Paco, I'd like to start by saying that I think it's great that you throw all these interesting thoughts into the room. I might not always respond immediately, and sometimes I might not contribute anything at all, but I always read your posts thoroughly and have your thoughts in the back of my mind. I have the impression that there are at least ten other roomies who do like I.
We also go through different phases in life; sometimes we feel full of pep and want to share all our stuff with others, other times we feel flat and wrapped up into ourselves.
Right now there are two things I'd like to say: Notes don't need to have a tight rhythm to be experienced a music. Prog usually does have a tight rhythm, but think of a pan flute or a violin playing solo in a church or out in nature: If the player loosens up the rhythm, the music attains a dreamy or spiritual atmosphere, but is still experienced as music. Here the word pulse may be more appropriate than rhythm.
The second thing is that music can easily have changing measures within one song or movement, e.g. changing between 4/4 and 3/4. Already Johann Sebastian Bach changed measures in his pieces in The Well-Tempered Keyboard. Beethoven took up on it and did it more often in his compositions. Dream Theater do it a lot, and I think that you and I at least can agree that this is music of the highest order.
Changing measures makes the music more complicated, but often more expressive and lasting.
Think of Pink Floyd's Money: This song freaked out people initially, because they couldn't get what was so different. The thing is that the singing part of Money is in 7/4, and then all of a sudden Dave goes off into one of his most fabulous solos in 4/4, changing the character entirely. I think that even Paco senior would agree on this.
Nicky.
