what it means that Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” is written in 7/4 time?
In: 17
First be aware of the ‘tempo’: the sense of a steadily recurring beat, the ‘downbeat’, usually sounded by the bass drum. Imagine the hits of the bass drum in ‘Solsbury Hill’ as footfalls on a pavement.
The pavement is made of blocks called ‘measures’. Seven footfalls take you the length of this measure before you reach a line in the pavement and start another seven footfalls on the next measure.
Start the song. Now listen for the lyrics ‘Climbing up on Solsbury’.
Now take ‘Hill’ as the initial ‘downbeat’ or first step into a new ‘measure’. Count the beats as the lyrics continue, up to: ‘I could see the city’.
Now take ‘Lights’ as the initial downbeat of the next measure. You counted seven beats last measure. Keep counting in tempo and notice that the measure is always seven beats long.
Running the lyric phrases across the ends of measures like this is a party trick but it doesn’t affect the length of each measure: seven beats.
It’s a musical convention to cut an imagined ‘whole note’ lasting an entire measure into four equal chunks called ‘quarter notes’. The ‘4’ in ‘7/4’ lets you know that each ‘footfall’ or beat is understood as one quarter-note long, or a conventional length of stride for music of average tempo.
To test your ear with another song in 7/4, listen to Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’.
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