What is this cadence/rythym time signature called?

[Uncle Thor's Hamer]

Is this just a 4/4 with an unusual accent pattern or is it officially something exotic? The pattern is two beats of triplets (6 notes total) followed by two-thirds of a triplet.

A single measure is: One-Two-Three One-Two-Three One-Two

As an example, check out Eva Cassidy's "Time After Time".

She does change up the accent and picking pattern throughout the song, all of it fitting into 8 notes per measure. I don't know how she plays and sings this together, other than she was talented and I am not.

[Brewmaster]

4/4 intro and 2/4 for the verses?

In church they send me the chords and mp3 and I go from there since I'm self taught and can't read. We play a lot of non 4/4 stuff.

[Teh]

I guess you could call it 8/8 with the bass playing two dotted halfs then a regular half note. Another way to look at it would be a shuffle...

[JohnnyB]

The way she sings it I'd call it 4/8 with accents on the first, fourth, and sixth beats. The accents are gentle and they change up later, so it doesn't really call for something like alternating measures of 6/8 and 2/8. Underneath it there's an implied pulse on the standard four (1, 3, 5 and 7th) beats.

Really, it could be 4/4 with accents on certain 8th note beats. This is especially common with Latin music where a 4/4 framework is laid down and all kinds of variously accented polyrhythms are put on top of it. I'm not saying Time After Time is a Latin song, just that it uses a gentler version of the same principle.

[geoff_hartwell]

Cyndi Lauper's latin album haha...

It's in 4, but with accents on the downbeat, the fourth and seventh eighth-notes.

ONE and two AND three and FOUR and

Similar to the first measure of a '3-2 Clave'.

Lots of pop songs adopt this - such as the drum beat accent pattern on "Clocks" by Coldplay.

Geoff