phrases — IE, paragraphs of measures — that follow unusual patterns. A perfect example of this is OutKast's "Hey Ya": while it does have an unconventional 6-bar phrase in its chorus, and while those bars involve 3 bars of 4/4 ("(Beat) My baby don't / mess around, because she / loves me so, this I—"), a bar of 2/4 ("—know fo'—") and two more bars of 4/4 ("—sho-ooooo..."), none of the bars themselves are in Uncommon Time, thus failing to qualify for this trope. And while a 6-bar phrase is less conventional than a 4-bar phrase, that would fall under a different trope (or be too meaningless to trope). Also, while you could try to Square Peg, Round Trope the song into this trope by claiming it's secretly in 22/4, any experienced musician can tell you how unwise that would be. When reading sheet music, musicians rely on bar lines as a visual navigation aid. The phrase can be expressed as one long measure, just like you can write things as a Wall of Text with No Punctuation Period, but that doesn't mean anyone would.


Examples:

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    Avant-Garde 

    Christian 
  • Many ancient hymns and chants don't even use time signatures. As a result, some have really weird settings where each line might have, say, 4½ beats. Most hymnals today will alter the rhythms of such hymns (such as "O Come O Come Emmanuel" and "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God") to make them 4/4 to make them easier for modern congregations to sing. The uncommon-time versions are usually called "isometric", and the straight 4/4 ones "rhythmic". (Even so, the "rhythmic" version of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" still usually involves at least one bar of 6/4 per line.)
  • Overall, it's become almost ridiculously common for modern hymn and Christian praise song composers to jump all over the place with time signatures:
    • "Waterlife", a praise song composed by Handt Hanson, is in 7/4 on the verses.
    • "Look There! The Christ, Our Brother Stands", by John Bennett, has two melodies in the Episcopalian The Hymnal 1982. The first tune, by William Albright, has the right hand playing an 11/8 ostinato over a verse that starts in 5/4 but switches to 4/4 partway through. Exactly how they expected a congregation to handle this is unknown.
    • One melody for "Christ, Mighty Savior" in the same book is written in what can only be described as 4½/4 time — it doesn't actually have a time signature.
  • "Sing of the Lord's Goodness" has the same 5/4 time as Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" (see below under "Jazz"), and the melody is vaguely similar.
  • "The Truth Sent from Above", at least in the setting adapted by Ralph Vaughan Williams, is typically rendered in 11/4 (5 + 6).
  • The Christmas carol "Some Children See Him", composed by Alfred Burt, is in 5/4.
  • "All This Time" by Rachael Lampa is mostly in 4/4 but has a few short sections in 7/4.
  • The nearly 20-minute-long Benjamin Britten cantata "Rejoice in the Lamb" goes all over the place, with measures in (among others) 11/8 and 13/8. Throw a dart at a number line and there's probably at least one measure in that time in the piece.
  • "Chameleon" by Petra opens with a riff in 5/4 time, then jumps into 7/8, before transitioning into ordinary 4/4 for the vocal parts. The 7/8 part comes back for the guitar solo before the last verse.
  • The traditional hymn "How Great Thou Art" is officially in 4/4 time all the way through, but it's often performed with consistent emphasis on the seventh and eleventh beat of each line ("when I in AWE-some won-DER" and "I hear the ROLL-ing thun-DER" etc.), making it seem to jump from 6/4 to 4/4 and back again twice.
  • The frequency of this trope in this musical genre is parodied by Clickhole with Christ Cometh to My House and Eats All of My Food, which has nothing resembling rhyme or rhythm at all, yet still somehow manages to sound good, in the same way anti-humour is funny or Dadaist art is beautiful.

    Country/Bluegrass 
  • Dennis Linde was fond of slipping 6/4 and 7/4 bars into his usually 4/4 songs, including "Janie Baker's Love Slave" and "Heaven Bound (I'm Ready)" by Shenandoah; "Queen of My Double Wide Trailer" by Sammy Kershaw; "Night Is Fallin' in My Heart" by Diamond Rio; "Down in a Ditch" by Joe Diffie; etc.
  • "Music on the Wind" by Suzy Bogguss is in 5/4 time.
  • "Cowboys and Angels" by Dustin Lynch is in 7/4 on the verses, but mostly returns to 4/4 for the chorus.
  • "Mine Would Be You" by Blake Shelton is in 7/4 on the verses.
  • "Sand Dollar" by the progressive bluegrass band The String Cheese Incident is in 5/4, and "Turn This Around" alternates 8/4 and 7/4 bars at one point.
  • "Swimming in Champagne" by Eric Heatherly is in 8/8 (3+3+2).
  • "Burning House" by Cam goes in and out of 7/4 (4+3).
  • "What We Ain't Got" by Jake Owen is largely 7/4 (3+4).
  • The chorus to "Blue Memories" by Patty Loveless ends with a line that's in 10/4 (4+2+4).

    Electronic 
  • Electronic music giants Autechre sometimes delve into unusual time signatures - "Drane" from Peel Session and "Cichli" from Chiastic Slide are in 10/4, while "777" from LP5 is 7/8. The melody from "Slip" on Amber also seems to follow an odd signature. They also use a certain polyrhythm, in which the song assumes a straight 4/4 rhythm and expected four measures throughout the track, except for the bass drum pattern which only follows three measures, leading to interesting combinations. Listen to "Rotar" from Tri Repetae and "Cichli" from Chiastic Slide for examples.
    • Averted by Confield, which is probably one of the weirdest albums in the world but manages to stay in common time. "Gantz Graf" is also confounding but is also in 4/4 (a lone hi-hat click is your only hint.)
    • Autechre also like to abuse tempos. With "Teartear" (from Amber), it merely means a simple slowdown at the end of the song, but "Cap.IV" from Gantz Graf, which is in constant acceleration, nearly becomes a huge smear by the end of the track, and the rhythm in "Fold4, Wrap5" from LP5 somehow manages to constantly shift its tempo down only to return to its origin again (all while the melody seemingly keeps a steady rhythm).
  • iamamiwhoami's "u-2," part of the "To whom it may concern." series, is in 7/4 time.
  • "Aulos" by Vladimir Cauchemar is written in 4/4, but the flute that plays throughout the song is written in a meter of 6/8 as confirmed by Vladimir himself through Twitter.
  • Lamb has an entire album dedicated to this trope called "Fear of Fours."
  • "Cut Your Money" by Da Nine is mostly in a meter of 95/16. (In reality, it still has odd times. It starts with a repeating pattern of 5 bars of 4/4 and a bar of 15/16, then 5 bars of 5/4, followed by a single bar of 14/16, goes back to the 95/16 pattern, and adds in a polyrhythm where 9 bars of 5/8 and a bar of 5/16 play underneath the 95/16 pattern up until the end.)
    • In general, "Da Nine" messes around with time signatures. Of all the songs released on his Soundcloud, only a couple of them can be counted in straight 4/4 and even then, the structures are not in a common 4/8/16 bars.
  • Venetian Snares is the all-time king of this, having used it so much he damn near inverts it. How crazy does he get? "Nineteen 1319" alternates 13/4 and 19/4 time.
    • "Mercy Funk" has probably more time signature changes than any other Venetian Snares' song. Running at a high speed 180 bpm, it starts with 8 bars of 11/4 then switches to alternating bars of 5/4 and 13/8 (or 23/8 together) until 2'32". It then holds 5/4 until 3'50", where a single 7/4 bar is followed by 7 bars of the 23/8 plus one 19/8 bar. At 4'23" there follows a sequence of 16 bars of 13/8, 8 bars of 7/4, a cycle of 3 bars of 7/4 and a bar of 15/8 (or 57/8 together), repeated twice, then 7/4 until the end.
    • For him, Common Time is the least common signature—he prefers 7/4.
    • He appears to have a follower in Scottish musician Acrnym.
  • "Polyrhythm" by Perfume. The bridge has 5/8 and 6/8 (vocal parts) over 4/4 (the drumbeat), then to 3/2 after the vocal 'hiccups'; the low synth has a 7:6 polyrhythm. It was such a radical song for what is essentially an Idol Group that the company initially requested that the bridge be cut altogether. The song's composer (and Record Producer) Yasutaka Nakata saw that the song was allowed to stand as is (although a radio edit version was made in concession), and it became Perfume's first top ten hit.
  • The aforementioned Autechre and Venetian Snares have actually collaborated on a track titled "Elephant Gear" under the alias "AEVSVS" as part of a compilation of tracks in memory of Elektron co-founder Daniel Hansson. Naturally, the track was in uncommon time, specifically 5/4.
  • The song "Good-N-Evil" from Traci Lords' album "1000 Fires" is a 7/8 song given a four-on-the-floor rhythm, which makes the meter sound like 3.5/4.
  • The title track of Lazerhawk's Visitors has a 5/4 bassline against a 4/4 beat, while "The Voyage" alternates between 3*7/8 and 4/4, basically the "Tubular Bells" rhythm minus a half-beat.
  • "Punchinello" by Mr. 76ix is in 14/16, which is not the same as 7/8 since it is divided differently: 2/4 + 2*3/16 rather than 2/4 +3/8.
  • ohGr's "Eyecandy"(11/8) and "Feelin' Chicken"(5/4).
  • "Robotic Apocalypse" by Cyborganic Zombie has the drum track alternating 3 bars in 5/4 with three in 3/4, and everything else on top in 4/4.
  • 'So Damn Beautiful (Amethyst Mix)' by Polaroid is in 3/4 — not particularly out of the ordinary, except that it exists in a genre where everything is in 4/4 because it's supposed to be crossfaded with other tracks.
    • By the same token, "Just Another Groove" by Mighty Dub Kats features 3 bars of 4/4 followed by a single bar of 3/4. This video shows it in action. In the interview that follows, DJ Carl Cox notes that it's "not one of the easiest records to mix in at all".
  • Four Tet's "Liquefaction" starts out with a synth loop in 5/8, then a drum groove comes in over it in 6/8.
  • Oneohtrix Point Never's "Cryo" is in 17/16.
  • Feint loves subverting this trope as much as they love playing it straight. Many of their songs use a base of 4/4 time so twisted into knots by syncopation and triplet loops that you only realize it on close analysis- "Fury," for instance could be represented in 4/4 time, but you might find yourself trying to count it using 3/4, 5/4, 6/4, and 7/8 time at various points. Special mention goes to the Double Subversion found in the controlled chaos of "Formless," however: Good luck figuring the full time signature of that one out, but it starts out with layers at 9/8, 3/4, and 4/4, before coalescing into 4/4...and then it gets really complicated after that first drop.
  • DJ/producer Jonathan Peters released "Flower Duet '99" under the name Lumimaire. Not only is it a club song in 6/4 time, it's based on the famous "Flower Duet" from the opera Lakme, which is in 6/8. The commercial single carried a warning for DJ's that the song was not in 4/4 time.
  • Jake Chudnow's "Going Down" and "Pressed Pennies"(the ones commonly heard in Vsauce videos) are both in 7/4.
  • Front Line Assembly's "IED" is in 5/4.
  • Devo's "Jocko Homo" is in 7/8 for the first half of the song.
  • Solar Fields' "Landing Party" starts in 4/4, switches to 12/8, then combines the two into a polyrhythm.
  • The Eurobeat song "Why" by Black Eva has a 7/8 synth riff, though the percussion is always 4/4.
  • "Endourban" by Black Rain is in 15/16 until the finale, where it gains a 16th and becomes 4/4.
  • Blue Amazon's "And Then The Rain Falls(original mix)" is polyrhythmic, with an organ riff in 12/16 against the other instruments in common time.

    Folk and Blues 
  • Greek folk dance style Tzakonikos employs 5/4 time.
  • Uncommon times are vigorously common in Turkish folk music traditions. Most common ones (besides the Common Time, of course) are 5/8, 7/8 or 9/8, but even more complex times like 9/16, 10/8 or 11/8 could be easily found. Uncommon times are called aksak ritim ("limping rhythm") in Turkish folk tradition.
  • Vienna Teng's "Harbor," which is in 5/8 when it's not in 6/8, 3+3+2/8 (which is not the same as 8/8 due to the location of the stresses) or 7/8.
    • A lesser-known but better example is "Signal Fire", ostensibly a 5/4 piece that changes meter at the drop of a hat.
    • "The Last Snowfall", from her fourth studio album, is in a steady 5/4.
    • And her fifth album opens with the appropriately-named "Level Up", which ratchets the time signature to 7/4.
  • Bulgarian music is really big on difficult time signatures. Here is an example of traditional folk dancing in 11/16, 7/8, 12/8 and 8/8, roughly in this order.
    • Same with Bosnian music. The traditional "L'jepi li su mostarski ducani," for example, is in various divisions of 9/4 and 9/8, like 2+2+2+3/8 and 3+2+4/4.
  • Nickel Creek's "In the House of Tom Bombadil" has a recurring bridge that is either played in 9/8 or 9/4 time, made more interesting by the occurrence of a single 4/4 bar at the beginning of every repetition of the motif.
  • Sufjan Stevens loves this trope. You'll hear it several times per album, sometimes even per song.
    • Perhaps the ruler of all songs listed here is Sufjan's "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois," which is mostly in 65/16 (18+17+17+13/16) (source).
    • Subverted in "Happy Family Christmas", which starts by him counting "one-two-and-one-two-three-four," implying 7/8 time, but then continues as a 4/4 song.
    • "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders" constantly switches from 11/4 (5+6) to 5/4.
  • Bert Jansch was notorious for fitting the music to his lyrics, rather than the more common lyrics to music. As a result many of his songs veer off wildly into odd time signatures just for that one line, with little logic or reason aside from "it sounds better".
  • For added fun, the Leo Kottke and Mike Gordon song "The Collins Missile" has the vocals in 4/4 but the music in 5/4, such that the point at which the vocals come in constantly shifts.
  • "Autopsy" by Fairport Convention is in 3/4, 4/4 and 5/4. Their version of "Tam Lin" alternates between 7/4 and 6/4. The instrumental coda to "Matty Groves" also seems to use this, but is in a much more complicated time signature.
  • Paul Simon's jazzy satire "Have A Good Time" has verses in 7/4 and choruses in straight 4/4.
  • Irish folk music often plays around with Uncommon Time - for instance, "Rocky Road To Dublin" is in 9/8.
  • Irish music has several "sub-genres", which are basically divided by time signature:
    • If it's in cut time (2/2), it's a reel or a hornpipe, depending on how heavily the first beat of the bar is emphasized (lightly emphasized, it's a reel, heavily, it's a hornpipe.).
    • If it's in 6/8, it's a jig. There are also slip jigs, in 9/8 (including "Rocky Road To Dublin"), and a few double jigs in 12/8.
  • "Heartless Highway" by Alela Diane is in 5/4 and 4/4.
  • "Chronologie Part 1" by Jean-Michel Jarre starts in 9/8. You can barely tell because the only rhythmic element fast enough is an aleatoric string line. That, and instead of 3/8 + 3/8 + 3/8, it's 5/8 + 4/8.
  • The second half of Oxygène Part 5 has a 5/8 meter(or perhaps a polyrhythm of 5/8 against 2/4).
  • "Beekeeper" by Aoife O'Donovan is in 7/4.
  • "Barrett's Privateers" by Stan Rogers is mostly in 4/4, but switches to 5/4 for one measure during each verse and chorus.
  • Hozier's "From Eden" is in 5/4.
  • The Grateful Dead:
    • "Uncle John's Band" contains a riff in 7/4 (including the passage that closes off the song), and also frequently skips a beat during the verses, inserting a measure of 3/4 into passages that are otherwise in Common Time.
    • "The Eleven" got its title from its 11/8 time signature.
    • They really used this a lot, to the point where they are practically candidates for Trope Codifier in rock music alongside The Beatles; see their page, which features a much longer list, for proof. Some of their examples get complicated.
  • Wardruna's "Fehu" utilizes 5/4 meter throughout.
  • The folk song "Peggy-O" (also called "The Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie", "Fennario", "The Maid of Fife", and a number of other titles) is often performed in unusual meter signatures, although arrangements vary. Bob Dylan's arrangement on his debut album uses Common Time, but Simon & Garfunkel's, also on their debut album, is mostly in 10/4 (there are a few connecting passages of 4/4). The Grateful Dead's, which was a staple of their live set, is even more complicated, using patterns of 5+4+5+7/4 (i.e., 21/4); as mentioned above, they really loved this trope, so this probably won't come as a surprise. Despite the wildly different arrangements (and even lyrics) between these versions, though, the melody generally remains pretty similar. Interestingly, when Dylan began performing the song again in concerts in the '90s, he began using the Dead's melody and lyrics, though he kept a simpler rhythmic foundation.
  • The Smothers Brothers sang "The Last Great Waltz" by Mason Williams, which tells the story of waltzer Jonathan W. Astor. The verses are in 2/4 time and the choruses are in 3/4 (waltz) time, until the last chorus which is in 5/4 time (played as alternating measures of 2/4 time and 3/4 time).

