GRGR - more triplets & 4/4

Michael Arnowitt arnowitt at sover.net
Wed Sep 25 13:57:24 CDT 1996


Andrew Dinn wrote:
>
>But, I think you are righ that the triplets are on each beat. Not only
>are the initial `Yadada' and the trailing `have a ba-' triplets but
>the `ya da' pairs are triplets with the ya being a tied pair. i.e. the
>rhythm is
>	
>   3         3         3         3         3         3     
> ______    ______    ______    ______  |  ____      ______   
> |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  |   |  |  | |  |  |  |   |  |  |   |    |
>.| .| .|  .| .| .|  .| .| .|  .| .| .| | .| .| |   .| .| .|  .|   .|
>           `-'       `-'       `-'     |  `-'       `-'       
>Ya da da  ya    da  ya    da   ya   da    ya       Have a ba- na-  na

>

You're on the right track here ...

Another spot in the book where you'll hear triplets in 4/4 time are the
Rocket limericks.

I enjoy trying to sing the songs Pynchon puts in his books ... but it's not
always easy to make it come out right!  Somehow the fact that he will
hyphenate certain words together in a song lyric must be a clue as to how
the rhythm goes, but I haven't quite figured out yet what he wants with
those hyphens -- sometimes I think he means the syllable before the hyphen
to be stressed, that after unstressed, or maybe the syllables in a hyphen
are supposed to be sung faster than the other notes?  But neither of these
theories works very often, so I'm generally on my own trying to figure out
how to sing these songs ... anyone else figured out Pynchon's "notation"?

Tip for singing the first song -- "have a banana":  go with straight
triplets and also the type of triplet mentioned above, where the first two
divisions of the triplet are tied (ya------da, ya-----da), but note that
some lines (like the first two?) might start on the upbeats -- for example,
you could sing:

    2     3      ONE     2    3    TWO    2    3      THREE    2     3    FOUR
    Time  to     Ga -  ther  your  Arse   ---  up     Off    ---    the   Floor
    --    --     Have  --    --    A      ---  ba -   Na -   ---    ---   na
    Brush your   Teeth  and  go    Tod -  ---  dling  Off    ---    to    War
    ---   ---    Wave  --    your  Hand   ---  to     Slee -  etc.

There's lots of ways to try singing these songs.  Have fun and experiment
(best in the privacy of one's own home when no one's around, naturally...)


Michael Arnowitt
arnowitt at sover.net




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