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Distinguishing time signatures

#21
Originally posted by ConU


IME 6/4 is grouped as compound duple,the beat being 2 dotted halfs and the quarter note the pulse rather than the beat.
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Hmm ... that hasn't been my experience. When I've encountered 6/4, it's more often been just a straight 6. Sometimes it sounds like 4 + 2, or sometimes even like a fast 3.

But there is no unanimity on this stuff.;) It's sometimes possible to write things more than one way. For instance, check out that John Hiatt song "Cry Love." I could hear that either as 6/4 or as 3/4 at half the tempo.
 
#22
Interesting...the few times I've encountered 6/4,it's been easier for me personally to subdivide the bar in 2,perhaps because that's the way I was taught.
edit. a quick check of Thr Royal Conservatory "elementary rudiments of music" lists 6/4 as compound time...does'nt mean it's right though.;)
 
#24
Originally posted by ConU


IME 6/4 is grouped as compound duple,the beat being 2 dotted halfs and the quarter note the pulse rather than the beat.
Click to expand...

Mine as well - Compound duple, with the dotted half note as the unit of beat.

You can't really call it 'simple sextuple' time, can you?
 
#25
I was thinking about this the other week at my local Jazz club, so there was a Quintet led by Pete Wareham (3 horns, bass and drums) and the last number sounded really strange - I was sitting with a few people I know and next to another local bass player and we were trying to work out what was happening as we could see the bass player was struggling!! ;)

So I thought I counted a repeating pattern of 11, but the tune kept geting faster - deliberately, so it was hard to tell.

Pete Wareham said it was an original tune written by the trumpeter, so afterwards I went up and asked him about it - basically wanting to see if I had been right about 11! ;) He told me it was in 21 :eek: - and it was supposed to have three plateaus of ever-increasing tempo, linked by separate written passages....I think my brain exploded at this point!! ;)
 
#26
Pete Wareham said it was an original tune written by the trumpeter, so afterwards I went up and asked him about it - basically wanting to see if I had been right about 11! He told me it was in 21 - and it was supposed to have three plateaus of ever-increasing tempo, linked by separate written passages....I think my brain exploded at this point!!
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Ouch, holy moly that sounds like a killer!

"Soooo, we want you to goove in 21, OK? 123467..."

IME 6/4 is grouped as compound duple,the beat being 2 dotted halfs and the quarter note the pulse rather than the beat.
Click to expand...

what does "duple" mean - terminology i've never heard before?
ta
:)

...and way to go moley, tis indeed a post of almost epic value right back at the start there
 
#28
It means 2 main beats in the bar. 2/4 is duple, as is 6/8.
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OK, so 2/4, is duple because you have two 1/4 beats in the bar. No problem

6/8... as per your earlier post the main beat in the bar is a dotted 1/4, divided into six 1/8th notes... so two dotted quarters in the bar makes it 'duple'

i just had to sit here and work it out on a calculator, 0.25 x 1.5 / 3 x 8 = 1.

maths, whoa, that's a fead huck

goddit. dont much like that silly word tho :hmm:
 
#29
Originally posted by Howard K


Ouch, holy moly that sounds like a killer!

"Soooo, we want you to goove in 21, OK? 123467..."
Click to expand...

Well I could see him explaining it to the bassist before the number and he told me afterwards that it was sort of subdivided into little riffs of 9, 7 and 5 beats - so it had this kind of blocks in 3s going on!!

:hmm:
 
#30
Well I could see him explaining it to the bassist before the number and he told me afterwards that it was sort of subdivided into little riffs of 9, 7 and 5 beats - so it had this kind of blocks in 3s going on!!
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"Mommy, make the nasty rhythm stop"
:bawl:

You could play that symatrically as: 12345 1234 123 1234 12345. hellish!

Man, stuff like that just has so many options, so cool... one day I'll be good enough to play stuff like that!
How old was the bassist, please dont say 17 or something, I want to feel I can grow into this kinda stuff!
 
#32
Originally posted by Howard K
so moley,
i understand the examples in your post, but you stated that 6/8 "in this case" the /8 meant compound time.
Can you define compound time for me?
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Yes, compound time means each main beat is subdivided into three, rather than two. With 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8, the main beat is a dotted quarter - which is divided into three 8ths.

Irregular time signatures such as 5/8 and 7/8, are not compound.
 
#35
I think the largest notated signature I've seen is 13/8, and yeah I've seen the time split up far more often.

One interesting case though is when the sum of all the funny stuff adds up to something normal: for instance 9+8+7 (Tool's "Lateralus") adds up to 24. Four bars of six, with funny accents? Or 9+8+7? I recently transcribed a guitar piece I was learning, and kept it in 4/4 as much as possible -- there were a number of turnarounds in the middle of the bars, but the larger pattern repeat fell on a 4/4 boundary. My guitar teacher reworked it to use many time signatures - I'm not kidding:

11/8 + 8/4 + 8/4 + 13/8 +
11/8 + 8/4 + 8/4 + 13/8 +
11/8 + 8/4 + 13/8 +
3/4 + 5/4 + 2/4 + 6/4 + 6/4


and so on and so forth.
 
#37
Originally posted by Howard K


"Mommy, make the nasty rhythm stop"
:bawl:

You could play that symatrically as: 12345 1234 123 1234 12345. hellish!

Man, stuff like that just has so many options, so cool... one day I'll be good enough to play stuff like that!
How old was the bassist, please dont say 17 or something, I want to feel I can grow into this kinda stuff!
Click to expand...

The bass player was Phil Donkin and the drummer Tom Skinner - they looked quite young and get mentioned as "the best of new young Jazz talent" "Jazz rising stars" etc

I found this on the net :

"Phil is just coming to the end of four years at the Guildhall School of Music during which time he worked with such luminaries as Jim Mullen, Henry Lowther and Phil Lee and is an up-and-coming bassist to watch out for."

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#39
Originally posted by geshel
Hmm. . .21. . .so the question is, when do you put it in 21/8, and when do you use 9/8 + 7/8 + 5/8?
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Well - I actually went up to the composer and asked him about it, as I mentioned.

But if people don't trust my account, they can always contact Tom Arthurs who was the trumpet player/composer in question.

He has his own website :

Invalid Link Removed

Here's a quote about Tom :

'I learnt something that night!' (Following performance of Tom's music at Banff Centre)
'It is so nice to hear a group of young musicians creating some new music. And Tom Arthurs' band, Centripede is just that - Bravo!'

[Joe Lovano, saxophonist]
 

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