    Hip Hop 
  • DJ Shadow's "Changeling / Transmission 1" is in 7/4. "Stem/Long Stem" from the same album has at least one bar of 3/4.
  • The Gorillaz song "5/4" features a polyrhythm of 5/4 in the guitars and 4/4 in the drums.
  • Eminem:
    • "Underground", from Relapse, is in 5/8.
    • "Untitled", the Hidden Track from Recovery, is in 3/4 - pretty weird for a rap song.
  • Flobots' "The Rhythm Method" jumps between 6/8 and 7/8.
  • Andrew Huang, rapper of YouTube fame, has a song titled "Andrew Huang Raps in 15/8" in... Well, you know. The same goes for his "Andrew Huang Raps in 5/4", and "Alphabetical 26-Genre Song" uses something at least as odd in its "math metal" section.
  • This live-recorded rap is in 7/4.
  • YouTube rapper None Like Joshua recorded this over a 7/4 Venetian Snares tune.
  • YouTube's Milton Coffee made this in 7/8.
  • "Grammy Family" by Consequence featuring DJ Khaled, John Legend, and Kanye West cycles five bars of 4/4 and can thus be tracked out as 10/2 or 20/4. (The first couple of these are pretty disorienting, too.) While questionably uncommon for music as a whole, even this much is rare in rap.
  • The main groove in "Message II (Survival)" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is 5/8 against 4/4.
  • Madvillain's "Strange Ways" has a slow bit in 5/4, as in the Gentle Giant song it's sampled from ("Funny Ways").
  • clipping's "Story 2" adds an extra beat to the time signature every eight bars (so you get eight bars of 3/8, eight bars of 4/8, eight bars of 5/8, etc.). Midway through the song, this pattern starts over with the triplets becoming the new eighth notes.
    • "Story 7" is even crazier. It has three sections: the first in 15/16, the second in 21/16, and the third in 4/4.
    • "Pain Everyday" is in 7/8.
  • Mad Conductor's "Central America EP" has 4 songs in odd times. "Yo, Kid!" is in 5/4, "The Parthenon" is in 14/4, "Chillin' in the Columns" is in 6/4, and "Cross Gates Estates" is in 7/8. All of which comes off as pretty natural flowing.
  • Coin Locker Kid raps on Quakers' Russia with Love in 7/8.
  • Kid Koala has produced a few odd time beats. Some notable ones include;
    • "3030" by Deltron 3030 has a chorus that is in 5 bars of 6/4, with the final 6th bar in 7/4.

    Jazz 
  • The "time studies" of the Dave Brubeck Quartet use unconventional time signatures.
    • "Take Five", "Countdown" and "Castilian Blues" are in 5/4 (though, given how it subdivides, you could argue that "Take Five" is in 6/8+2/4);
    • "Three's A Crowd" and "Unsquare Dance" are in 7/4;
    • "Eleven Four" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin (to be more precise, [3+ 2+ 3+ 3]/4).
    • The outer sections of "Blue Rondo A La Turk" are in [2+ 2+ 2+ 3]/8 (the improvised middle section is in Common Time).
    • "Three To Get Ready" alternates between 3/4 and 4/4 every two bars.
    • "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck is both the Ur-Example of this trope in pop music (coming a decade or more before Progressive Rock and even the Beatles' temporal experiments) and the Trope Maker for a new genre of jazz: despite the Uncommon Time, its rhythm is simple enough that a lot of jazz songs have copied it since. In the '50s, this was groundbreaking.
    • They did do a piece in 4/4 on one of those records, the joke being that the piece promptly turns into a waltz in 3/4.
      • It's actually worse than that — "Kathy's Waltz" features a saxophone solo by Paul Desmond in waltz time with the drummer (Joe Morello) playing 6/8 behind him, then segues into a waltz-time piano solo by Brubeck that suddenly breaks into a 4/4 swing right in the middle, with Eugene Wright playing bass in 3/4 while Morello continues to play 6/8... it has to be heard to be believed.
  • Jazz musician and arranger Don Ellis was known for his use of unorthodox time signatures. His Electric Bath album featured charts in 5/4 ("Indian Lady"), 7/4 ("Turkish Bath"), and 17/4 ("New Horizons"). "Bulgarian Bulge" (see the entry on Bulgarian folk music below) is in 33/16. A later chart, "Niner Two" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, as is "33 222 1 222", in 19/8.
    "The first number we have is one that is based in what we call the 'traditional 19,' nineteen beats to the bar. Let me give you the subdivision here, it is 3-3-2-2-2-1-2-2-2. Of course, that's just the area code."
  • Jazz pianist/composer David Benoit has stated he likes to have at least one song per each of his albums use a time signature other than 4/4. For instance, "Wistful Thinking" flips between 7/8 and 4/4, as does "Yusuke The Ghost". "One Dream At A Time" is in 9/8.
  • Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Vital Transformation" from The Inner Mounting Flame is mostly in 9/8, as is the title track from Birds of Fire. Then "Celestial Terrestrial Commuters", on the latter album, is in 19/16, while "The Dance of Maya" from the former album opens with a segment in (3+4+3)/4 or 10/4 before switching to a segment in (3+3+3+3+3+3+2)/8 or 20/8, before it overlays the two in a particularly confusing segment. This is far from an exhaustive list, even on these two albums; the first Mahavishnu Orchestra (which also recorded The Lost Trident Sessions) was pretty much one of those bands that preferred to use compound meters to anything resembling Common Time. There are at most a handful of tracks in their recorded output that don't use compound meters. (One of the band members reportedly commented that none of them knew for sure what time signature any of their songs were in, because they were too busy keeping track of the rhythms of their own parts to pay attention to such trivialities as what time signatures anyone else's were in.)
  • "Let Me Be Your Mirror" (by Hal David & Michel Legrand) is in 5/4.
  • Outsider jazz/classical composer Louis "Moondog" Hardin frequently experimented with Uncommon Time; he was quoted as saying "I'm not gonna die in 4/4." His chamber piece "Chaconne in G Major" features an unconventional method of stringing fours together — one can make a case that the time signature is actually 8/4 or 16/8.
    • His preferred method of working was to string together rounds in unconventional times. See "All Is Loneliness", which is performed in 5/4 (and was covered in 4/4, much to his annoyance, by Janis Joplin); or "Bumbo" (first song in this link), which is in 4/4 but arranged in an unconventional three-bar measure.
  • The band Supersilent loves ... unusual time signatures, for example, the mid-section in 7.4. It's made all the more impressive by the fact that their entire catalogue is made up entirely of free improvisations being written on the spot, from scratch. They've never even played the same riff twice in 15 years together, let alone song, yet they still manage to modulate time signatures and polyrhythms on the fly. They are understandably tense and focused while playing live, though not beyond joking about.
  • Pat Metheny embraces every time signature known to man. Not only does much of his work modulate through varying common times, but through multiple uncommons. For example, one of his earlier compositions in Pat Metheny Group, "The First Circle", cycles around a 22/8 riff with 12/8, 6/8 and 4/4 utilized. Two consecutive songs on Letter from Home are titled "45/8" after its uncommon time (which, for an exercise in how far they could stretch the concept, is pretty catchy); and '5-5-7", after the 5/4 - 5/4 - 7/4 pattern of the main riff (the song also uses 6/4, 6/8 and 3/4.)
  • Jeff Coffin likewise loves bizarre time, but is much more focused on making uncommon time groove like no other. All of the weirdness of his music can be attributed to his... unconventional phrasing. A song titled "The Mad Hatter Rides Again"" features a main melody in 17/8 (referred to by Coffin as "eight and a half-four") and a bridge in alternating 9/4 and 7/4. This is all on about two chords - thanks to the song being funk. Yep.
  • "Time for a Change", performed by the Stan Kenton Orchestra, is entirely in 9/4 (2+2+3+2/4).
  • Steely Dan's "Aja". That Other Wiki sums up the shenanigans in the song's instrumental break:
    The first part goes on for 17 bars, one in 2/4, as the other musicians vamp on staccato chords beneath. The interlude chords briefly return, and Gadd resumes keep the beat, with a few more flourishes, while Shorter's solo continues. Then the vamp and drum solo resume for another 17-bar section, this one including one bar in 3/4, that ends with a descending chord progression that takes us back into the intro.
The last word of the chorus ("you") also inserts 3/4 into an otherwise 4/4 section.
  • Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan has named Meshuggah as an influence, if that's an any indication. The song "The Grid" is apparently based on a 35/16 meter signature, but good luck making any sense out of it.
  • Sungazer's Threshold is just as much music as it is an experiment in musical psychology. It goes at 33 BPM, which is the lower threshold of what humans can perceive as a rhythm, with a 19/16 time signature that comes out to almost 10 notes per second, the higher rhythmic threshold that humans can keep up with. This results in a strange medium where the song almost sounds like it's in 3/4 at 99 BPM, but with the third beat in the bar being slightly longer since 19 can't be divided evenly into 3. One of the creators of the song explains how it all works here.
  • This video of Harry Connick Jr.. He's playing a blues in 4/4 and gets annoyed at the crowd clapping on 1 and 3, so he throws in one bar of 5/4. The audience is now clapping on the 2 and 4 and the song takes off.

