The Beatles Mastery of Using Time Signature Shifts

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As I’ve written previously, The Beatles were arguably the most impactful musicians of all time. Their short 8-year career produced more historic achievement records than any other musicians. That even includes current megastar Taylor Swift. The Beatles massively impacted the music business and pop culture while also releasing 4 movies, 1 documentary and roughly 190 original songs. They reached No1 20 times and landed 71 entries in the Top 100, both records for any artist. This article will address their use of time signatures. You should think of this subject as one of their numerous secret sauces.

First, let’s define time signature. It indicates the meter of the song and structurally how many notes are found in each bar. The most used signatures are 4/4, 2/4 and 3/4.

Songwriters and music producers tend to remain in the same signature throughout their work, because that’s their training. In the early 1960s pop music was still following Tin Pan Alley and Broadway songwriting rules which were created in the 1920s. Changing signatures inside a song can risk disrupting the vibe of the song resulting in a turned off listener. It was a definite rule breaker when producing a record.