what is the difference between 5/4 and 10/4

[taygunov]

Ive been getting into time signatures lately and was just wondering how one could differentiate a riff in 10/4 from something in 5/4 being played twice?

[bass_lord_mutha]

Well I can't say I've ever seen a piece of music written in 10/4, that seems a bit excessive when it's much easier to write in 5/4, though to answer your question, I'd say if the piece in question had a phrase that modulated over 10 beats without repeating a progression before queing back to the beginning of that phrase that could be read as being 10/4, but yet again it would be much easier to just have each half of the phrase being in 5/4.

Speaking of weird time signatures, check out Primus' song "Eleven", it's in 11/8 :P

[SteveC]

It would be difficult. You would hear a difference if it was say a 7/4 +3/4 followed by a 10/4 as the phrasing and emphasis would probably be different in the 7/4+3/4 measure.

[Roscoe East]

Originally Posted by taygunov

was just wondering how one could differentiate a riff in 10/4 from something in 5/4 being played twice?

If the music was written by a hack it would probably be notated in 10/4; if it was written by a skilled composer it would be written as two measures of 5/4.





just kidding










...okay, not really kidding. Maybe a little.

Think about what time signatures are for. They're designed to convey information to the musician who's going to perform that piece of music. The primary bit of information a time signature needs to convey is where the strong beats are.* This will determine downbeats and subdivisions, among other things.

Only as a secondary consideration should the time signature be used to convey phrase lengths, because there are other tools used in conventional musical notation that are better suited for conveying phrase lengths than meter.





*note that even 5/4 is imperfect in this regard, because it still doesn't convey how the individual measure is subdivided. But it does restrict the possibilities to a more manageable selection.

[MalcolmAmos]

That's what I like about Country. 3/4 and or 4/4 is all I ever run into.

A 3/4 waltz gets them up and on the dance floor and 4/4 keeps then there.

Yep, start a waltz and the old timers fill the dance floor.

[FretlessMainly]

Being mainly a prog player these days, I deal with odd time sigs regularly, and I spend a good deal of time working up grooves in 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. The best answer I can give you is this:

One of the things I like to do is to play a groove that includes a phrase played twice, but the emphasis on the beats are flipped from the first time to the second time. For example:


| 1 2 3 4 5 | 1 2 3 4 5 | - this should really be felt as "in 10" and not "in 5."

Conversely, tunes like Brubeck's Take Five or Tull's Living in the Past have a very clear repetitive 5 pattern with consistent emphasis.

Hope this helps.

[mambo4]

speaking of Rober Fripp
His version of "Exposure", bass line in 10/4...at least in places...

Feels like 4+4+2, not exactly divisible into 2 measure of 5

you could notate it either way of course.

[bassybill]

You can write out any piece of music in any time signature you like. Usually, the choice is fairly obvious with a lot of conventional music. A lot of the time in odd cases like these, it's about choosing the way that's most likely to be interpreted the way you want it to be.

I can't imagine me choosing to write anything out in 10, personally, except in very odd circumstances. If something is clearly in 5, then I'd go that route (and as Roscoe points out, some further clues may well be needed as to where you wanted the strong beats in the bar). If it really didn't have a 5 feel to it and was, say, more likely to be played the way that I wanted if I notated it as two bars of 4 and then a 2, then that's what I'd probably do. Neither option is totally correct or totally correct - it's a question of which one best suits your purposes and gets the musical results you're after.