    Metal 
  • Mathcore band The Number Twelve Looks Like You loves this. The song "Grandfather" alone includes 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 7/4, 11/8, and 13/4.
  • Many of Alice in Chains' songs (particularly the ones composed by Jerry) have unusual time signatures. Especially notable is "Them Bones" which shifts between 7/8 and 4/4 at different points in the song.
  • The landmark Technical Death Metal band Atheist created musical insanity bound to force any person familiar with music to shudder in horror at the sound of their constant use of bizarre time signatures changing at a rapid fire pace. Their second album is 8 straight songs of this trope in abundance. Try to guess the time signature at 1:24 in this song. This is Alien Geometries as applied to music.
  • tool likes to use weird time signatures with a lot of their songs. The most famous is probably "Schism" which, according to Justin Chancellor, their bassist starts out in * 6.5/8 time, and then just goes everywhere from that point. Interesting to listen to, not so much when you actually try to play it yourself.
    • The intro riff is in 6/4. A bar of 5/8 and then a bar of 7/8.
      • "Schism" apparently holds the record for most time signature changes in a song that appeared on the Billboard Hot 100, with 47 changes in its nearly 7 minute running time.
    • "Lateralus", the title track from the same album, is another example. The chorus is in 9+8+7/8, and the rest of the song combines 5/8 and 12/16 or 12/8(both of which feel like 4/4, but looking at it rhythmically, and tempo-wise, there aren't enough 16th notes in 4/4 for some parts).
      • "Lateralus" gets bonus points for following the Fibonacci Sequence.
      • There's also the bridge of the song where the drums are playing 5/8 and the rest of the band is using 6/8.
    • Many other Tool songs make use of 5/4, 7/4, 9/4, and changing or compound meters, including "Intolerance", "Die Eier Von Satan", "Forty Six & Two", "The Patient", "Jambi", and "Vicarious"
    • The Grudge is in 5/4 and Right in Two is in 11/8.
  • "Question!" by System of a Down continually shifts between 9/8, 10/8, 6/8 and 3/4, to the point that the band has had trouble playing it live. In general the band tends to use this pretty liberally, although "Question!" is probably their most extreme example.
  • Soundgarden was known for their unintentional usage of unusual time signatures, most famously in their song "Spoonman". The band has said that a lot of this was unintentional — they would just mess around until they found something that sounded good, and they wouldn't realize until much later that the song was actually in 7/4 or 9/8.
  • The main riff for the song "Ithyphallic" by Nile is in 7/4, but the song has numerous time changes and tempo changes, using 4/4, 5/4, 3/4, 6/4, and 7/4, and tempos ranging from 255 BPM to 60 BPM.
    • Also, the song "Papyrus Containing the Spell to Preserve Its Possessor Against Attacks From He Who Is in the Water" has, as its most odd time signatures, 11/8, 5/8, 9/8, 7/8, and a couple of bars of 17/16.
  • Meshuggah, much like Tool (who they have toured with) love this trope, and they tend to do a lot with it. In the main riff to "New Millennium Cyanide Christ", for example, their drummer plays a slow 4/4 with his hands and, apparently, five bars of a very brisk 23/16 followed by one of 13/16 with his feet, and it only gets more complex from there. This is arguably Subverted or Played With as most of their songs turn out to have bases of 4/4 underlying all the time signature changes, but their use of polyrhythms is so rhythmically complex that it's probably impossible for anyone to tell without actually reading their musical scores and/or manipulating their music to slow it down by at least a factor of three. (For example, the aforementioned pattern in "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" adds up to 128/16, which theoretically can be counted as eight bars of 4/4. However, even if you count the beats, you'll never be able to follow them and figure this out. The tempo of the song is just too fast to follow such rhythmic complexity). Essentially, Meshuggah's use of polyrhythms is the purest possible essence of Mind Screw as applied to rhythm. See here for a much lengthier explanation, which still only barely scratches the surface. They do have at least one example that does not have any elements that divide into powers of two, namely "Spasm" from Nothing, which (apparently) features a base of 7/4.
  • Sludge/drone/noise metal outfit Normpeterson's "Attenuation" is in 7/4 time.
  • Underoath's "We Are the Involuntary" jumps between 5/4, 4/4, and 3/4.
    • "The Created Void" is in 5/4 with some 3/4.
  • Between the Buried and Me lives for this trope, their songs normally jumping among several time signatures. Perhaps most notably, "Selkies - The Endless Obsession" has mostly 13/8 verses, and "Prequel to the Sequel" includes a 5/4 polka section.
    • "White Walls" really takes the cake, though: the main riff is in 24.5/4 ([3+4+2+2.5+3+4+2+4]/4) and the song rarely, if ever, stays in the same time signature for a full minute.
  • Dream Theater uses this a lot. "Learning to Live" starts in 15/8 and 7/4, and meanders around from there.
    • Most notably, in "The Dance of Eternity" there is a section that changes almost every measure. There are 104 time changes in total in a song that is 6:13 long. That equates to a time change every 3.6 SECONDS! It's just as ridiculous as it sounds. Musicians beware, actually seeing it laid out on paper just might make Your Head Asplode. A good way to get a handle on the time changes in The Dance of Eternity is to watch this guy beatbox the drumline while holding up time signature flash cards… Wait, did I just watch a guy beatbox that song? Good god!
    • There are a few measures before the finale of "Home" in 19/16.
    • "Breaking All Illusions" is nearly as ridiculous, with over 170 time changes in 12 minutes. At an average of a change every 4-odd seconds, it's not quite as compacted as Dance of Eternity, but close. There is a breather of a guitar solo in 4/4 in the middle, though.
    • Hell, a majority of their longer songs have instrumental sections that change time signature every measure.
  • John Petrucci's 2005 solo album Suspended Animation has this in nearly every song. Special props go to "Glasgow Kiss", which has a section where the band plays in 12/8, but two of the guitars play in 9/8. And the sheet music notates it as such.
  • OSI sports a song that alternates between lyrical sections in 6/4 and instrumental passages in 25/16.
  • A lot of Black Metal bands really like this trope. It's probably harder to find a Blut aus Nord song that stays in Common Time the whole way through than it is to find one that uses this trope somewhere, especially on anything they've released in the last five years.
    • Mayhem's "Slaughter of Dreams" is mostly in 7/4, which isn't all that surprising since it's from their days as a progressive black metal band, but what is susprising is that "Deathcrush" and "Chainsaw Gutsfuck", both from the incredibly primitive Deathcrush EP, both have segments in 5/4.
    • Emperor's "An Elegy of Icaros" has one section where it's pretty much impossible to find two consecutive measures in the same meter signature. Most of them are truly bizarre combinations of 10, 11, and other numbers. This segment can be heard starting at 1:04 and at the end of the song. "Sworn", from the same album, does something similar. One of the Uncommon Time segment begins at 1:51. This also shows up in several songs on Prometheus, like "The Tongue of Fire" and "He Who Sought the Fire".
  • Slayer does this occasionally. "Metal Storm/Face the Slayer" starts in 4/4, transitions to 9/8, and then goes back to 4/4. "At Dawn They Sleep" starts in 5/4, then transitions to 4/4. Their usage of this trope has dropped off over time.
  • Cain's Offering's "Morpheus In A Masquerade" is mainly in 6/4 timing, but there's a section where it changes to 4/4 and then 5/4, before returning back to 6/4.
  • Pain of Salvation have several songs with uncommon time signatures. Notable examples include New Year's Eve whose opening riff starts in 21/16, a lot of The Perfect Element is in 7/8 (with interspersed 6/8 and 4/4), Idioglossia includes 15/16, 17/16, 7/16 and 10/16 measures. Rope Ends even has a guitar solo in 17/16! There are far too many songs to list here, so just check out their entire opus!
  • Andorran band Persefone has their work full of this, every one of their songs is full of uncommon times and changes on the signature time that they have been considered by some people as an Extreme version of Dream Theater, notable examples "Shin-ken Part 1" from their 3rd album Shin-Ken or "Returning to the Source" from their 4th album Spiritual Migration.
  • Deathspell Omega does this a lot. It's part of what makes their sound so impenetrable.
  • One of the riffs in Astarte's "Queen of the Damned" is in 5/4. Earlier albums by the band use this trope more extensively; for example, "Furious Animosity", the first song on Rise from Within, has a section that has two 5/4 measures followed by a 6/4 measure, then later, a 5/4 measure followed by a 4/4 measure followed by another 5/4 measure and then three 4/4 measures. Other songs on the album use this trope too, though not to this extent.
  • The second half of Panopticon's "The Long Road, Pt. II: Capricious Miles" is in 7/4.
  • Japanese Avant-Garde Metal band Sigh use this pretty frequently. For example, 7/4 segments (or multiples thereof) show up in "Izuna", "Intro: Soushiki", "Outro: Higeki", "Hail Horror Hail", "42 49", "A Sunset Song", and "In Devil's Arms" (this list is undoubtedly not complete). They're still using compound meters in new songs as of Graveward (in "Kaedit nos pestis", for example).
  • Kayo Dot really likes this trope. Almost every song on Hubardo has at least one compound meter section. Other albums use it, too, though maybe not to the same extent.
  • Black metal band Botanist is extremely fond of this trope. It's one of the many things that makes their music so strange (although the strangest is still the fact that their music is mostly based around the hammered dulcimer).
  • The first half of Plaistow, NH, black/sludge/post-metal band Vattnet Viskar's "Glory" is in 7/4. The second half has segments in plain old 6/4 and 4/4. There is also a riff in "Breath of the Almighty" near the end of the song that is in 5/4. They've since shortened their name to Vattnet and changed to a lighter style with clean singing, but they're using this trope even more now; for instance, "Dark Black" has a riff in 10/4, "Chains" has a segment in 5+5+5+6/4 (or 21/4), and "Time Will Prove Everything" uses 5/4 in parts of its verses.
  • Maine folk/black metal band Falls of Rauros' "Ancestors of Shadow" has one section that has one measure of 6/4 followed by one measure of 5/4 followed by one measure of 6/4. This section is reprised in "Ancestors of Smoke", which has other examples of this trope as well (including one section that seems to be 15/8 or 5/4 depending on how it's counted).
  • Norwegian Viking metal band Windir's "Sóknardalr" appears to use this extensively, switching meter signature basically every measure or two, but it could be considered an arguable subversion along the lines of Meshuggah's, since the overall pattern appears to be 5+4+5+2+5+5+4+2/4... which adds up to 32, or eight bars of 4/4. This does, however, contrast with Meshuggah's in that Meshuggah's subversions are difficult to recognise as subversions because of how quickly they are played, while Windir's example is played at a tempo typical for Doom Metal, which means that unless you're counting the beats, you probably won't notice that they fall into powers of two either (and even if you do count them, you'll probably get lost somewhere along the way). "Byrjing" provides an indisputable straight example: it mostly uses patterns of 27 beats, which might be considered a subversion if they were divided differently, but here they're divided as 11+11+5. The only reason the song isn't entirely an example of this trope is because it finishes with two measures of Common Time.
  • Controversial U.S. Black Metal band Liturgy has used this trope rather extensively, in tracks like "Veins of God", "Vitriol", and "Sun of Light". This is not a complete list of their use of this trope.
  • Progressive Black Metal duo Njiqahdda also uses this trope a lot. Serpents of the Sky contains a number of examples of this, for example in the song "She Which Water Holds", which has several complex meter signature changes. The Path of Liberation from Birth and Death also contains a rather large number of examples.
  • Black Metal band Bosse-de-Nage uses this from time to time. For example, "Desuetude" has a riff in 5/4.
  • Symphonic Black Metal band Caladan Brood have a few examples in the song "Echoes of Battle" which can be counted as 10/4.
  • Rage Against the Machine have "Year of tha Boomerang", which has a riff in 5/4.
  • The main riff of Ministry's "Animosity" is in 9/4.
  • While the original Metroid soundtracks occasionally contained examples of this trope (see below under video game soundtracks), Stemage's metal arrangements of them, solo and with his band Metroid Metal, take this trope up a notch, with nearly every song containing complicated time signature changes wherever Stemage thinks they will make the song flow more naturally. As a result, any given song is liable to have a section in 4/4 that changes to 7/8 for a couple of measures before going back to 4/4. This is a characteristic of nearly every song he has arranged for the project to the point where it could be considered a Signature Style and probably appears once a song or more.
  • One riff of Immortal's "Cold Winds of Funeral Dust" has a measure of 6/4 followed by a measure of 7/4.
  • Krallice, being a Progressive Black Metal band, use this a lot; it kind of comes with the territory. One example is "Over Spirit", which contains a riff in 5/4. Similarly, "Wretched Wisdom" contains a riff in 9/4. Other songs get more complicated, which has earned them comparisons to Math Rock in some circles. A variant of this trope that also sometimes shows up is the usage of patterns of unusual numbers of Common Time measures (e.g., patterns of five, seven, or nine measures). And at other times they'll subvert it; for example, "Intraum" contains one segment with alternating bars of 9/8 and 7/8... which add up to 16/8.
  • Mastodon started off using this on the first song on their first demo ("Shadows That Move", which opens in 5/4) and haven't looked back since.
  • This trope is all over the place in some of Megadeth's material. "Five Magics" goes through about five time signature changes in slightly over as many minutes, including segments in 7/4 and 5/4. Rust in Peace in general has a lot of this.
  • Metallica used a lot of this too. For example, the verses of "...And Justice for All" are in 7/4, while the verses of "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" are in 10/4 divided into five measures of 2/4. "Blackened" frequently shifts between 7/4, 5/4 and 6/4 while also throwing in the occasional 5/8 and 7/8 towards the end. The "mystery bar" in the main riff of "Master of Puppets" is noted as 5/8 in the official transcription, but someone measured it and found out it's actually in 21/32… most likely accidentally.
  • The Progressive Folk Metal band Týr, who are probably the most famous musical act ever to come from the Faroe Islands, use this trope extensively in most of their songs. Many of these examples, such as "Regin smiður", are based on traditional folk music.
  • Moonsorrow, another progressive folk metal band (this one from Finland), also like this trope a lot. "Tuleen ajettu maa", for example, is in 5/4 for most of its first several minutes, while "Karhunkynsi" extensively uses 10/4. This is nowhere close to being a complete list.
  • Australian Death/Doom band Inverloch opens its first EP with a riff in 7/4, and it's not even the only one in the song. They've used this trope elsewhere as well.
  • American progressive black metal act Cobalt are quite fond of this, which pretty much comes with the territory of being a prog band (especially one as influenced by tool as they are). To give but one example, "Hunt the Buffalo" opens in 5/4.
  • Death/doom band Derkéta utilise this in their lengthy song "Goddess of Death", alternating three bars of 4/4 with one of 6/4 in one part, and using other patterns elsewhere. It's honestly pretty difficult to keep track of all their time signature changes.
  • The bridge of Swedish Thrash Metal band Witchery's "Nosferatu" alternates between 7/8 and 8/8.
  • Used extensively by the Norwegian progressive metal band Leprous, they are specially fond of the 7/8 time signature which they use in a good number of their songs.
  • Cascadian Black Metal band Huldrekall use a pattern that adds up to 20/4 in several sections of "The Will to Freedom" (3+3+3+2+3+3+3)/4. There are several other meter signature changes in the song, some of which add up to Uncommon Time and some of which don't. It's a pretty disorienting song. Later in the same album, "Traversing the Borderland State" has a riff that subdivides into patterns of 14/4 (4+2+4+4)/4.
  • Arcata, CA's Ash Borer have "Lacerated Spirit", of which at least one section has three measures of 4/4 followed by a measure of 3/4, amounting to 15/4. A later section of the same song is in 7/8.
  • Kyrgyzstan's Darkestrah have a habit of this. All three songs on their debut album Sary Oy use this extensively, and the first and third have rhythms that get very difficult to follow at times (the second one just switches between 15/8 and 4/4). Their later albums don't use this trope quite as consistently, but there's still quite a bit of it.
  • The opening of Irish black metal band Primordial's "Graven Idol" is in 7/4. A later segment can be counted as either five-measure patterns of 6/8 or as 10/4, another later segment is in 9/4, and the closing segment of the song switches meter signatures seemingly every second bar.
  • Black Sabbath has "Sabbra Cadabra," which is mostly in 12/8, except for the intro riff, which is actually (and surprisingly) in alternating bars of 35/24 and 12/8.
  • Avenged Sevenfold usually sticks to good ol' 4/4, with the occasional 6/8 (in "Acid Rain", the beginning or "Buried Alive" or most of "Save Me"), but they do have a couple of punctual examples, usually to create a slight sense of unease or unbalance. Being a more prog-oriented album, The Stage plays with this in several songs.
    • The intro of "Almost Easy" and the verses of the aforementioned "Save Me" are in 6/4 (2+2+2); the actual time signature is given away by the kick pattern.
    • The bridge of "A Little Piece of Heaven" just before the final chorus is in 5/4 to make it sound creepier.
    • On The Stage, "Angels" (which is partly about the loss of faith in God) has verses in 7/4.
    • Similarly, "Simulation", where the narrator is starting to realize he lives in a literal simulation, has verses in 15/8, making the tempo slightly off, like something's amiss.
    • "Exist" has a part between the 3rd and 5th minute where each portion is composed of three 4/4 bars followed by a 5/4 bar, culminating in a polyrhythmic part where the guitars keep the aforementioned pattern while the drums stay in 5/4, which gives it a chaotic feel. The quiet middle-section guitar solo has no time signature.
  • Even by metal standards, the avant-garde black metal band Jute Gyte takes this to an extreme, frequently using polyrhthms of multiple simultaneous tempi. The liner notes to 2017's Oviri explain the shenanigans on that album (note that Jute Gyte also employs a 24-note scale, rather than the 12-note scale found in nearly all Western music):
    "Mice Eating Gold" and "Yarinareth..." have sections in which one guitar gradually increases in tempo while a second guitar gradually decreases in tempo in a manner similar to Conlon Nancarrow's Study No. 21. For instance, "Yarinareth..." opens with a left-panned guitar decelerating from 400 BPM to 100 BPM, while a right-panned guitar accelerates from 100 BPM to 400 BPM. At the midpoint of this process (0:36), the left and right-panned guitars momentarily converge at 200 BPM and a third, centered guitar enters at a stable 200 BPM. The guitars proceed through different configurations of these tempo gradients each time this section recurs in the track, always playing manipulations of the 24-note series 0, 3, 22, 21, 14, 17, 8, 7, 4 19, 18, 5 6, 15, 16, 23, 20, 1, 2 13, 10, 11, 12, 9.

