Where is the "one" in Chick Corea's Children's Song no. 1?
October 26, 2024 5:35 AM   Subscribe

I thought to myself it would be child's play (excuse the pun) but it's not. For me, at least. I found the notes and when I listen to the music and look at the notes, my foot taps the "one" in the wrong place. I cannot force myself to tap my foot as it is supposed to be in the notes.

Here is the first part where I marked my "one" and "two" with arrows and the bars as I hear them.

Here is a video with the music and the notes.

Is Chick Corea playing with my brain?

Do I hear it wrong?

Is the transcription wrong?

If you teach music of play, I would love to get your thoughts or tips.

Thanks!

Hanan Cohen
posted by hananc to Media & Arts (14 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I tried to get myself to hear it your way but couldn't. My brain hears it as written in the sheet music. Then again, I did listen while seeing the sheet music so maybe that's a factor.

To me, it's the repeated G in the base clef that marks the one and two. Maybe the way you hear it might have something to do with the key and where it resolves to C.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:30 AM on October 26 [1 favorite]


It’s 6/8 time so a compound meter. If you count from one to six the beats are on the one and four (there is no “and” between notes like you would have in 3/4)

Try counting “ONE two three FOUR five six” and I think you’ll get it.
posted by bitdamaged at 7:31 AM on October 26 [2 favorites]


You might find this video about Radiohead's song Videotape interesting as it shows how hard it is to try to hear things a different way.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:35 AM on October 26


The two feels strong bc it's that big jump up to a high quarter note which is very salient. It feels almost syncopated. I can count it as "and ONE", which means you'd put the first eighth note in the bar before as a pickup note. Which is definitely a thing they sometimes do!

Also remember bar lines are technically a convenience right? The music would be the same if you wanted to erase all the bar lines, or shift it and write it in 3/4, and you could play it the same.

I recall frustrating my band teacher with this kind of talk. Sure, in theory you can write the same music in almost any different time signature (or key signature) but that kind of pure math perspective ignores what music notation is really for, which is effectively communicating. And so if you do stuff like mess around with time signatures and bar lines, that will affect how people sight read it and play it.

I don't think this is intentional fuckery or mistranscription, but I do see what you mean.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:25 AM on October 26 [1 favorite]


The transcription appears to match others I've found online.

I don't think you're hearing it wrong. If I wasn't looking at the sheet music, I'd hear it the same way. I was thinking that the piano player was playing it "wrong" but slightly emphasizing the note that you're hearing as the downbeat, but Chick Corea plays it the same way.

I'd say that yes, Chick Corea is playing with your/our brain. Maybe not intentionally, but the song definitely could be written with that first G in he bass as a pickup note. Check out Steve Reich's "Piano Phase" for a lot more questions about where the one is.
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:31 AM on October 26 [2 favorites]


I think what's happening here is just clever writing on Chick Corea's part. You really have 3 voices: a pedal bass (the low Gs), a middle accompaniment (the upper notes in the left hand) and the melody (the right hand). Imagine the lower two voices as something like the um-pa-pa of a waltz played by a brass band. The tuba's got the ums and horns have the pa-pa. It does sound a little off kilter because the pa mostly just hits the first pa (in most triple feels we expect it either do both 2 and 3 or just 3). Then, because the two voices sit so close together, and are in the mid-range of the instrument it's easy to hear it as one voice, with the G being a pickup to higher notes. But functionally, they're serving different roles with the bass voice giving the strong beats of the measure (which is usually where a step would be if it's a dance) and the middle voice filling in the subdivision (so we know we're in a triple feel instead of a duple). And to lean into that unexpected accompaniment pattern, the melody ALSO switches where it lands, alternating between lining up with the bass and the middle voice.

So, yeah the piece is meant to confuse where the big beats are, it's what makes the groove seem to bounce off the beat and float at the top for a moment too long. But that only works because we've got hundreds of years of tradition saying that the bass voice is going to be giving the big beats, and so that pedal G is giving us the beat to bounce off of and anticipate.
posted by Gygesringtone at 10:00 AM on October 26


Also remember bar lines are technically a convenience right? The music would be the same if you wanted to erase all the bar lines, or shift it and write it in 3/4, and you could play it the same.


