Tuplets for Todlers
October 19, 2020 5:52 PM   Subscribe

Led by Numberphile's resident composer Alan Stewart, YouTube composers re-imagine nursery rhymes with a bit more oomph.
  • The Itsy Bitsy Spider in Quintuplets
  • BINGO in 5/4 (mostly)
  • London Bridge in Mixed Meter
  • Ring-a-ring o' Roses in Free Time
  • Wind the Bobbin Up in 11/8
  • Hickory Dickory Dock in Polyrhythm
  • Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Additive Meter
  • Frère Jacques in 7/4
  • Row, Row, Row the Boat in Tempo Canon
  • Ants Marchin in Metric Modulation
The composers react to each other's contribution: Making Advanced™️ Kids Music (odd meters, metric Modulation, etc).

12Tone disects his own: How I Ruined A Childhood Classic.

Alan Stewart inverview on the project: Nursery Rhymes and Numbers (with Alan Stewart) - Numberphile Podcast

The tunes are available many places (see YouTube blurbs) and:
"All proceeds from this album will be going directly to Save the Children UK. Save the Children exists to help every child reach their full potential. In the UK and around the world, they make sure that children stay safe, healthy and keep learning, so they can become who they want to be.

Last year, 38.7 million children were reached directly by Save the Children’s movement in over 100 countries. Responding to ongoing emergencies in Yemen, Syria, as well as the recent explosion in Beirut, we are delighted to be raising funds to contribute to this ongoing support."
posted by zengargoyle (17 comments total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
How delightful!
posted by Coaticass at 6:03 PM on October 19, 2020


This was a delight. My music education was horribly poor so when the composers started describing time signatures, beats, etc, I was like oh dear, I am not going to get this at all. But then London Bridge came on and I went OH and the rest of the video was tremendously enjoyable. Thank you for sharing!
posted by Kitchen Witch at 6:31 PM on October 19, 2020


This is great - I follow a few of the composers in this post, and watched it when it came out. I've learned a ton about music theory and just about listening to music by watching them.
posted by sauril at 6:41 PM on October 19, 2020


Frère Jacques in 7/4

This works amazingly well!

Jarring (in a good way) to revisit tunes that are grooved into your brain from childhood but having the time switched around.

This is great, thanks for posting.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:42 PM on October 19, 2020


Ring-a-ring o' Roses in Free Time

My first thought was "This should be called Brian Eno's Music for Plague Wards."*

*Only because what I was always told about the provenance of the song has always made go "Wow. Dark." And of course that may be a totally inaccurate thing to think.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:49 PM on October 19, 2020


Gosh, I love all of this.

Always remember to count your 7/4 as "one-two, one-two, one-two-three" or "one-two-three, one-two-three, one" and not "one two three four five six seh-ven" (that's eight)! (Frere Jacques here is a 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3 mostly, if you're trying to count it. It's so lovely and smooth that it's hard to hear the sevenness!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:11 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Oo a beginner zweifacher!
posted by clew at 8:13 PM on October 19, 2020


Total fan of London Bridge in Mixed Meter! As the one person says, it's like a lost Dave Brubeck song.
posted by Blue Tsunami at 8:38 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Fun music, but fairly rich in geekery. Too much, from where I'm coming from. "5 against 3 polyrhythm" after talking "12 8 Afro-Cuban bass line", all before a note of music... Hey, the music is slick! I enjoy listening. But, when I think about simple songs like nursery rhymes, that level of academic theory feels over-the-top.

Personal taste for these sort of variations: give me something I can try to emulate myself, or share with others. Accessibility matters! Maybe "Jingle bells, Batman smells" is too simple (heh, not when I was 10), but I know wild time signatures and tempo canons (never heard one of those, nifty!) give me that feeling of music being something "someone else" does.

Along those lines, my favorite 'accessible' variation on nursery rhymes (beyond the middle school lyric re-writes) is singing "Row, row, row your boat" with only two "row's".

"Row row your boat gen-/
tly down the stream merr- /...."

It puts everything off by a beat. Continuing, the second time is off by two beats, and... well, keep going until the lyrics and melody diverge into nonsense and laughter.

Who taught me that trick? I wish I remembered. But I've used it to make long stretches of solo highway driving disappear as I serenaded the mile posts with an new-old nursery rhyme...
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 8:58 PM on October 19, 2020


Aw man, those were great!

When I'm counting for odd time (which I do primarily for purposes of geekery rather than performance, I don't have that much talent), I change "seven" to "sen" and "eleven" to "len" so I don't get caught out by the extra syllables.
posted by biogeo at 9:09 PM on October 19, 2020


Frère Jacques in 7/4 with syncopation sounds beautiful.
posted by eye of newt at 9:18 PM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


how did i make it this far and never hear wind the bobbin up?
(also ants marching, though i know when johnny comes marching home).
posted by 20 year lurk at 9:21 PM on October 19, 2020


also: how i ruined "twinkle twinkle" (though, then, it was evidently "ah, vous dirais-je maman"), by w.a.mozart.
posted by 20 year lurk at 9:45 PM on October 19, 2020


I watched this whole video and I loved it. I’m not a musician and only sort of grasped the music theory, but I still loved it. Actually, I found the nursery rhymes to be a good practical example to understand some of the time signatures. (I still can’t quite grasp the “Hickory Dickory Dock” arrangement — need to re-listen.)

If you don’t want to hear people geeking out about the theory, don’t watch the video with a bunch of composers discussing the music. You can just listen to the album itself on your preferred streaming service (it’s called Tuplets for Toddlers).

I think “London Bridge”, “Frere Jacques”, and “Ring Around The Rosie” were my three favorites. “Ring Around The Rosie” is especially brilliant because it absolutely succeeds in not being creepy — it feels like a memory of a golden childhood afternoon. One person on the video says it could be on a Sigur Ros album, and that’s exactly right.
posted by snowmentality at 5:11 AM on October 20, 2020


I’ve always enjoyed unusual time signatures. Remember, though — if you want to get any good at the more obscure ones you have to practice 24/7.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:26 AM on October 20, 2020 [35 favorites]


@Theophrastus Johnson:

Singing one syllable out-of-sync by Jay Foreman almost hits a similar chord.
posted by alikins at 9:06 PM on October 21, 2020


"if you want to get any good at the more obscure ones you have to practice 24/7."

I literally chortled aloud, but am also kind-of mad you made such an amazing joke.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:37 PM on October 21, 2020 [1 favorite]


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