    Most of the tracks have sections in multiple simultaneous tempos, like the prolation canon in a 4:5:6:7:8 ratio in ["The Norms That Author the Self Render the Self Substitutable"]. "Democritus Laughing" opens with a four-measure riff that accelerates by gaining an extra note each measure in a horizontal 4:5:6:7 ratio, for a total of 22 notes. The 22 pitches played by the opening guitar were generated aleatorically by rolling a 24-sided die; the three other guitars play serial transformations of that pitch material. When the drums enter, the tempo ratio becomes vertical and the four guitars trade tempos in that 4:5:6:7 ratio every time the opening theme recurs.

    Orchestral 
  • Igor Stravinsky loved changing time signatures almost every measure.
    • "The Rite of Spring" is a good example of him playing havoc with time signatures: "The Naming and Honoring of the Chosen One" changes, in consecutive measures, from 9/8 to 5/8 to 7/8 to 3/8 to 4/8 to 7/4 to 3/4. The theme of the concluding "Sacrificial Dance" uses an irregular mixture of 2/16, 3/16, 4/16 (or 2/8) and 5/16.
    • The "resurrection" sequence that begins the finale to The Firebird has several bars in 7/4 time.
    • Petrushka has this here and there: the "Master of Ceremonies" sections in the opening tableau go through a lot of time signatures before ending up in 5/8, and there is a short 5/8 dance in the final tableau.
    • In The Soldiers Tale, "The Soldier's March" and "Ragtime" both start out in straight 2/4, but the former's bridge section switches between 3/4, 3/8 and 2/4 in a not quite regular pattern and the latter has a recurring violin break that throws in bars of 5/16 and 7/16. Likewise, "Triumphal March of the Devil" is mostly in 2/4, but its first four bars (which repeat later on) go from 4/4 to 5/8 to 5/4 to 3/4, and several other time signatures also make one-bar appearances here and there.
  • The finale of Borodin's Symphony No. 2 alternates bars of 3/4 and 2/4 in its main theme.
    • And "Bazaar of the Caravans" from Kismet, which is merely the finale of Borodin's Symphony No. 2 with an overlaid vocal arrangement.
  • "Sensemayá" by Silvestre Revueltas is primarily in 7/8, but also has measures in 7/16, 9/8, and 5½/8 (which is essentially 11/16).
  • In Gustav Holst's The Planets, "Mars" is in 5/4 and 5/2 (except for the coda, which is 3/4) and "Neptune" is entirely in 5/4. (Indeed, the movements are symmetrical (in the order presented, rather than the actual order of the planets) when it comes to time signatures)
    • In a lesser known work, "Egdon Heath," he uses 7/4, a later section is in 5/4, and instead of actually writing out triplets, in the middle he puts half the orchestra in 7/4 and half in 21/8. At different points in the piece, there are also two bars of 4/4
  • Raymond Deane is fond of this.
  • The fourth movement (well, second half of the second movement) of Camille Saint-Saëns' Symphony #3 starts in 6/4 time and moves several times between 6/4, 9/4, 3/4, and 4/4.
  • Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms is in Hebrew and employs 6 percussionists, and that's just the beginning. The first movement is mostly in 7/4, the second in 3/4, 4/4 and then 3/4-against-4/4 (a Soprano and Gravel juxtaposition where the women sing the 23rd Psalm against men chanting at Dakka speed about war), and the final in 10/4.
    • Bernstein's "waltzes" were sometimes in the usual 3/4 (e.g. the "Paris Waltz" in Candide), and sometimes really different: the waltz in his Divertimento for Orchestra is in 7/8; the waltz in his ballet music for Fancy Free switches freely between 3/4, 3/8 and 4/4.
    • "Profanation" from Symphony No. 1 shifts meters almost constantly. The first theme mixes 6/8, 8/8 and 7/8 (the latter two are both divided into three beats).
    • In "Kaddish" (Symphony No. 3), the chorus begins singing "Kaddish 1" in 7/8 alternating with 3/4, with a later section in 8/8 (3 + 2 + 3). "Kaddish 2" begins and ends in 5/8, with a middle section in 5/16. "Kaddish 3" has a middle section in 7/8. The finale is mostly in 7/8 (2/4 + 3/8) and 7/4 (4/4 + 3/4).
    • Leonard Bernstein's music for On the Waterfront includes a very fast, drum-heavy theme whose bars alternate between alla breve and 3/4.
    • "Turkey Trot" from the Divertimento for Orchestra alternates bars of alla breve and 3/4.
    • The "Prelude" theme from "Prelude, Fugue and Riffs" switches between 4/4 (=8/8), 3/4 (=6/8), 5/8, 7/8 and 9/8, though its barlines get translated into Common Time when it reappears in the "Fugue."
  • The majority of Steel by Randall D. Standridge is written in alternating measures of 4/4 and either 3/4 or 2/4, effectively making the majority of the piece either 6/4 or 7/4.
  • If you think the quote at the top of the page is a joke, you should talk to Norwegian composer Knut Nystedt. He has a setting of the "Veni Sancte Spiritus" text which, From 2:39 to 3:03, gives the sopranos and altos a pattern represented by one bar of 4/2 and another of 3/2, while the tenors and basses a pattern in two bars of 4/2. And all four parts begin their patterns at totally different times, meaning that each part's bar lines don't necessarily line up. The best a conductor can do at that point is give individual beats and then hope to God his singers can count.
  • Whoever claimed it might be more intuitive to notate triplet meters as X/6 might care to glance at the score of Thomas Adès's Piano Quintet sometime. The first and last few bars are in 4/4 (not that they sound like it). In between things get a bit ... complicated. 4/5, 1/12, 3/10, 6/7.... What's more, in many places each of the five players has a completely different "irrational" time signature, synchronising with the others only occasionally. Yeah. It's somewhat surprising that it can be performed at all without coming across as a godawful polymetric mess.
    • And even that doesn't compare to some of Conlon Nancarrow's music, like a player piano study in which the parts are moving at a ratio of √42 (~6.4807) to 1.
  • The fourth movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony #2 "Resurrection" doesn't use unusual time signatures (except for 5/4), but switches them frequently, including eight measures in a row. Thankfully, the tempo is slow enough that the only thing to worry about is the conductor's stick technique.
  • Willson Osbourne's Rhapsody for Solo Clarinet has a measure in 5.5/4 time.
  • Karl Jenkins' Chorale (sol-fa) + Cantus 'Song of Aeolus' is a mix of 2 songs. The result is a song, part 5/8, part 7/8 and part 4/4.
  • Jami Sieber's "Long past gone" and "Tell it by heart" have alternating 12/4 and 11/4 bars.
  • Robert Jager's Third Suite for Band, a perennial favorite, includes a march with a first strain in 7/4 (4 + 3) and second strain and trio in 5/4 (3 + 2) followed by a waltz in 5/4 (3 + 2).
  • Percy Aldridge Granger put the second movement of Lincolnshire Posy into an alternating 4/4 and 5/4, the third movement into 5/8, and the 4th movement switches between 2.5/4 and 7/8.
  • The Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky (no, that's not a descriptor. That's his name) alternates between 5/4 and 6/4 for its first few measures. Word of God says that this meter is supposed to simulate a natural walking pattern.
  • Rimsky-Korsakov also had a habit of writing such music. There is an Urban Legend that he once wrote some piece at 11/4. When the musicians had trouble keeping track, either the conductor or Rimsky-Korsakov himself recommended that they use the phrase "Rim-sky-Kor-sa-kov-has-gone-com-ple-tely-mad".
  • The finale of Sergei Prokofiev's Sonata for Violin and Piano in F minor has a main theme that mixes 5/8, 7/8 and 8/8.
    • The finale of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto no. 2 in G minor has significant passages in 7/4 and 5/4.
  • In Béla Bartók's music, this frequently occurs under the heading "Bulgarian Rhythm":
    • The Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm from Mikrokosmos are respectively in (4+2+3)/8, (2+2+3)/8, (2+3)/8, (3+2+3)/8, (2+2+2+3)/8 and (3+3+2)/8.
    • The Scherzo alla bulgarese from the Fifth String Quartet is in (4+2+3)/8; its trio varies between (3+2+2+3)/8, (2+3+2+3)/8 and (2+3+3+2)/8, but is really too fast for the average listener to bother counting metrical divisions.
    • The Intermezzo interrotto from the Concerto for Orchestra has a main theme alternating between 2/4 and 5/8. It rather sneakily shifts into Common Time after a modulation, but this turns out to be the setup for a musical joke.
  • Szelenyi has a piece aptly titled "Changing Bars." There are only four places where it stays in the same meter for two measures in a row. The rest of the time it alternates between 2/8, 3/8, and 4/8 with no apparent logic behind it.
  • Samuel Barber:
    • The finale of the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (Op. 38) is in a very fast 5/8.
    • In Souvenirs (Op. 28), the opening "Waltz" has a coda in 5/4, and "Schottische" has some extended 5/8 sections.
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams in his youth wrote Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilogue in 7/8 time. Not so bad, except that it also starts with a syncopated triplet and another syncopated quaver immediately following, and keeps this up as an ostinato for over ten minutes. Unsurprisingly, it never became a favorite of any conductor.
  • Most of the later works of Olivier Messiaen change the time signature in every measure. (!) He mostly used extremely uncommon times like (3+2+2)/32, (2+2+3)/16 and mixed them with more common ones like 2/8 or 3/8.
  • Benjamin Britten:
    • "War Requiem" has "Dies irae" in 7/4 (retaining the time signature at a much slower tempo for "Lacrimosa"), "Confutatis" in 5/4, and "Agnus Dei" in 5/16.
    • The "Missa brevis in D" has a "Gloria" in 7/8 and "Agnus Dei" in 5/4.
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" symphony has the second movement in 5/4.
  • In Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, the instrumental "Tanz" alternates bars of 4/4 with bars of 3/8.
  • The second movement of Aaron Copland's Piano Sonata constantly shifts between time signatures, primarily 5/8 and 7/8.
    • Copland also sniffed at this trope in "Rodeo" where significant portions of "Buckaroo's Holiday" are written in common time, but in practice subdivide into [3+3+2]/8.
  • Maurice Ravel:
    • The finale of the String Quartet begins in 5/8.
    • The Piano Trio has an opening movement in 8/8 subdivided throughout as 3+2+3, and a finale largely in 5/4 with several 7/4 passages.
  • Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima is a simultaneous subversion and exaggeration. It has no uncommon time because it has no time signature at all, relying on meter-less time codes that tell the conductor when to bring each instrument's pitch-less sounds in.
  • In the opera The Turn of the Screw, Variation V and the ensuing Latin lesson scene are scored in a brisk 5/4.
  • Mild example in the first movement ("Seventeen Come Sunday") of Ralph Vaughn Williams's suite English Folk Song Suite. Approximately half of the orchestra (higher-pitched instruments such as flutes and violins) plays a 6/8 melody over the top of the lower-pitched instruments, who play a contrasting counter-melody in 2/4 time.
  • Elliott Carter turned this kind of thing into a basic compositional principle, superimposing one metre on another and letting the first one take over, a technique that became known as metric modulation. Math-rock bands typically have discrete sections of songs in one metre and then switch to another one for a bit. In some of his works, such as the Double Concerto, Carter changes metre every three or four bars.
  • Paul Hindemith:
    • The third movement of the Sonata for Solo Viola OP. 25/1 has a metronome marking of "600-640"note , and the metre changes, on average, every 1.5 bars, with the top digit of the time signature being written in above each bar, so as to avoid cluttering up the sheet music.
    • In Ludus tonalis, "Fuga secunda" is entirely in 5/8 time. The "Praeludium" from the same work ends with eight bars in very slow 15/8, and the "Postludium" begins with these same eight bars played upside down and backwards.

