Tempo Changes

I remember being so excited the first time I heard "A Day in the Life" from Sgt Peppers. What makes this song so great is all the tempo throughout. It is not very often that pop music writers decide to make changes in tempo or even use interesting time signatures like 5/4. Cali and I spent some time listening to K-Love, the Christian music station, figuring out how some of these songs might be less monotonous if they were in 5 instead of 4. The Beatles did some of these great tempo adjustments pretty frequently and there have been a few groups that followed their lead:

On New Years Eve we went to Joel and Traci's to play some Rock Band. This may sound stupid, but when you play this game you find out which songs really do "rock". Everybody gets into these songs and everyone sings along (Weezer still rocks by the way). Anyway, one of my favorites from the game is the Franz Ferdinand which totally has the best slow down tempo change:

I've totally gotten into the tiny desk concerts on NPR. They bring in some great bands to sing in their studio and have made the videos available on youtube. The Avett Brothers were fairly recent guests and the first song they performed on this video is one of my favorites (although I wish they had taken a little longer to tune their instruments up). At the end they do a great accelerando:

Amanda turned me onto this next one. I have been a Radiohead fan for a super long time, but for some reason I never bought In Rainbows. I think sometimes you just need a break from a band for a while. Anyway this next song is in 5/4 (Christian producers please take note).