Notating an intro in unstable 17/8 (?)

[Trilobita]

Hello,

I have been trying to notate the bass part to Lumsk's "Allvis", linked below:



My question is related to the first 40 seconds of the song, from the guitar-only opening until the male voice stops singing. I feel the guitar part quite distinctly at a very fast and steady 17/8 (6/8 + 3/8 + 5/8 + 3/8), but the problem is that once the bass and the drums come in the time signature starts to shift, like this:

[Guitars only]
4 bars of 17/8
[Bass and drums enter]
3 bars of 17/8
1 bar of 18/8
3 bars of 17/8
1 bar of 21/8
[After 0:40 the song progresses for several bars at 6/8]

Just take for granted that rhythm-wise the above structure works - the audio playback of the above score lines up note-by-note with the original recording. My question is whether there wouldn't be simpler or more efficient ways to notate it.

I can think of several pros and cons regarding the use of 17/8:

I understand 17/8 could be written as 6/8 + 3/8 + 5/8 + 3/8 (or at times 4/8 or 7/8 where I have written 18/8 and 21/8 as above), but of course writing this four-bar sequence twelve times in a row would result in 48 bars, each single one of them in a different time signature, and this would look quite absurd on the page. Also, this mixed bag of time signatures would not outline the fact that the 18/8 and 21/7 bars are just variations of the 17/8 main rhythm (which appears in 10 out of 12 bars), which - if notated as 17/8 - results in two four-bar sequences with a variation on the fourth bar each time, which feels like a common enough musical sequence.

For the above reasons 17/8 would appear to be the a good solution, but in order for that to work the song has to be notated at a blazing fast [eighth note = 308 BPM] which clearly does not correspond to the actual feel of the song. Maybe it were possible to write [quarter note = 154] as I did when the song settles in 6/8, but since 17 is odd the quarter notes are useless to count because the last half of the last quarter note would have to be skipped each time. But adopting [eighth note = 308 BPM] for the 17/8 parts in turn results in either having to "change" (while actually not changing) the tempo from [eighth note = 308 BPM] to [quarter note = 154] just because 17 is odd, or having to notate the the entire song as [eighth note = 304 BPM] which feels just wrong.

I have thought this over and over and the impression I have - admittedly not knowing much about problems such as this - is that there is no easy way out and a compromise will have to be made either with regard to the tempo or to the representation of the time signature.

Any thoughts? Fell absolutely free to get into the details to your heart's content - I am really curious about this problem, and I believe getting to understand how to approach this sort of structure could be quite useful further on.

Thank you!

 

[MaurizioTorchio]

Hi, this is how I would write it

 

[Bob_Ross]

I understand 17/8 could be written as 6/8 + 3/8 + 5/8 + 3/8 ...[snip]... writing this four-bar sequence twelve times in a row would result in 48 bars, each single one of them in a different time signature, and this would look quite absurd on the page.

Two possible solutions, both of which, while not being super common, do have plenty of precedent in 20th (and 21st) Century music:

- You perhaps inadvertently stumbled on one correct solution when you wrote "17/8 could be written as 6/8 + 3/8 + 5/8 + 3/8" (which btw is way more informative/useful to the musician trying to read it than just writing "17/8") ...except instead of having each meter in a separate measure you write it as a single measure in the additive meter of 6/8+3/8+5/8+3/8 (...sometimes notated as 6+3+5+3/8 although you have to imagine that "8" as being a centered denominator in the time signature)

- Arguably any additive meter, or any time signature with a large number for a numerator, is just some combination of 2s and 3s ...and some composers indicate this not with numbers, but with slashes for 2s and dotted slashes for 3s. So instead of having a 17/8 time signature or a 6/8+3/8+5/8+3/8 time signature etc. you would simply indicate / / / /. /. / /.

 

[dreamadream99]

Hi, this is how I would write it

I too would rather read it in its separate components, rather than strung together in one long indecipherable measure.

 

[Trilobita]

Thanks a lot for your answers, which (as usual for me) have led to a couple more questions.

There seems to be a clear preference for having things broken down in smaller parts, either by using repeat bars with different endings or by using long bars with additive time signatures that make the 6+3+5+3/8 (or variations thereof) clear at a glance. So far so good. But in this case:

- Why notate the straightforward, non-variable part in which the female voice starts to sing as 12/8 (as MaurizioTorchio has done) and not as 6/8 (as I had initially done)?

- How to indicate the tempo (there were no comments in this regard)? Would [eight note = 308] be ok or would you suggest something else?

Again, thank you a lot for your insightful comments.

 

[MaurizioTorchio]

Hi, good points

"having things broken down in smaller parts"
Has to be something that makes sense. Imagine someone giving you the part, what would you like to see?
A subjective thing anyway. Many times I've seen good musicians, well educated, transcribing the same part differently.

"Why notate the straightforward, non-variable part in which the female voice starts to sing as 12/8"
I hear it, again, a personal opinion, as a two bars idea repeated four times, in 6/8 would be a four bars idea.

"How to indicate the tempo"
I like ♩ = 154

"by using repeat bars with different endings"
I wrote a compact version, if more clarity is needed you should break down the 8 times repeat in 2 + 2 + 2 (bs + dr in) + 2. The next three in 1 (instr) + 2 (vox1 in).

 

[Bob_Ross]

How to indicate the tempo

I'm a huge proponent of having every bit of detail you include on a chart being there to provide value/information to the person reading the chart...so, for example, if there is useful information in addition to just the tempo that a tempo marking can convey, that's valuable.

So ask yourself, how should the pulses be felt? What are the perceived beats? If every single partial of the meter is supposed to be felt, then eighth note = 308 bpm is acceptable. But if the player is supposed to be conveying a less frenetic/more relaxed feel, or more of a downbeat/backbeat feel, it may be more helpful to indicate the tempo as quarter note = 154 bpm.

