What's it called when the Melody and Harmony are half a measure out-of-sync?

Question

As an example in caveman speak, the melody goes ONE-2-3-4-ONE-2-3-4, and the harmony goes 1-2-THREE-4,1-2-THREE-4.

I'm not sure this is actually an example of what I'm talking about, but in the intro of

(Zaveid's battle theme, 12 seconds in), there's a melody going, and when the bass kick harmony is added on, it seems a half-measure out-of-sync with what the melody is doing. It's an interesting effect, and I was wondering what it's called. That being said, I'm sure if, for the example I gave, I listened to it/analyzed it more closely, there isn't a desync between the harmony and melody. Still, I'd like an answer to the question, as well as a prototypical example.

P.S.: I guess a similar way to refer to the phenomenon is that the melody goes 1-2-THREE-4-1-2-THREE-4 (the emphasis seems to happen midway through the measure)

Answer 1

I think what's going on here is a pet peeve of mine as a listener. Once the kick comes in, it's very clear where the beats are. In the preceding measures, the melodic material is just the same, but it's harder to tell where the beats are. The riff plays on beats one and four, but on beats two and three it has a rest on the exact moment of the beat, instead playing a moment later. In rhythmic syllables, if you count "1 e & a," you might say that it plays on the "e" of beats two and three: "ONE E (and a two) E (and a three) E (and a) FOUR E AND A." Or, notated, this:

With no other instruments providing a strong sense of the beat, it's very disorienting on first listen. After all, we don't know that it's notated like this; all we get is bits of sound on a timeline. We wonder whether those isolated C and B are in fact beats, and then are thrown off by the final full set of 16ths. Once the kick comes in, it's not quite where we expect it and it takes a few seconds to calibrate.

There isn't a term, per se, for the cognitive dissonance we feel between the unclear (misperceived?) meter of the intro and the clarity of a few bars later, and I can't think of a good term for a contrast between a voice with simple rhythm and one with a more complex one. But there might be good terms to describe the guitar part. One might use "syncopated," but that could be confusing. Syncopation is often about emphasizing weak beats, or "stretching" simple notes so that they begin early or end late; think ragtime. I think "displacement" might be the most useful word. Google "beat displacement" or "rhythmic displacement" and you find a lot of videos and blogs, like this one, talking about the idea of shifting notes to be ahead of or behind the beat.

So it's not a single handy phrase, but maybe the best way to describe this is "The guitar part displaces the notes on the second and third beat, delaying them by a sixteenth note. This creates some metric ambiguity until the kick drum enters, marking each beat directly."

You mention a "prototypical example": perhaps the simplest and best example of the potential confusion between offbeat and onbeat was mentioned in a comment thread linked above, "She's a Woman" by the Beatles:

The only sonic information we get at the outset is the regularly-spaced guitar chords. Given no other information, we are forced to perceive them as beats. But once the drums enter they're revealed to be offbeats.

Similarly, my nemesis for decades has been this track by AfroCelt Sound System:

Around the 4:00 mark most instruments drop out and there's no strong sense of the beat. Then the vocalist comes back with a repeated "Cha! Cha!," and the guitar has a choppy strum at the same time. It's near impossible not to hear these strums and chants as being on the beat. But when everybody drops back in at 4:23 they're revealed to be offbeats and we feel like we stepped off a moving sidewalk on the wrong foot.