Jacobs Ladder by Rush, repeating 5/4, 6/4

12:30 I swear I've listened to this song for years without realizing it was a odd time signature

Thank you so much this is very helpful. Also thanks for favoring variety among the tracks, lot of great bands to discover 😃

Back in NYC by Genesis is a clear example of 7/4 formed by two bars of the 2-2-3 7/8 pattern

love that blotted science made it into this, would also enjoy seeing the contortionist analysis you asked about 👍

Always good to see some Anathema love!!

Love Pain of Salvation, such a solid band that everyone needs to listen to.
I started listening to them with In the Passing of Day, everything they write is so damn well written
Also thank you for giving Gentle Giant some love!

Variety is good!  Oh, I just sooo love Lee Douglas' voice in Anathema (obviously that was Vincent singing in the clip you put, but still, Lee is just sooo...  moving, and The Optimist is a good example).

The Perfect Element by Pain of Salvation was the first time I felt 7/4. Of course there's money by Pink Floyd but it literally feels like counting beats. The Perfect Element really makes that truncated 4/4 *2 stand out and feel like it has a purpose distinct from other times. 15/4 Tubular Bells. That 4/4 3/4 4/4 4/4 is iconic. In general I associate counting and figuring out weird meter with Tool and Symphony X. Those were my introductions to frequent odd meter and trying to count it to figure out why it felt odd and what it was. Remedy Lane is also one of my all time favorite albums, which I bought on a whim because the art looked intriguing, along with Signify by Porcupine Tree, Terria by Devin Townsend and Blackwater Park by Opeth. That was quite the life changing visit to the record shop.

To this day I still think Pain of Salvation is by far the prog band I have found to make odd meter just flow naturally and feel appropriate. I could put on so many of their songs for people who don't listen to anything including odd meter and there's very good odds the song would work for them and they'd never even realize something was very off about it. Really good composers naturally gravitate towards certain modes or harmonies because they fit the intent and they just know what to go for. Pain of Salvation was always that for rhythm, for me. I've found that being able to navigate between time signatures for musical effect but without ever drawing attention to how odd it feels is actually a rare talent. Tool is pretty smooth with it, NIN is incredibly stealthy with it, but for me the best at making 13/8 feel natural and 4/4 feel weird as hell while making all of it feel like intentional music is Pain of Salvation. In more obscure music it's Tigran.

Definitely would love to see more on The Contortionist!

Looking foward to know all these bands!

Before I ever got into prog I really got into a band called Vulture Industries, their song 'I hung my heart at Harrow Square' is the first time I remember realizing something was in 7/8, so that always stuck with me.

You should check them out if you haven't before, criminally underrated band with a vocalist that sounds like a deranged bloodborne npc

yo man your channel is trailblazing and you do a great job communicating some hard to articulate ideas. hats off to you!. good idea but might i recommend The Contortionist Intrinsic album, they develop some incredibly badass rhythmic parts and some heavy, beautiful contrasting sections at different points. definitely worth digesting. peace

ron jarzombek mentioned

Not prog rock, but definitely wild time signatures: "The Third Sanctuary" from Deltarune has 9/4 (alternating 5/4 and 4/4) into 11/8, then 5/4, then finally 23/8 (alternating 12/8 and 11/8). Hypnotic.

One last thing.  Have you ever listened to the british prog band IQ?  They have an obscure song on the 2nd CD of their album The Road of Bones (MANY epic tracks on this one!), and it is called "1312 Overture".  Try to guess why by giving it a listen...  :^D

I'm surprised that for 9/8 you did not use the song that has the time signature in its title!  hmmm...

AAhh!  Hyperventilate!  I used this song to launch my jogging playlist.  Odd as jogging would be more of a 4/4 or 2/2, right?  But i had other Frost* songs in there too, uhhh...  i mean the whole album, right?  No you, no me is a more appropriate rhythm for running.

Great video so many great examples  . Need to check out the song  Eleven by Virgil donati the whole song is in 11/4 he uses a dotted quarter note pulse on top the song .  Amazing.

When writing a song what comes first, the riff or the time signature?