And for music written in a large additive meter, depending on how the subdivisions are intended and whether they skew more frequently towards three-beat divisions, it might be even more helpful to indicate the tempo as dotted quarter note = 102 bpm.

 

[SteveCS]

- Why notate the straightforward, non-variable part in which the female voice starts to sing as 12/8 (as MaurizioTorchio has done) and not as 6/8 (as I had initially done)?

Because the vocal phrasing is clearly structured around a single accent every 4 beats. 6/8 suggests a stronger accent every two beats, which doesn't reflect the lyric.

 

[Trilobita]

I'm a huge proponent of having every bit of detail you include on a chart being there to provide value/information to the person reading the chart...so, for example, if there is useful information in addition to just the tempo that a tempo marking can convey, that's valuable.

Your entire answer addresses many of the points I was puzzled about, but this part in particular makes me understand what I think I am missing. I don't know whether you've listened to the entire song, but even though the metrical variations underpinning the musical phrasing include at least 12/8, 13/8, 15/8, 17/8, 18/8, 19/8 and 21/8, the foundation to everything that happens in the song is far simpler: a variable 17/8 and a variable 12/8 (which later on becomes a steady 13/8).

I guess the idea I would like to convey in terms of useful information in addition to (as you have finely worded it) the meter is that, rather than a song with seemingly random and unpredictable time signatures, this is a song with way fewer basic structures that do however show some degree of variation as the structure progresses. Maybe the best example to illustrate this is the final section starting again with the guitars at 4:55 (a variation on the 17/8 guitar melody which opens the song), where what you strictly have in terms of musical phrasing is:

1 bar of 15/8
3 bars of 13/8 (same melody as the 1 bar of 15/8, now two beats shorter)
7 bars of 12/8
1 bar of 13/8 (same melody as the 7 bars of 12/8, now with syncopated bass and one beat longer)
24 bars of 13/8 until the song fades out (same melody as the seven bars of 12/8, now one beat longer and no longer syncopated because the bass line has readjusted to fall on the beat)

When I think of the above section, however, instead of thinking the song goes (as it actually and complicatedly does)

|15/8|13/8 (x3)|12/8 (x7)|13/8 (syncopated)|13/8 (x24)|

I rather think it simply undergoes some variations in

|13/8 (x8)|12/8 (x8)|13/8 (x24)|

I guess this is the useful information in addition to that I feel I am unable to convey: that even though the meter changes in this bar here or in that bar there, things are more or less stable and stay pretty much the same nonetheless because those are simply variations on what has just been played or is just about to be played, and not new things entirely.

 

[Bob_Ross]

I guess this is the useful information in addition to that I feel I am unable to convey: that even though the meter changes in this bar here or in that bar there, things are more or less stable and stay pretty much the same nonetheless because those are simply variations on what has just been played or is just about to be played, and not new things entirely.

One solution that I've seen used --- not necessarily in published scores, but in conductor's scores and sometimes in individual musician's parts -- is a "rhythm map" written above the staff.

So in addition to whatever time signature and tempo marking you determine is most conducive to conveying the gist of the rhythm, you would also have a guide (written in superscript, like cues) that uses a combination of:
- the aforementioned slashes & dotted slashes to indicate subdivisions (e.g., / / / /. /. / /. ...although for maximum legibility those should have stems on them)
- lots of one-bar repeat signs (e.g. this symbol)
- a method to highlight/identify the deviations from the underlying pulse theme...I've seen it done mostly with parenthesis around the additional beats, once or twice can recall seeing the deviations flagged with an asterisk, and I suppose color-coding would be pretty effective too.

I realize I'm probably "dancing about architecture" right now, so if ^^^that doesn't make sense let me know and I'll see if I can find examples in my charts, or maybe I'll just quickly whip up a mock-up to demonstrate what I'm describing.

 

[Trilobita]

I did some more reading on the internet and found about this interesting and (to me) unknown resource: dotted bar lines. The style guide adopted by the Jacobs School of Music/Indiana University Bloomington reads:

Meters With Too Many or Too Few Beats. Use Meters of 2, 3, 4 beats for the most part. Sometimes 5 or 6. Avoid large meters of 7, 8, 9, or more beats in a bar. These are usually broken down into twos and threes anyway, and the downbeat is easily confused. Players sometimes get lost when following a conductor through measures with seven or more beats. Consider dividing the measure with a dotted barline or splitting these into two separate bars.

The example shown in the style guide is this:

The style guide is no longer available on the original website, but a snapshot of the full document has been preserved at Wayback Machine in case anyone else is interested: Music Notation Style Guide: Composition: Departments, Offices and Services: Jacobs School of Music: Indiana University Bloomington

 

[Trilobita]

Just a quick update to say that after giving this some more thought and taking into account several suggestions offered here on this thread, for the time being I am using this:

So far I like having the subdivisions clearly stated after the large numerator and beaming the notes according to those subdivisions. Actually separating the bars as 6/8+3/8+5/8+3/8 (and similar counts) would result in a sequence of 28 consecutive bars with nothing but a single full-bar note in each, and I really dislike the idea of having so many bars with no individual melodic content at all.

Feel free to comment if you feel inclined - and thanks everyone for all the valuable suggestions, which really helped me make sense of what at first seemed like a pretty complicated problem.

 

[srbbass]

I would just suggest changing the 12/8 section where the female vocal comes in to 6/4. To me it's the quarter note that is the pulse here and you wouldn't have to change your note values. I would even consider using 3/4+4/4+3/8 for the opening part in 17/8 but then you have a heavy syncopation in the 4/4 bar; but I still hear the quarter note pulse, even in the beginning, with the 3/8 being a lilting exception to that. Just a thought.