That is not at all true from a performance perspective. Bar-lines and note beaming and time signatures all provide information about where the strong and weak beats are, and so a phrase beginning on the second beat of a bar is going to be played differently than if it began on the first beat. And a series of 6 eight notes in compound time is going to have emphasis than if it was played in simple time. There's a lot of performance practice that doesn't get taught particularly well.
posted by Gygesringtone at 10:01 AM on October 26 [2 favorites]


I totally hear it your way too -- not only because of the agogic accent (the accent that's created by the register leap) that happens on all the beats 2 and 5, but also especially because the way the phrase keeps resolving to the tonic (the C) on beat 5 of every other bar. The Cs are the notes that sound most like a resolution, and my brain wants to hear those as strong beats.
posted by dr. boludo at 10:05 AM on October 26


I tried again to hear it your way and I do get why. I think if you feel it that way it won't detract from your performance. I don't think either way is 'wrong' in this case. Even though I'm still hearing "1 2 3 4 5 6" in the habitual counting brain, it feels right to move my body so as to emphasize the 2 and 5. Creates a bit of a groove.

And it is super hard to change how you hear something, I've tried with Videotape and it only works if I focus really hard. So I don't think there's much point trying to change it!
posted by lookoutbelow at 12:18 PM on October 26


Flipping between hearing beat 1 as written and hearing it where you currently do is kind of like the aural version of flipping a Necker cube. It can make sense to your brain both ways once you learn how to do the flip, but until you do, you're just going to be perceptually stuck with the first interpretation you put on it.

To begin to force this flip, think carefully about the way your brain is actually counting that piece. If you tap your foot to the beat you're currently hearing, I'd bet small amounts of money that the most natural way to count that beat out loud is in fours, ONE TWO THREE FOUR following the repeated left-hand melodic figure C E D D that starts on the last quarter-note of the second bar as written and consists only of the notes you've arrowed.

But there's a quicker 3-beat overlaid on those fours: a ONE an' a TWO an' a THREE an' a FOUR an' a ONE an' a TWO an' a THREE an' a FOUR an' a... and you should be able to count that out loud too, without too much trouble.

Next, switch in FIVE for ONE or THREE, and TWO for FOUR, so what you end up counting is a FIVE an' a TWO an' a FIVE an' a TWO an' a FIVE an' a TWO an' a...

And now you can start filling in numbers instead of the an' a, so you're counting FIVE six one TWO three four FIVE six one TWO three four...

Now keep counting that way with your mouth, and stop your foot, and look at the notation as you listen, and slowly take the vocal emphasis off the five and the two. This is a bit of a leap of faith, like taking your feet off the ground when you're first learning to ride a pushbike. You will undoubtedly fall off a few times but at least you won't skin your knees doing it.

And yes, Corea is absolutely playing with your brain here, and his own, because polyrhythms are the best fun and twelves are where heaps of them hang out.
posted by flabdablet at 2:33 PM on October 26


Response by poster: Thanks everyone for the interesting discussion. My conclusion is that there is no "best answer" and no "solution" to the problem. It's confusing and everyone is correct.

As to "it doesn't matter where the bar line is". My confusion happened when I wanted to record the bass loop on my DAW with a click track. The click track has a different sound for the first beat in the bar. Writing this, I think I will set my click track for this piece to not have a different sound for it and see how it goes.
posted by hananc at 11:09 PM on October 26


When I have trouble playing something like this, my flute teacher has me play it with all 8th notes until I get the hang of it.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:06 AM on October 27


We have an answer from Chick himself!

Here is a YouTube video of a short promotion for the album. The bit where he talks about Children's Song #1 at about ~1:20 with the answer given at ~1:26.

The way he includes "By the way one is here" tells me a lot of people have struggled with this question.
posted by Gygesringtone at 9:46 AM on November 2


I also note that he's counting it in fours, which suggests to me that it really ought to be notated in 12/8, not 6/8.
posted by flabdablet at 9:55 AM on November 3


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