What's happening at the end of this song?

[acidskiffle]

I'm learning this Mammal Hands tune but I keep getting tripped up when the drums start the fast beat at the 2:50 mark.

I was quite happy feeling everything in 6 until that starts, what exactly is happening?

[mr. beaumont]

Shoot...I'm able to feel it as a fast straight 8ths...but...

I find myself not caring and just enjoying. This is great stuff.

[sgosnell]

I didn't listen to all of it, but I heard nothing that seemed to be in 6. Like Jeff, I just hear straight 8s.

[acidskiffle]

I would have counted everything up until 2:50 as 6/4, based on the phrasing of the melody. After that I get a bit confused as the melody is the same but the drums is playing a different feel which kind of feels like 4/4 until the end of the form where there seems to be a bit extra or something.

[pauln]

If you follow the piano, the beats of the segments of the continuous repeating melody lines are phrased as segments that add up to 12 beats.

Starts repeating 12 note melody segments phrased 3-2-3-4.
At 1:39 it changes to 3-3-3-3. At 2:50 it changes to 3-2-4-3.
At 3:38 it returns to 3-3-3-3, then deconstructs the ending.

[ragman1]

As Paul said, absolutely follow the piano. It's playing the same basic thing all through and the drummer's faster rhythms don't change that.

Here's the opening salvo anyway, without sustain obviously.

[Christian Miller]

at the start it's a slow 6/4, definitely not 4/4. Which I tend to feel as a bar of 4/4 followed by a bar 2/4. The piano notes are felt as sixteenths.

By the 2m mark it's a clear 12/8 (3, 3, 3, 3).

The drum pattern appears at 2:50 to be a displaced 9/8 pattern over the top - so that's 3 against 4 if you look at the piano notes as triplets.