    Progressive Rock 
  • Used extensively by two different drummers in progressive rock: Neil Peart of Rush and Bill Bruford of Yes and King Crimson.
  • Many, many progressive rock bands do uncommon time signatures; two great examples are "Siberian Khatru" by Yes (13/8, for most of it) and "Tarkus" by Emerson, Lake & Palmer (10/8 for at least two of the segments).
    • Yes manage to slip this into their pop rock albums - "Changes" from 90125 is part 7/4 and part 4/4.
    • Yes' "Awaken" off of Going for the One goes through ten time changes during its opening twenty-four measures - including briefly passing through 9/32, which is just silly, really.
    • Yes' "Roundabout" has choruses in 14/4 (6/4 + 2/4 + 6/4) and an ending vocal section in 7/4.
    • Yes' "Miracle of Life" (from 1991's Union) opens in 17/16, which can be explained as 5+5+7; Averted thereafter, though Tony Kaye's organ part from the 17/16 section does reappear in the coda.
    • Less known (for their prog rock side, anyhow) example: Ambrosia had a habit of shifting signatures. See "Time Waits for No One," "Life Beyond L.A." and "Apothecary," just to start. Even their better-known ballads aren't immune: "How Much I Feel" shifts to 7/8 briefly about three-fifths of the way through.
  • The opening section for Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" switches between 7/8 and 8/8. This opening riff is used as a soundtrack in The Exorcist.
  • Genesis (Band):
    • One of the more iconic moments of an awkward time signature is definitely the aptly named " Apocalypse in 9/8" part of "Supper's Ready". Mind you, 9/8 in classical music is mostly a compound waltz meter consisting of 3+3+3; in this piece, however, the time signature is an additive one consisting of 3+2+4 with the organ solo often venturing to other time signatures, creating a polymeter.
    • It was a song from their more pop days, but "Turn It On Again" is in 13/8 time.
    • The second half of "The Cinema Show" (the keyboard solo) is in 7/8.
  • Pink Floyd's "Money" is mostly in 7/4 time. It then goes to straight 4/4 for the guitar solo, due to David Gilmour having difficulty soloing in 7/4. The change to 4/4 became iconic in its own right.
    • Pink Floyd also has "Mother" and "Two Suns in the Sunset" (both 5/4).
    • Much of "Bike" is in 4/4 time, but due to extra syllables thrown irregularly into its lyrics, the song is peppered with an unpredictable pattern of 5/4, 6/4 and 7/4 bars.
    • "Scream Thy Last Scream", written during Syd Barrett's Sanity Slippage and never officially released, features several time signature changes which throw it into this trope.
  • One section of Sound of Contact's "Mobius Slip" repeats 10/4 + 8/4 + 10/4 + 7/4.
  • Rush makes use of several unusual time signatures. Moving Pictures alone has examples of 7/4, 5/4, and 3/4 time.
    • Really, Rush is the poster band for this trope - it's all too easy to buy the folk myth that Neil Peart CAN'T play in 4/4.
      • Part of Neil Peart's drum solo for many years was a section called "The Waltz", where he would play a 3/4 pattern with his feet and throw as many time signatures as he could over it with his hands. Including 4/4.
    • "YYZ" has an intro in 10/8 time, but this could just be incidental, as the Morse code for YYZ (dah-dit-dah-dah, dah-dit-dah-dah, dah-dah-dit-dit) happens to fit into said time signature.
    • "Subdivisions" seems to alternate between 7/8, 4/4, and 6/4 time signatures. Some time signatures only last a few bars before switching.
    • "Losing It" has verses in 5/8, the chorus in 4/4, and alternating bars of 5/8 and 6/8 in the bridge.
  • Many of Jethro Tull's catalog uses uncommon time signatures.
    • Since the album Thick as a Brick is a Stealth Parody of many norms of their genre, it has many weird signatures and changes thereof. The "See there! A son is born" part of it, for example, is in 5/8. A similar part in the second section of the song is 6/8, but the difference is barely noticeable. Seriously - to notice it, you'd have to be counting it.
    • "Living in the Past" and "Jack Frost And The Hooded Crow" are in 5/4. Ian Anderson did the former in an attempt to avert it becoming a Black Sheep Hit, but it did so anyway.
    • "Boris Dancing", is, as Ian Anderson says during the Orchestral Jethro Tull recording, "written in alternating bars of 7/8 and 9/8, making it pretty difficult to dance to... unless you're Boris Yeltsin."
  • Obscure psychedelic/prog band Egg released a single called "Seven Is a Jolly Good Time", about the joys of playing in unusual time signatures. The verses are in 4/4, but the choruses are indeed 7/8, and unlike some of the prog rock out there, it's got a sense of humor and is actually pretty catchy.
  • The Mars Volta really like their time signature changes too. The 'robot talk' solo in "Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt" changes time signature every bar, with most of the time signatures being subdivisions of 16.
    • "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus" from Frances the Mute features a 6/8 intro, a 4/4 main setcion, a guitar solo and buildup in 29/16, followed by an explosive outro in 10/4.
    • "Tetragrammaton" from Amputechture rotates through 11 different time signatures (including two areas with no time signature), and manages to count some uncommon times in multiple ways (one section in 12/8 is counted [5+ 5+ 2/]/8 every first measure and [4+ 4+ 4]/8 every second measure.) A full breakdown can be found here.
    • A few examples from The Bedlam in Goliath: "Metatron" (5/4), "Wax Simulacra" (11/8 or [6+ 5]/8), and "Cavalettas" (11/8 or [5+ 6]/8).
  • Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" is in 7/4 time.
  • "Red", by King Crimson, has three bars of 5/8 followed by a 4/4 bar during its main riff, which uses a whole-tone scale for bonus points. And then it starts to get complicated.
    • Starless on the same album has sections played in 13/8.
    • However, these time shenanigans pale in comparison to the work done by King Crimson in their '80s reincarnation. In particular, the song "Discipline" involves the band's two guitarists playing patterns in slightly different time signatures, changing every few seconds, for 5 minutes. It must be heard to be believed.
    • Then there is the Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part II, featuring a long 10+8/8 intro phrase interwoven with 4/4 - and yet, somehow managing to remain headbang-friendly. Later it intermittently calms down to a relatively steady 5/4.
  • If anyone wants to try keeping track of all the time changes on Citizen Cain's Skies Darken album, best of luck.
  • Mew is good at pulling off odd time while you aren't looking with its dreamy, spacey compounds of two, three, and four. For example, "Hawaii" has 11/4 choruses and "Repeaterbeater" 22/4 ones, "Vaccine" ends with 11/4 and "Am I Wry? No" with 15/2, "156" has a refrain in 13/4, and "Sometimes Life Isn't Easy" is all over the place. Cartoons and macrame wounds ends with 3 beats of 3/4 and one beat of 2/4 repeated several times.
  • Avoided almost completely by some prog artists, like the Alan Parsons Project and Kevin Gilbert. Kaipa's Allman-Brothers-influenced first album is entirely in 4/4.
  • Joan Osborne's song "Right Hand Man" is in 7/8 time.
  • Common in Zeuhl, which probably isn't surprising as the music is deliberately intended to feel alien. It is not uncommon for songs to change meter and tempo every four measures or more frequently. Magma naturally use it a lot, as the genre's progenitors, but perhaps the most ridiculous examples are found in Japanese band Koenji Hyakkei's discography, in which apparently some segments of songs are intended to be counted with beats of varying lengths. One example of this is in the song "Ozone Fall" (which is coincidentally one of the band's few songs to have a comprehensible title, though the lyrics are in the band's usual Conlang). "Fettim Paillu" is apparently another. Sister band Ruins does this a lot too, to the point where it often seems like they have more segments in 7/4 than in any other meter.
  • Journey had "I'm Gonna Leave You" and "Nickel and Dime" back before they shifted to pop.
  • English 70s stoner band Caravan have a song called "Hoedown" which does sound a lot like a hoedown, with upbeat key signatures, excited guitars, a country and western-sounding guitar solo, and... 7/8 time.
  • Gentle Giant's music has been parodied with this image. Not too far off from the actual content of their songs; they don't have a reputation as one of the most complex prog bands for nothing.
  • Todd Rundgren used this a lot in his prog days. Two examples: his cover of "Cool Jerk" is in 7/8 (as a pun on its title), and the intro of "Don't You Ever Learn?" (which returns in the middle of the song) drops several beats at various points. The early Utopia albums also feature a lot of this; "Freak Parade" is a good example.
  • Frank Zappa would train his musicians to shift time signatures at a second's notice - something he'd occasionally use to mess with guest artists who thought they were going to play a straight 4/4. See also the page quote.
  • Many Kansas songs. "The Spider", for example, begins in 11/16 and goes just about everywhere from there. Another example is "Miracles out of Nowhere", which follows a seemingly random pattern consisting of 4/4, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8, and 13/8 in the intro; there's also an instrumental break halfway through the song that is in 7/8 before a reprise of the intro. "Point of Know Return", one of their most famous songs, changes time signatures liberally; verses have 4+4+4+3/4 while choruses have 7+7+4+4/4, though there are some measures of straight 4/4 before the choruses.
  • Subverted with "Unison" by [[hololive's Houshou Marine]]. While the the unorthodox manner in which the song is laid out, especially in regards to its constantly-changing vocal rhythm, might lead one to believe it has an odd time signature, it uses the industry-standard 4/4, but with a whole lot of syncopation and even more polyrhythms.
  • Van der Graaf Generator have dabbled in uncommon time signatures, including 11/8 in the bridge to "Man-Erg" and 17/8 in the first half of "The Sleepwalkers".
  • Genesis:
    • The Peter Gabriel era has "Firth of Fifth," which goes all over the place. It starts in 2/4, then every couple of measures or so switches between that, 16/16, 13/16, and 15/16. When the lyrics start it goes into the standard 4/4 time. Then there's a flute solo that briefly slides into 5/4. Then another instrumental switching between the original 4 time signatures again before settling back on 4/4. The song then ends on a 13/16 piano solo into the fade-out.
    • The Phil Collins era has "Turn It On Again", which is written in 13/8. The song was originally conceived as part of a side-length suite that was broken up to avoid comparisons to "Supper's Ready".
  • The Toxhards' "Aengus, the Prize-winning Hog" cycles through several different rhythms throughout the song. At first it introduces the titular character with a 3/4 waltz, then segues into the cult sections with a 6/4 beat, goes to 4/4 in the "Butcherman" section, back to 6/4 in the fight with the Butcherman, and then finishes the song in the 4/4, 6/4, and waltz beats respectively for the final act.
  • Traffic comes in with parts of Roll Right Stones.

    Pop 
  • Andrew Huang did a challenge: "write and compose a radio-worthy pop song in 5/4 time". The result was "Alone" and ended up on the album The Coldest Darkness.
  • Josh Groban's "In Her Eyes" is 5/4 time.
  • Iranian artist Samir's "Dobareh" is 9/4 in the verses and 6/4 in the choruses. (Iranian traditional music also delves into odd time signatures now and then.)
  • Bobby McFerrin's "Stars" is in 13/8 time.
  • Enya commonly uses uncommon time signatures in her work, often switching them mid-song. "Book Of Days" changes time signature nearly every measure (4/4 to 3/2 to 5/4 to 2/4 to 5/4, etc...) except for the bridge which maintains the opening 4/4 time.
  • Always by Erasure is mostly in standard 4/4 time, but the chorus has an extra beat at the end, making it either three bars of 4/4 and one of 5/4, or 17/4 overall. As the tempo of the song makes it a good one for walking to, the extra beat will probably throw your stride out a little. "91 Steps" is mostly in 7/4 with the occasional additional 4/4 bar just to throw you.
  • Given that Burt Bacharach's songs are considered definitive middle-of-the-road pop, he played around with tempo to a surprising extent, but in a way that casual listeners wouldn't pick up on. Many of his songs even change time signatures from one bar to the next.
  • Harry Belafonte's "Turn The World Around," which debuted on Sesame Street of all places, is in an excited 5/4.
  • Everything produced by The Shaggs, a Giftedly Bad band of Dreadful Musicians who would each attempt to play in 4/4, and... not particularly succeed.
  • half•alive's "Move Me" is mostly in 7/4 with the second half switching to 4/4.
  • Taylor Swift's "closure" is in 5/4 time.

    Punk/Pop-Punk 
  • Ted Leo and the Pharmacists' "Better Lead than Dead" switches between 7/4 and 4/4.
  • Green Day uses two bars of 4/4 followed by two bars of 7/8 for the verses of their song "Before the Lobotomy." The choruses of that same song are entirely in 7/8.
  • The choruses of Refused's "The Deadly Rhythm" are in 11/4.
  • The intro to Sum 41's "Nothing on My Back" is in 7/4.
  • Mission of Burma's "Dirt" has verses in 11/4 and a bridge in 7/4. The rest is in common.
  • "Forced March" by Earth Crisis (most notably covered by Between the Buried and Me) has 9/4 (7/4 + 3/6) verses and a section in 11/8; the rest is mostly 4/4 and 6/8.
  • Emo band Far's song "Bury White," most notably covered by Finch, has choruses in 9/4.
  • The bridge to Silverstein's "Born Dead" is in 7/4.
  • The intro to Matchbook Romance's "My Mannequin Can Dance" goes 3/4 + 4/4 + 5/4 + 6/4, repeated twice. The rest of the song is in Common, except for 3/4 in part of each chorus.
  • Here's a relatively simple example in comparison to some of this chaos: During the verses of "That's What You Get" by Paramore, the drummer plays in 4/4 under instruments and vocalist running 3/4.
  • Perhaps unsurprisingly, Midori's "5 Hyoushi" (translates as "5 Beat") is mostly in 5/8. The choruses are in 6/8.
  • Hüsker Dü's "Masochism World" jumps all over the place (its verses use (4+5+4+4)/4, or 17/4, for example). Some of their other songs use it, too, though not as extensively; a few examples can be found on their page here.
  • "Taking a Liberty" by Flux of Pink Indians contains several passages of 5/4. Sometimes 5/4 parts overlap with 4/4 parts to create a highly disorienting polyrhythm. They're that kind of band.
  • Part of the chorus of Dead Kennedys' "MTV - Get Off the Air" is in 5/4. Because of the shouted nature of the chorus and the underlying percussion, the effect of this section is roughly the musical equivalent of a boot to the head.
    • In his collaborations with the Melvins, Jello Biafra has "Enchanted Thoughtfist" with verses in 7/4 and "Dawn of the Locusts" with significant portions of the song in 13/8. When industrial hip-hop group Dälek remixed the latter track, they put a 4/4 drumbeat under the whole song just to make it even more disorienting. Meanwhile, from his Nomeansno collaboration, "Sharks in the Gene Pool" goes through several time signature changes, with one of its riffs in 7/4, and several of his tracks with Lard (a collaboration with Ministry, who have also been known to use this trope) also provide examples (for example, "Sylvestre Matruschka" has verses in 5/4).
  • Nomeansno, who are mentioned just above for their collaboration with Jello Biafra, have used this trope extensively throughout their work, which is one of the primary reasons that they are considered an Ur-Example of Math Rock.
  • blink-182's song "6/8" is in, well... Exactly What It Says on the Tin. This isn't particularly uncommon, but it's unusual for Punk Rock.

