Once Upon A Time In The West lyrics

[dmg]

Always loved JI's bass line in this song - really drove it.  Eat that GW! 

[Ingrained]

Does anyone know the time signature and are there any other well known songs that use that? I think it’s 3 bars of 4/4 and then a bar of 2/4 for the verses?

It's in 7/4
However have this 4/4 feel

Wow, that's bought up loads of search results for me now with the 7/4 time. Thank you Rolo 

You are welcome.
Actually, the song have a mixture of 7/4 and 4/4.
If you count on 4/4 or 2/4 you will note that the strong tempo (aka 1) will change.

And Pick's drumming in this song is flawless.

(Edited)
Ha!
From Alchemy is a implícit 4/4 and 2/4 Groove. But is on 7
3 times 4/4 And 1 time 2/4 = 14 (2 Of 7/4)

Sorry my baaaaad english

Ah, I see the difference I think. Terry hits the snare on the last 2/4 bar where as Pick just slightly opened the hi hats on that 2/4? Terry also puts snares in other places as well whereas Pick left it to accents on the hi hats.

I once jammed it with a drummer and we sat and watched Alchemy OUATITW to figure out the drums. The drummer, as I remember, said that the only way he could get his head around it was that it was some kind of 4/4 x3 and 2/4 x1. But we were only young so I thought in hindsight that he had just found a cheeky "work around". I never noticed the difference between Terrys and Picks until now.

Thanks again Rolo 

[Robson]

I found a book that was published many years ago. Rock Poets.

Songs by Mark Knopfler:

Ride Across the River
Private Investigations
Why Worry
Brothers in Arms, and...
Once Upon a Time in the West

[dustyvalentino]

If you Google, some people say 14/4!

[Rolo]

If you Google, some people say 14/4!

Where is our dear Chris Whitten?

[Rolo]

If you Google, some people say 14/4!

In my knowledge, is 7/4 75bpm.
Could double it to 150bpm 14/4

Where is our dear Chris Whitten?

[Ingrained]

If you Google, some people say 14/4!

In my knowledge, is 7/4 75bpm.
Could double it to 150bpm 14/4

Where is our dear Chris Whitten?

Well lets say the BPM stays the same, I think as you have suggested if I’m not misunderstanding, is that Terry kind of just approached that same rhythm slightly differently than PIck, with Terry adding snares in some places where Pick used high hats accents.

The problem is that Google is probably just scraping sites for data and using AI to give a time signature answer. Isn’t the point that the song kind of has more than one time signature in it? Is that allowed even? I’m not sure. I'm not a drummer.

My questioning of the time signature orignated because I had got feedback from a drummer friend trying to learn OUATITW, with him watching Alchemy (VHS back in the day), not the original studio Pick version. I’m not a drummer, so I don’t quite understand the intricacies of it, but I always wondered, for years actually, what was going on with the drumming in that song. It seems to change time signatures all over the place. I don’t know who came up with that arrangement, Mark or Pick. They make it sound effortless/seemless with the studio version which is amazing.

My original thought that I lost along the way, was that it may have been harder, or less like a natural flow of thought, to write lyrics to/around that rhythm

[Love Expresso]

This is about lyrics. Open your own rhythm thread. 

LE

[Chris W]

If you Google, some people say 14/4!

Where is our dear Chris Whitten?

It is 7/4. Or you can make it a bar of 4/4 followed by a bar of 3/4, as the 7/4 doesn't happen all the time (from memory).

[wayaman]

This is about lyrics. Open your own rhythm thread. 

LE

I was thinking the same.

Please people, we are discussing the meaning of the lyrics.

[Rolo]

This is about lyrics. Open your own rhythm thread. 

LE

I was thinking the same.

Please people, we are discussing the meaning of the lyrics.

Mark was drunk
This is MK's Bohemian Rhapsody
The lyrycs has no meaning.

[JF]

in his book about MK (you can find info about it in another thread), Richard Koechli says about the song :

"... ambiguous lyrics that may refer to life in London as well as the philosophical difference between the Western and Eastern worlds."

I don't know if it is his own interpretation or if he read that somewhere

[Love Expresso]

in his book about MK (you can find info about it in another thread), Richard Koechli says about the song :

"... ambiguous lyrics that may refer to life in London as well as the philosophical difference between the Western and Eastern worlds."

I don't know if it is his own interpretation or if he read that somewhere

Thank you, JF, that book was under my Radar.

Your last sentence sums up one of the main problems I had with that book, lack of sources.

Speaking of the Eastern World, I remember an interview with MK (around 1990) where he remembered that Communiqué was a huge success and heavily imported to Eastern Germany (GDR in that time) and they assumed only because of the title Once Upon A Time In The West.

LE

[JF]

in his book about MK (you can find info about it in another thread), Richard Koechli says about the song :

"... ambiguous lyrics that may refer to life in London as well as the philosophical difference between the Western and Eastern worlds."

I don't know if it is his own interpretation or if he read that somewhere

Thank you, JF, that book was under my Radar.

Your last sentence sums up one of the main problems I had with that book, lack of sources.

Speaking of the Eastern World, I remember an interview with MK (around 1990) where he remembered that Communiqué was a huge success and heavily imported to Eastern Germany (GDR in that time) and they assumed only because of the title Once Upon A Time In The West.

LE

I didn't find that the book lacks of sources. there's a lot of articles titles, websites, YT links, etc... quoted in the text.

about eastern and western world, I think my traduction wasn't accurate (I used Deepl). It's not about east and west in Europe as you says about Germany, but about " occidental" and "oriental" ("asian") world

[Pottel]

in his book about MK (you can find info about it in another thread), Richard Koechli says about the song :

"... ambiguous lyrics that may refer to life in London as well as the philosophical difference between the Western and Eastern worlds."

I don't know if it is his own interpretation or if he read that somewhere

key word here being "may" i guess.