Break My Body

I spent a fair amount of time last night avoiding practicing the drums by working out the timing of Break My Body on the bass. RS had mentioned that there were some tricky time signature things in the first few Pixies songs they were learning...and I guess I had glossed over them. But yes, Break My Body is a little tricky until you get it worked out.


(click image to make larger)
My conclusion, assuming I've got it right, is that the song is mostly in 4/4 with some regular measures of 2/4 thrown in. There's also a couple of spots where it goes into 5/4. I can see where this would be confusing on the drum throne, though it is pretty easy to work out on the bass.

It made me realize that, when I'm playing bass I don't think about counting beats the way I do on drums. I just play along with what sounds right...or I count notes instead of beats (i.e, instead of counting "1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +" for the first few measures of Break My Body I count "1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4". I'm counting the notes and not the beats.