    Rap 
  • As rap evolved out of spoken word poetry, a lot of it's never really been confined to a time signature. Freestyle raps are also frequently this way, especially rap battles. Even many rap songs that try to stay in common time have the rapper going into 5/4 and then 3/4 in order to say what they want to say.
  • Kendrick Lamar's song "For Free?" off of To Pimp a Butterfly is a spoken-word rap over jazz instrumentation- though the transcription notates it as common time with nintuplets over the entire song, so basically 9/8, it might make more sense to notate it without a time signature.

    R&B 
  • The first half of the intro to Meshell Ndegeocello's "Dead End" is in 5/4, and the second half is in oddly divided 8/4 (2+3+3).
  • The refrain riff to "This Christmas" (originally by Donny Hathaway and later covered by artists such as Cee Lo Green, Mary J. Blige and Seal) is in 7/4.

    Rock 
  • "Math Rock" is an entire subgenre named after its fondness for this trope. Generally, not only do math rock bands exclusively use odd time signatures, but they tend to frequently change signatures and use odd stop-start rhythms.
    • Minus the Bear notably averts this; most of their songs are in straight 4/4 all the way through. They do, however, fulfill other landmarks of math rock: fast, cyclical, hammered-on, and clean guitar riffs with emo singing on top.
    • UK math rock band TTNG (formerly This Town Needs Guns) experiments frequently with odd time signatures. Their song "Crocodile," in 10/4 and 4/4, is quite normal by their standard; for example, "Baboon" is mostly in 23/8, "Panda" is largely in 17/8, and "26 Is Dancier than 4" lives well up to its title.
    • Battles' "Ddiamondd" has the guitar, bass, and vocalist in 7/4 time for two measures, before shifting to 4/4 time for four measures... while the drummer is playing 15/8 under them the entire time. "Rainbow" from the same album is in 15/8.
    • The bridge of "F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X." by The Fall of Troy alternates bars of 6/4 and 9/8.
    • The originators of the genre of Math Rock, Slint, have "Nosferatu Man" in 6/4, then 5/4, then 3/4, then 5/4, then 3/4, then swapping between 12/8 and 15/8, then 9/8, then 10/4, then 12/8, then changing between 18/8 and 12/8, before ending in 21/8. Similarly, "Breadcrumb Trail" is in 7/4, then 4/4, then 7/4 again, then 4/4 again, and then alternates between 12/8 and 15/8 during the distorted parts, then 4/4 again, then 10/4, then 4/4, then 12/8 for one last time before heading back into the original 7/4-4/4-7/4 segment again. You can see how the genre got its name.
  • The intro to The Allman Brothers Band's "Whipping Post" is famously in 11/4 (or 3+3+3+2/4) time. Interestingly, Gregg Allman didn't realize what he was penning was unusual, but simply tried to make a 3/4 section sound natural by chopping off one beat. Duane had to show him what 11/4 was. Less famously, "Black Hearted Woman" has an intro in 7/4 and "Revival" has segments in 5/4.
  • "Modern Man" from Arcade Fire's The Suburbs throws in a few cheeky bars of 5/4 every now and again - with the accent on the drums coming half a beat before the first beat of the next bar, just to confuse you even more.
    • The choruses of that band's "Intervention" use two measures of 7/4 and one of 6/4 before switching to common.
  • A few songs late in The Beatles' catalogue have some rhythmical shenanigans. The bridge of "Here Comes the Sun" from Abbey Road rotates between 7/8, 11/8 and 4/4, respectively, and "Good Morning Good Morning" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has completely screwed up verses.note  "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" (The White Album) has alternating measures of 9/4 and 10/4 in one section, with other sections using patterns of 22 bars of 3/8 and other sections still using what can be counted as 4+2+4+5+4/4 or 19/4 (though there are other possible interpretations; see here for a detailed rhythmic analysis of the song). Ringo also confuses listeners by playing straight 4/4 over an otherwise 6/8 section of the song, and generally uses polyrhythms liberally throughout the song.
    • Also from the Beatles is "Strawberry Fields Forever" from Magical Mystery Tour, played mostly in 4/4 except for "Nothing to get hung about" in 6/4 and "Strawberry fields for-" in 3/8, with "ever" back in 4/4.
    • "All You Need Is Love" (Magical Mystery Tour) alternates between 7/4 during the verses and 4/4 in the chorus.
    • "We Can Work It Out" (Past Masters) has 4/4 verses, 2/2 (alla breve) chorus and 3/4 bridges. None of these is particularly weird on its own but they shift between them pretty rapidly.
    • John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" (originally from John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, later Covered Up by Green Day) is in 7/4.
    • Even "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) gets in on a this a little: the verses are 3/4, switching back to 4/4 for the chorusesnote 
    • "Within You Without You" (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) perhaps takes the cake; it's based on Indian ragas with cycles of 10 and 16 beats. There's a more upbeat epic (sitar) rocking section that works out to be about in 5/4, but not always.
    • "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" (The White Album) contains mostly 4/4, but then drops two beats from the end of the chorus to add a measure of 2/4.
    • "Don't Let Me Down" (Past Masters) inserts 5/4 bars into the pickup to the verse of an otherwise 4/4 song.
    • "She Said She Said" (Revolver) switches liberally between 3/4 and 4/4.
    • "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey" (The White Album), at the end of its refrain, uses patterns of 3+3+4/4, or 10/4.
    • The bridge of "Hey Jude" (Past Masters) could be counted a number of ways. One way to count it is eleven measures of 4/4 followed by one of 2/4.
    • Providing a variant of this trope, there was a period of time where John Lennon seemed to be constitutionally incapable of writing that based its patterns of measures on multiples of four all the way through. For example, "Julia" (The White Album) uses patterns of nine measures in the verses, while the choruses use patterns of thirteen and the bridge is ten measures long. "Dig a Pony" (Let It Be) has verses of thirteen measures and a refrain that could be counted as any number of beats due to lengthy pauses. Paul got in on it too; several of the verses of "Helter Skelter" (The White Album) are fourteen measures long, while the measures to "Hello Goodbye" (Magical Mystery Tour) are seventeen measures long. This is nowhere near being a complete list. This is probably the closest thing to a complete list that will ever be compiled.
  • "Desperately Wanting" by Better Than Ezra goes into 7/4 during part of the bridge.
  • BIGMAMA's "Royalize" is in 11/8. For most of the song, it switches between 6+5/8 and 5+6/8 every measure; it ends up sounding like it's switching between 6/8 and 5/8 every two measures, but the pattern is consistent. The outro is still in 11/8, but is consistently 6+5/8.
  • Bloc Party's "This Modern Love" is in 14/4, and the ending to "Little Thoughts" 7/4.
  • Blondie, believe it or not, has an example here, and in one of their best known songs to boot. One part of the instrumental section of "Heart of Glass" skips a beat in three out of eight measures, meaning that there is a popular disco song with a few measures of Uncommon Time in it. (The exact pattern, if you're wondering, is 4+3+4+3+4+3+4+4/4, meaning that there's a 29-beat pattern instead of the standard 32. This no doubt tripped up quite a few people on the dance floor without them knowing exactly why).
  • David Bowie used this occasionally. "Soul Love", from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, has the first two measures of each of its verses in 7/4. "Win", from Young Americans, contains passages in 5/4.
  • Broken Social Scene has "7/4 (Shoreline)".
  • Cat Stevens' "Rubylove" is in 7/8.
  • Chicago's song "The Road" has continually shifting time signatures: 5/4, 6/4, 3/4, 4/4, etc. Actually, Chicago tended to play with time signatures a lot back in the beginning. One of the band's most famous singles, "Colour My World", is in 12/8 time, as is the lesser-known "Goodbye" from Chicago V (aside from a brief excursion into 4/4 about two thirds of the way through the song).
    • "Colour My World" is part of a longer suite called "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon", which has a few time-signature shifts. It's a very good example of the experimental tendency that gave their early material some backbone that their later work missed.
    • From Chicago VII, "Aire" is 7/8 time, and "Devil's Sweet" is...mostly 12/8 with shifting signatures? It isn't 4/4, that's for sure.
    • The intro to the full version of "Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?" is in 5/4. And if memory serves correctly, "South California Purples" includes some 7/4.
      • The standard blues verse is 12 bars of either 4/4, 6/8, or 12/8, unchanging. Each verse in "South California Purples" (vocal and instrumental) is 11 bars of 4/4, then three bars in 3/4, and back to four bars of 4/4 afterward. Its chord progression is typical for blues but rhythmically, it is slightly "off" from blues, hence "Purples" in the title.
    • Then there's the hook in "It Better End Soon"—a measure of 13/8 followed by a measure of 11/8!
  • Clutch has "The Elephant Riders". The intro and chorus are in 7/8 and the bridge alternates between 4/4 and 5/4.
  • While perhaps not strictly uncommon, Coheed and Cambria's "Everything Evil" has sections in 4/4, 6/4, and 9+6+6+9/4 and transitions between them pretty fluidly.
  • British pop rock band Coldplay are known for experimenting with time signatures. Among some examples from their discography include "Cemetries in London", written in 3/4, and the second half of "Death and All His Friends", written in 7/4, from their 2008 album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. The band has also experimented with mixed time signatures; "Charlie Brown" from their 2011 album Mylo Xyloto features a switch from 4/4 verses to a chorus that opens with a single 6/4 measure followed by six 4/4 measures.
  • Counting Crows' "Mercury" is about half 7/4 and half 4/4. They also have a cover of Teenage Fanclub's "Start Again" that jumps around a lot.
  • "Get On" by Covenant seems to be in 4/4 at first, but skips a beat every other measure, making it 7/4.
    • The same goes for the choruses of Powderfinger's "Love Your Way."
  • Cream's "White Room" has an intro and bridge in 5/4. The verses are in Common Time.
    • "Deserted Cities of the Heart"'s verses have two measures of 4/4, one of 3/4, and one of 4/4.
  • The rhythm in the solo section of "Dangerous Ground" Crush 40 is in 11/4 (7/4 + 4/4).
    • "Revvin' Up" alternates between 4/4 and 6/4 on occasion.
  • A number of songs on Dave Matthews Band's Before These Crowded Streets, the most prog of their albums, use odd or shifting time signatures. "Rapunzel", for example, switches between 4/4, 5/4, and 6/8, while "The Dreaming Tree" is in 7/8 until the last section, which alternates 8/4 and 6/4 bars before switching again to 3/8.
  • The outro to The Desert Sessions' "Rickshaw" is in 13/8. The rest of the song cycles between 6/8 and 4/4.
  • Dirty Projectors flirt with odd time changes frequently, but "Temecula Sunrise" is on another level, which is unusual for an indie pop tune. The brunt of it seems to be in 12/8, although there's about six meter changes in the first minute.
  • The Dismemberment Plan love to play around with this. Particularly on their third album, Emergency and I.
    • "Memory Machine" has verses in 5/4, with choruses in 4/4, and sections with 6/4.
    • "It's So You" is one of their only songs with an eighth note meter, being in 9/8.
    • "The City" has verses in 4/4, choruses in 6/4, and a section in 13/4.
    • "If I Don't Write" uses 17/4 for the verses.
    • "The Small Stuff" has verses in 35/8 and a chorus in 7/4 and 4/4.
    • "8 1/2 Minutes" has a chorus that goes from 7/4 to 4/4 to 4/4 to 8/4 to 4/4.
    • "Time Bomb" has sections in 10/4 and 12/4.
    • "Gyroscope" is by far their most complex. It starts out in 15/8, goes into 14/4, goes back to 15/8, then 27/8 for the verse. The choruses switch from 15/8 to 4/4, and there's a little section in 4/4.
    • "Spider in the Snow" and "Automatic" are two atmospheric songs in 7/4.
    • "The Jitters" has 5/4 in the verses. For the choruses, it does 2 bars of 7/4, then 2 bars of 6/4, then 2 bars of 4/4. The ending section is in 4/4.
  • Elliott Smith's "Rose Parade" is in 14/4.
  • Five Iron Frenzy's Car is in 5/4 with an occasional 6/4 bar at the end of a phrase.
  • The Fleet Foxes' "Battery Kinzie" jumps around between 4/4, 6/4, and a bit of 2/4, 3/4, and 5/4.
  • Post-Rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor use this sometimes. “Dead Metheny” is in 7/8. One segment of “Motherfucker=Redeemer” is a polyrhythm with a guitar part in 5/8 and most of the rest in 6/8. A later segment of the song is also in 7/8.
    • Sister project Silver Mt. Zion also uses this from time to time. "13 Blues for Thirteen Moons" opens in 5/4 before switching to 9/4 for the latter two-thirds of the song. "Iron Bridge to Thunder Bay" is in 7/4. "Microphones in the Trees" is in 5/4.
  • The eponymous song from Incubus' album Make Yourself alternates between one measure of 7/4 and two measures of 4/4.
    • "Nice to Know You" features one bar of 6/4 followed by two bars of 4/4, for a total of 14/4.
  • Juice Leskinen's Rampojen valssi (Waltz of the Cripples) is in 5/4.
  • Juliana Hatfield's "Spin The Bottle" is in 5/4 time.
  • Kaizers Orchestra's signature style uses uncommon time a lot; it was outright pointed out in "Femtakt filosofi" from Violeta Violeta Volume I. The title translates to "Philosophy in 5/4".
  • The Kinks song "Strangers" is in 5/4.
  • Led Zeppelin's "The Crunge" from Houses of the Holy started off in 9/8 (4/8 + 5/8) and mixed it up from there.
    • From the same album, we get "The Ocean"; the main riff is in 15/8.
    • The main 'call-and-response' section in "Black Dog" from Led Zeppelin IV is in what sounds like (3/4 + 4/4 + 5/4).
    • "Four Sticks" from the same album alternates between 5/8 and 6/8, with a synthesizer section in 3/4.
    • "Kashmir" from Physical Graffiti has in the main section the drums playing in straight 4/4, while the strings, guitar and bass all play in 3/4. There's also a bar of 9/8 before the bridge.
    • "Achilles Last Stand" from Presence has a segment in 5/4.
    • Also from Presence, the bridge of "For Your Life" has extra beats thrown into some of the measures, and the "Do it when you wanna" section features a measure of 4/4 followed by a measure of 5/4.
    • Again from Presence, the intro to "Tea for One" is in 9/8, although Bonzo plays a straight 4/4 beat over it. The rest of the song is in a languid 6/8.
  • The verses of Linkin Park's "Powerless" are in 7/4.
  • The bridges of Live's "Shit Towne," while perhaps not strictly Uncommon, are in 9+9+12/4 (a total of 30/4), all triple-compounds. The rest of the song is in 3/4 and 4/4.
  • Lush's "Covert" is in 9/8, as is "De Luxe".
  • Love Is Like a Bottle of Gin from 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields is written in 21/8. That is, until the final measure when the meter breaks for the line, "a bottle of gin is not like love."
  • Japanese band Mass of the Fermenting Dregs used this sometimes. "Kono supīdo no saki e" contains one riff in 5/4, and "Delusionalism" closes with a few measures in 7/4. A 7/4 riff also shows up at several points in "Bears".
  • Most of MGMT's "Electric Feel" is in 6/4, along with an instrumental bridge in 4/4.
  • My Bloody Valentine use this quite frequently.
    • The defining example is undoubtedly "Feed Me with Your Kiss", which has a main riff with one bar in 5/4, then another bar in 3/4, then one bar in a varying meter signature. It's almost impossible to keep track of unless you memorise the patterns. (The usual pattern is 4/4, then 5/4, then 6/4, then 8/4, but other patterns are used, such as 4/4 then 8/4, or, at the end of the song, one each of each meter signature from 4/4 up to 10/4).
    • The opening riff of "Nothing Much to Lose", reprised at several other points in the song, is in 5/4. Oddly, it's changed to 6/4 in some live performances. (It's also performed in a jerky, disorienting fashion - these time signatures are arguably only approximations of its rhythm.)
    • "Drive It All over Me" throws an extra beat (or, depending upon how one counts it, half-beat) into the last measure of each chorus, which creates a rather jolting effect.
    • "You Made Me Realise" is a Double Subversion. The main riff might sound like it's in 7/4 at first, but it's actually just really syncopated 4/4. However, the chorus ends up being an example, as it has three bars of 4/4 and one of 6/4. (The verses are 6/4 all the way through.)
    • "Only Tomorrow" shifts time signatures quite often. The main body of the song can be counted as a slow 10/4, though that's not the only way to count it. Things start getting more confusing after the first minute or so; there's some 8/4 mixed in, but it's difficult
    • "Wonder 2" also shifts around a lot. The opening is comprised of four-measure patterns of 4/4, but after about a minute and a half a strange electric guitar comes in playing a polyrhythm, and then it gets complicated. Some segments, such as the second passage with vocals, have patterns of 17/4 (good luck figuring out how they should be divided), and that's not even the only one the song uses. Oddly, though, the song's use of this trope is barely noticeable - if you weren't counting beats, you wouldn't even notice, though you might feel mildly disoriented without knowing why.
  • "Mutiny, I Promise You" by The New Pornographers is a double case: The verses and the colliope riff between them add an extra half measure after every four, and then the chorus is in 5/4.
  • The standard pattern of the Nine Inch Nails song "March of the Pigs" is three bars of 7/8 followed by bar of 4/4 time. Similarly, most of "The Becoming" takes the form of a bar of 7/4 followed by a bar of 6/4, and "Just Like You Imagined" (apart from the intro) is in 10/4.
  • The choruses of Nirvana's "Beeswax" are in 7/4.
  • The distorted section in of Montreal's "Famine Affair" goes 6/4 + 9/4 + 8/4 + 7/4 + 8/4.
    • The mid-section of "You Do Mutilate?" is in 9/4.
  • OK Go's "WTF?" is in 5/4.
  • Paul Simon is an odd inversion of this. His songs are usually in a regular meter, but his lyrics are insanely syncopated.
  • Pearl Jam uses odd time signatures on occasion. These include "Low Light" (mostly 13/4), "Push Me, Pull Me" (13/4), "Cropduster" (7/4 verses; 10/4 choruses); "Get Right" (14/4 verses; 6+6+4+4/4 choruses), "Alone" (9/4 choruses ending with a measure of 7/4), "Yellow Moon" (switches between 11/4 and 12/4) and "You Are" (mostly 10/4 verses). These have generally gone unnoticed; one of their only hits with uncommon time is "The Fixer", whose intro is in 5/4.
    • Stone Gossard briefly went solo in 2001, and "Unhand Me," his only single from that time, is mostly 10/4.
  • People in Planes' "Barracuda" has 5/4 verses with occasional measures of 3/4 to close off a phrase; the choruses are in 4/4. Also, the choruses of "For Miles Around (Scratch to Void)" are mostly in 4/4 but include measures of 7/8, and "My Black Widow" starts with a few pairings of 7/4 + 3/6.
  • Pete Townshend's "Face Dances Part 2" is in 5/4.
  • The Pixies are quite fond of this trope, perhaps owing to Black Francis' love of prog and psychedelic acts like The Beatles, Captain Beefheart, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer when he was growing up:
    • Significant portions of "River Euphrates", "No. 13 Baby", "There Goes My Gun", and "Velouria" are in either 7/4 or 14/4.
    • The "Rosa, oh-oh-oh, Rosa" segment of "Oh My Golly!" is in 11/4.
    • "Alec Eiffel" also uses some 11/4.
    • The opening of "Brick Is Red", reprised a couple times later in the song, employs 10/4 (4+4+2) and 14/4 (4+4+4+2).
    • "Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons" is almost entirely in 9/4.
    • "Blue Eyed Hexe" is 7/4 in the verses and 4/4 everywhere else.
    • The verses of "Indie Cindy" have three bars of 6/8, followed by one of 11/8, and one of 8/8. The chorus is in Common Time.
  • PJ Harvey's "Water" from Dry is effectively a march in 5/4.
  • Some of the more brutal tracks like "Up the Neck" on the first Pretenders album use key signatures such as 13/4 and 27/4.
    • The verses of "Tattooed Love Boys" alternate between 4/4 and 7/4.
  • Primus has a song titled "Eleven" that is, unsurprisingly, in 11/8.
  • Queens of the Stone Age has "Domesticated Animals" where the verses and main chorus are written in 7/8, with the bridge switching back to 4/4. The song "Hanging Tree" is also written entirely in 5/4. Parts of "I Think I Lost My Headache" are in 15/8.
  • Radiohead have written quite a few songs in 5/4, including "15 Step". "Everything In Its Right Place" and "Go to Sleep" are in 10/4, and the second section of "Paranoid Android" is in 7/8.
    • The twinkly guitar riff in "Let Down" is played in 5/4, while the rest is played in 4/4. Due to an additional error while mixing the band joins in at a really awkward and unexpected time, but it sounded cool so they left it in. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bugger to recreate live and they've very rarely played it during tours as a result.
    • Although not strictly uncommon time, the drums and guitar in "How To Disappear Completely" are in straight waltz time, while the bass plays in 4/4.
    • Also by Radiohead is "Pyramid Song", written in... well, nobody's quite sure yet. (Quite deviously, once the drums come in, it turns out to be a perversion of 4/4 accomplished by the piano and drums putting the emphasis in strange places.)
    • Similarly, though the riff in "Myxomatosis" technically works out to 4/4 - more accurately 16/8 - the rhythm is cut up into awkward jerky phrases that can be quite off putting. I believe it's counted as 3+3+6+4.
    • The Kid A song "In Limbo" uses... several time signatures... simultaneously.
    • The song "You" has three bars of 6/8 followed by one bar of 5/8, a phrase which repeats throughout the song. Ironically, this song is on their least experimental album which is highly unpopular amongst fans, Pablo Honey.
    • And then there's "Morning Bell", which seems to be two bars of 3/4 followed by one of 4/4. (It could also be counted as simply being in 5/4). One can also count it as 2+3+3+2/8, or alternating bars of 5/8 consisting of 2+3/8 and 3+2/8. All of this is somewhat subjective after a point though.
    • Depending how you count it, "Sail to the Moon" has as many as 30 or 40 time signature changes, though it's such a subdued song casual listeners might not even notice. It's easily Radiohead's most extreme deployment of this trope, though. Take a look.
    • The B-side "Polyethylene" is not too far behind "Sail to the Moon" in time signature complexity. See the link just above.
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Ethiopia" is in 7/4, and the bridge of "Subway to Venus" is in 5/4.
  • River City Extension's "Our New Intelligence" is in 5/4 with occasional 6/4 bars, except for its middle section, in simple 4/4.
  • The Rutles constructed often meticulously faithful affectionate parodies of Beatles songs, to the point where they have often been confused for the genuine article. "Love Life" is primarily a parody of "All You Need Is Love", listed above, so unsurprisingly it provides an example of this trope: where the verses of "All You Need Is Love" had measures in 7/4, the verses of "Love Life" have measures in 5/4.
  • Saves the Day's "Rise" is mostly in 7/4, and "Tomorrow Too Late" mostly 10/4.
  • Say Anything... goes odd for a few measures in "I Will Never Write an Obligatory Song About Being on the Road and Missing Someone." After the first time Max Bemis sings "and I've got you back" in a 4/4 phrase ending with a measure of 2/4, the band lurches into 6/4; then 9/4 the second time and 14/4 the third.
    • "The Futile" opens with a few measures of 7/4.
    • "About Falling" has a couple measures of 9/4 in the bridge.
  • A few examples from The Smashing Pumpkins, which are undoubtedly not an exhaustive list:
    • "Untitled" is perhaps their most notable example, which switches meter signatures literally every couple of measures for most of the song (being mostly comprised of patterns like 3+3+4/4 and 3+3+4+4/4) and has several bars of 5/4.
    • "Quiet" throws in some bars of 7/4 in between bars of 3/4 and 4/4.
    • "Set the Ray to Jerry" has verses in 10/4.
    • "Innosense" ends with several measures of 5/4.
    • "Let Me Give the World to You", in a borderline example of this trope, uses seven-measure patterns in its verses.
  • The Smiths' "Back to the Old House" is in 6/8.
  • Sting loves this trope.
    • In the ending of "Walking on the Moon" by The Police, the guitar and bass maintain their 4/4 riff while the drums go into a triplet-based time signature. It fits smoothly from a listening standpoint, but would be hell to play.
    • "Straight To My Heart" on his second solo album ...Nothing Like the Sun is in 7/4
    • Fourth album Ten Summoner's Tales has plenty:
      • "Love Is Stronger Than Justice (The Munificent Seven)" has the verses in 7/4 (as a nod to the Magnificent Seven), but the chorus in 4/4, to make it a country song
      • "St. Augustine in Hell" is in 7/8, with a spoken interlude in 3/4
      • Despite all of this, "Seven Days" is, of course, in 5/4.
      • "I Hung My Head" from the album Mercury Falling is in 9/8 time that sounds like alternating 4/4 and 5/4.
    • Brand New Day is similarly full of this stuff:
      • "Big Lie Small World" is in 9/8 time with the occasional extra bar just for fun. The middle eight starts off in 4/4 but reverts back to 9/8 quickly.
      • "Fill Her Up" starts in 4/4 time and then shifts into 7/4 halfway through.
    • "Like a Beautiful Smile", from the UK-only version of Sacred Love, is mostly in 7/4 apart from every fourth bar in the verse and the chorus, which revert to 4/4.
  • The Stranglers' "Golden Brown" has alternating bars of 6/8 and 7/8. A.k.a. waltzing three times per doing foxtrot once for that song. (so 3 x 3/4 then 4/4)
  • The Strokes' "Two Kinds of Happiness" has verses in 14/4.
  • Talking Heads came up with "Animals" from their album Fear of Music, which boasts verses in 5/4 and choruses with three measures of 7/4, followed by one measure of 6/4 just to screw with you. Don't worry, though, the intro and strange ritualistic chant outro are in 4/4.
  • "Hook in Her Head" by Throwing Muses is in 5/4.
  • "Possum Kingdom" by The Toadies switches every measure between 7/4 and 8/4.
  • Tokyo Police Club's "Favourite Food" has choruses in 14/4, and "Gone" is entirely in 12/4 (3/4 + 4/4 + 3/4 + 2/4). Uncommon time seems, well, uncommon among recent bands.
  • Toto's song "Hold the Line" is in 6/8, but alternates every measure between a double waltz (ONE, two three, ONE, two, three) and a triple march (ONE, two, ONE, two, ONE, two).
    • There's widespread disagreement on the verses of "Africa", but they're almost certainly not straight 4/4 until each verse's last four measures. The most plausible way to count the verses is probably as three measures of 4/4 and one of 6/4 (for a total of 18/4). They could also be counted as nine measures of 2/4, but the accents are inconsistent between the measures if counted that way. Each verse ends off with four measures of 4/4 to transition to the chorus, which is also 4/4... until its final measure, which is again 6/4. The song's rhythms are a lot more conspicuously odd in Frog Leap Studios' metal cover, which, perhaps counterintuitively, doesn't really alter the song's central rhythmic structure at all; it's just a lot easier to notice how odd the rhythms are when they're performed at a faster tempo and in a metal style.
  • The Edge said in an interview around the time The Unforgettable Fire was released that "Fourth of July", one of U2's rare instrumentals, is probably in 13/8.
  • Umphrey's Mcgee uses this a lot. Of particular note is their song "Eat", which alternates bars of 13/8 and 7/4 in the main riff and goes into all kinds of other times elsewhere. Also, the main riff of "Andy's Last Beer" alternates 4/4 and 7/8, the intro to "40's Theme" is in 7/4, and the refrain of "Ringo" is in 7/8.
  • Weezer closes their song "The Good Life" with a few measures of 5/16, and each section of each verse ends with a measure of 5/4.
    • Also, the choruses of the rare song "Jamie" can be plotted out as 14/4: they pair two measures of 3/4 with two of 4/4, and then it repeats.
  • Canadian indie rock band Women are rather fond of odd time signatures. They have songs in 13/8 and 7/4, and "Shaking Hand" has an opening riff that cycles through one bar in 13/8 and two bars of 4/4, and a closing section that cycles through one bar each of 3/4, 5/8, 3/4, 3/4, and 3/8.
  • boygenius' "$20" is in 7/4 for most of the song, switches to 5/4 for the bridge, and then has an outro in 6/8.

Other Media Examples:

    Anime and Manga 
  • In Death Note, the first section of L's theme alternates time signatures for each measure in patterns of 4: the first measure is 7/8, the second is 3/4, the third is 7/8, and the fourth is 4/4. This rather unique pattern is repeated in Near's theme, further cementing the connection between the two.
  • "7 Minutes" from the Cowboy Bebop movie is not only just under 7 minutes long, it spends a lot of time Epic Rocking in 7/4 (with interludes in 4/4).
  • "Medley from Spell of the Unown" from Pokemon 3: Spell of the Unown has a section in 7/8.
  • A couple of character songs from Higurashi: When They Cry have sections written in Uncommon Time, namely, Takano Miyo's "Bon ~Karma~" and Fuurude Rika's "Mugen Kairou". "Mugen Kairou" is in 5/4 except for its bridge and chorus, which is in 3/4; while the verse of "Bon ~Karma~" alternates between 3/4 and 4/4 measures -significant in that Miyo's name is written with the kanji for 3 and 4.
  • In the English dub of the Digimon Adventure episode "The Dancing Digimon", Joe's chant, "Bakemon, lose your power," repeats every three-and-a-half strikes of Sora's hat, and thus resembles 7/8 time.
  • The first ending theme of Naruto ("Wind" by Akeboshi) is in 5/8 (alternating between 3/8 and 2/8).
  • "Cry These" from Alien Nine switches between 5/4 and 4/4.
  • "Cause Disarray" from Mnemosyne has a section in 5/4.
  • "Kinpaku no Niramiai" from the fourth episode of Midori Days is in 7/4
  • "A Parallel Universe" from the Ito Junji Collection is a math rock song, so it switches meters a good chunk of the time.
  • The same goes for the opening theme to Tokyo Ghoul Root A.
  • In the extremely obscure OVA series, High School Agent, there is a track in 6/4 that begins at 19:12 in the second episode.
  • School-Live! has a track called "Reitan na Senkoku", which is in 6/4.
  • A short tune from The Kindaichi Case Files is mostly in 5/4, but switches to 8/4 for a couple bars.
  • The opening theme of Azumanga Daioh, "Soramimi Cake", is mostly in common time, but spends most of its chorus in 7/4.

    Comic Strips 
  • In one FoxTrot strip, Jason changes all of Peter's guitar music to 400,000/4 time, so when Peter counts off, he has to go all the way to 400,000 before he can begin playing.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Jokes 
  • There is a musicians' joke that subverts this.
    How do you count in 7/4?
    "One, two, three, four, five, six, sev-en."

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Battlestar Galactica (2003) score by Bear McCreary uses some unusual time signatures for leitmotifs. The most prominent is Six's theme, which is in 9/8 time (although it's worth noting that Richard Gibbs actually wrote this leitmotif). An example of a McCreary piece that uses Uncommon Time is "Black Market", which is (if memory serves) in 7/4.
  • The original version of the theme music to The Bill was in 7/4, or (6/8 + 4/4). Listen to it here.
  • The theme playing for a while around 40 minutes through in the Breaking Bad episode "...And the Bag's in the River" is in 11/8 (6+5).
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Musical Episode "Once More With Feeling" is mostly sane... except for the deliberately off-kilter "Something To Sing About". The cast noted that nobody told Joss that you're not supposed to go from 4/4 to 7/8 (and 5/8, and a bit of 2/4, and 6/8 at the end) mid-song - or, for that matter, mid-line...
    • "The Parking Ticket" is mostly in 3/2.
  • Doctor Who
    • The music playing as the "ghosts" shimmer into Cybermen in "Army of Ghosts" is in 5/4.
    • The Eleventh Doctor's theme is almost entirely in 7/4. 7 + 4= 11.
  • Game of Thrones: At certain points during the Battle Of Castle Black, the soundtrack goes from the regular 4/4 to a descending 5/4. And it is awesome.
  • "The Mystics" theme in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has no melody and features just whispered vocals in the 3/4 time signature.
  • The theme to the Mission: Impossible TV series is in 5/4, with composer Lalo Schofrin saying only someone with odd-numbered legs could dance to it properlynote . It was changed to 4/4 for the movies.
  • Harry Belefonte's "Turn The World Around", which premiered on The Muppet Show, is in 5/4.
  • Ramin Djawadi's score for Person of Interest really likes unusual time signatures, especially 5/4.
  • The theme to Room 222, by Jerry Goldsmith, is written in 7/4.
  • In Teletubbies, the music that plays during the Magic Tree event is in 5/4 time.
  • The theme song to Xena is in 7/8 time with a break around the bridge of 9/8.

    Software 
  • MOD Tracker formats don't really have time signatures for the composer to be concerned about. Composing in such programs is more about getting things to sound good when played by the computer. Some files even change the speed of the song every couple of lines, making it at the very least, very difficult for a time signature to be deduced.
    • "Danger Zone" by HMW uses a 10/8 against 3/4 melody on top of a 4/4 backbeat.
    • Part of "Network" by Skaven of the Future Crew, featured in Bejeweled, has a polyrhythm of 7/16:3/8.
  • Animusic:
    • "Beyond the Walls" ends with 7/4 time.
    • Animusic 1:
      • Most of "Seventh Alloy" is in 7/4 time.
      • The second half of "Drum Machine" is in 10/4 time, split as 4-4-2.
    • Animusic 2:
      • "Starship Groove" is entirely in 7/4 time. The video features pylons which flash to illustrate the 7 beats in a score.
      • The "chorus" parts of "Resonant Chamber" are in 5/4.
      • "Gyro Drums" has parts in 5/4 and 11/4.
      • The majority of Heavy Light is in 15/4, counted as 8/4 + 7/4.
  • Vocaloid Megurine Luka's song "7/8" is written in... guess.
    • The same producer, Yuyoyuppe, frequently uses strange time signatures. Two of their songs, "Significance of Existence" and "Misery," are in 5/4 and 5/8, respectively. Their most popular song, "Leia" switches from 11/8 in the verses to 6/8 in the bridge to 10/8 in the chorus.
    • Another Vocaloid example appears in "Looking For You In the Sky", the first part of the Synchronicity series, this song has a soft intro that lasts about half of the song, but goes into 5/8 time for the rest of the song.

    Theatre 
  • As mentioned in the Film tab, "When Your Mind's Made Up" from Once is in 5/4.
  • The "Mexican Dance" in Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid music is in 5/8, alternating with the occasional bar of 4/8.
  • Candide has "The Ballad of Eldorado" in 5/8, and "Words, Words, Words" in 7/8, as well as "Oh Happy We" in 7/4 (although the measures are counted as alternating measures of 4/4 and 3/4).
  • For some reason, Andrew Lloyd Webber really likes doing this (in particular, he seems to love septuple time — there's a song in 7/8 or 7/4 somewhere in practically every one of his shows):
  • "Thank Goodness" in Wicked sounds like mostly 5/8. "I Couldn't Be Happier" is in 5/8 mixed with 6/8, 3/4, 4/4, 2/4 and other time signatures.
  • The choruses of "Shipoopi" from The Music Man - and, perhaps more notably, Family Guy - are in 10/4.
  • Leonard Bernstein's Mass has some very unusual time signatures:
    • "In Nomine Patris" has the composite time signature 3/8 + 3/4, which is inverted for the bridge.
    • The "Mea culpa" section of "Confiteor" is a swinging, finger-snapping 5/4.
    • "Gloria Tibi" is in 5/8.
    • "God Said" alternates rapidly between 2/4 and 3/8 until finally settling on 7/8.
    • "Credo in unum Deum" uses any time signature that fits the stresses of the Latin words.
    • "World Without End" is in 7/8.
    • "I Believe In God" alternates bars of "cut time" (2/2) and 3/4 in the bridge.
    • "Agnus Dei" has a refrain (also used as the bridge of "I Don't Know") in 4/4, 5/8 and 5/4.
    • "Things Get Broken" not only reprises several of the above, but includes a new tune that alternates two bars of 2/4 with one of 3/8.
    • "Secret Songs" has a refrain that starts in 7/8 and continues in 5/8.
  • In West Side Story, the "Scherzo" section of the Dream Ballet uses a mixture of time signatures.
    • "America" is entirely in 6/8, but it uses a musical technique called "hemiola" that alters the emphasis of the measure, making it sound like it's switching into 3/4 and back out again (or, to continue our poetic analogy, from two dactyls to three trochees).
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has two sections in (mostly) 5/8: the introductions to "Ladies in their Sensitivities" and "Pretty Women".
  • "Sensitivity" from Once Upon a Mattress is in 5/4.
  • "Feelings" from The Apple Tree alternates bars of 3/4 and 3/2.
  • "What Does He Want Of Me?" from Man of La Mancha is in 7/8.
  • "Superboy and the Invisible Girl" from Next to Normal is 6/8 followed by 5/8 most of the time.
    • "Wish I Were Here" is 4/4 for most of the song, but at one part it switches to 7/8, then back to 4/4.
  • The refrain of "Let Life Happen" from Vanities has a 4/4 against 5/4 meter. The verse of "Cute Boys with Short Haircuts" follows an even more irregular pattern; 4/4+5/4->4/4+7/4->4/4+5/4.
  • A section of "The Barricade" in Les Misérables (you at the barricade listen to this...) changes its time signature every measure (6/8, 9/8, 9/8, 6/8, 12/8, IIRC).
  • "On the Willows" from Godspell is in 5/4, and "Alas For You" from the same show is... all over the place.
  • Jekyll & Hyde has a great many in songs in 4/4 or 3/4, but the intro to "No One Must Ever Know" is 12/8.
  • "O Ma Ley" from Amaluna is in 7/8 overall, with a few segments in (2+2+3+2+3+2)/8.
  • In Pippin, "Welcome Home" is in 5/4. "Love Song" disrupts its otherwise Common Time refrain of sorts with a bar of 6/4, and also uses 3/4 and 7/8 in the verse.
  • In the musical verson of Titanic, the intro to "Staircase" and its accompanying underscoring are in 7/8. The song itself is a frenetic 4/4 that feels more like 8/8 in practice.
  • In I Can Get It For You Wholesale, "What Are They Doing To Us Now?" is in 5/4 from the end of the opening verse until the dance starts, and for part of the dance music as well.
  • In The Magic Show, "West End Avenue" uses a mélange of time signatures (7/4 and 9/8 being among the recurring ones), changing almost with every bar.
  • In The Most Happy Fella, when Tony is learning to walk again, his limping walk is accompanied by incidental music in 5/4 time.
  • In Peter Grimes, the round "Old Joe has gone fishing" is in 7/4.
  • "Rehearse," the Opening Chorus from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is in 7/8.
  • In Funny Girl, the patter sections from "I'm the Greatest Star" and "Don't Rain on My Parade" (the music for both being recycled from the Subways are for Sleeping Cut Song "A Man with a Plan") have one bar of 1/2 following every two bars of 2/2; these 2/2 bars are themselves irregularly divided by a 3-3-2 rhythm.
  • Matilda has a couple.
    • In "Revolting Children," the bridge and the "Never again!" section at the beginning are three measures of 7/8 followed by one 4/4.
    • "The Hammer" starts in 5/4 before switching to 3/4; the chorus is in common time.
  • Hamilton has "Meet Me Inside", which starts out in 7/8, giving the sense that each measure is cut off by the next and everyone's talking over each other. The signature abruptly switches over to 4/4 at the Title Drop, signaling that Washington's arrival has shaken things up, and that the action's over.
  • "The Crow" from Zorba uses the 7/8 kalamatianos rhythm.
  • "Stay" in Amélie alternates between measures of 6/4 and 5/4.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Original 
  • Mazedude's "Microscopism" is in an incredibly bizarre 7½/8 (15/16) time signature (it's a repeating pattern of 4/4 and 2+2+3/8).
  • The Broken Clock, a piece in Homestuck's discography, is written in 13/8 (it'd be 13/4, except the composer "didn't really plan for it" and – taking a little jab at the below – "sometimes I like to put possible playability/sheet music over numerical references for the sake of references"). Given that the album it's in boasts "time shenanigans", this is just a more literal interpretation of the theme.
    • Then there's "Judgment Day", 13/4 at 413 bpm (only the drums sound as fast as this would imply, but catching the beat is still not so easy).
  • Pomplamoose's cover of "My Favorite Things" starts in 5/4 as a tribute to Brubeck and mostly keeps that time signature in the verses before switching to 3/4.
  • Jay Foreman's "Bim Bim Bim" plays this for laughs: the spoken "2nd verse, same as the first"-style interludes start out in 4/4, but gradually add a beat every time they repeat to accommodate the increasing number of verses ("Third verse, same as the first and the second"), while the fourth verse is in 5/4 because of the extra simlish syllable.
    • "Skin Sofa" is entirely in 5/8, "just to fuck with you all", according to Jay.
  • Strong Bad's "Trogdor" is partly in 9/4.
  • Twitch streamer The 8 Bit Drummer has covered MANY songs that fall under this. A relevant example that is played often is "Scourge of the Furies", which has a section where the time signature switches between 5/4 and 6/4, making it 11/4 in total.

    Western Animation 

    Real Life 
  • Westminster Chimes, heard frequently from the likes of church bells, doorbells and, most famously, Big Ben, is usually played in 5/4 (although popovishka makes little attempt to play it with the right rhythm).

    Other 
  • This opening to ABC's 4:30 Movie is partially composed in 5/8 time.
  • Tom Hedden's "A New Game" for NFL Films is primarily in 15/8.
  • Finnish children's song Omituisten otusten kerho (Club of Weird Creatures) has intro in 3/8, chorus 9/8 and 11/8 alternatively with drums 5/4, and verses in 6/8.
    • A comment on a bulletin board: This is child prog. Claimed to be legal in Netherlands.
  • The unplayablenote  joke piece "Fairie's Aire and Death Waltz" has some ridiculous time signatures, including 3/6 and 66/66.
  • The opening movement of the music of Epcot's Illuminations: Reflections of Earthnote  bounces around in its time signature at times, with the majority of it in 5/4, 6/4, and 7/4.
    • The second movementnote  is in common time with its middle third in 6/8. Its final section is in 7/8, being 4/4 minus an eighth note.
    • The last section, We Go On, is entirely in 3/4.

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