Double Bass truly odd time sigs

[Tbeers]

I can't get past the fact that there is really zero difference between 4/4, 4/8, 4/12, and 4/3.14159265358!

The ONLY reason to choose one over another is to make it easier for the musician to read.

And...

How could 4/12 possibly be easier to read, when nobody in the entire world seems to have the slightest clue what a 12th note looks like?

Honest to god, give me one good reason why this man's piece is not in 4/8. He puts four eighth notes in each bar.

And please, please do not turn this into some issue of people not accepting different sounds or different types of music. I have no problem with pieces that sound far out, many of which have NO NOTATION AT ALL! This composer can write (or not write) whatever stirs him, but writing 4/12 where the time signature goes is nothing other than a typographical error. He puts four eighth notes in each bar. His piece is in 4/8.

 

[oliebrice]

Honest to god, give me one good reason why this man's piece is not in 4/8. He puts four eighth notes in each bar.
QUOTE]

well you've twice been given the link to his explanation, but I suppose I could cut and paste for you...

"what I meant to express was the sense that meter has long been a relatively under-utilized resource, and that one thing I have been attempting for quite a while now has been a consistent re-integration of metric structure into the way we process unfamiliar sonic information"

and later...

"The so-called 'irrational' measure lengths, i.e. those based on beats expressed in terms of fractions of full beats in the prevailing tempo, thus giving rise to such time signatures as 3/10 or 5/24, are useful as local 'dissonances' serving to refocus attention and instantiate reassessment of the prevailing temporal perspective. A somewhat distant analogy would be the metric modulations typical of Elliott Carter's music, where a steady pulse in one tempo would continue across at exactly the same perceived rate in a new tempo, albeit notated differently, thus providing the performers with a constant unit of measurement when undertaking complex series of tempo modifications. I said earlier that these pulses are not normally present to the same degree in my own practice or, at most, are present only fleetingly through two adjacent measures. I find that such 'irrational' measures serve as a useful buffer between local changes of event density and actual changes of base tempo, which latter I interpret as being a more thorough-going radical intervention. Other composers have taken this particular technique much further than I in the meantime, with the result that the Law of Diminishing Returns has begun to apply".

 

[oliebrice]

And please, please do not turn this into some issue of people not accepting different sounds or different types of music. I have no problem with pieces that sound far out, many of which have NO NOTATION AT ALL! This composer can write (or not write) whatever stirs him, but writing 4/12 where the time signature goes is nothing other than a typographical error

what I was taking issue with is not what people like or don't like, but with the willingness to assume that something is nonsense just because you haven't given it much though/understood it/agreed with it

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

What if you have thought about it for a long time - but still think it's nonsense!! ??

 

[WalterBush]

What if you have thought about it for a long time - but still think it's nonsense!! ??

It's difficult to disagree with that sentiment, and I sure don't want to tell someone they're entirely wrong after they've given a subject plenty of consideration. Especially when the subject is, well, subjective

What I would disagree with is the idea that modern composers, inventing or discovering a new way of doing things, are a) out only for the money b) just trying to convince us how much smarter than the great unwashed they are c) stupid, arrogant, or clueless for making something much more difficult than it needs to be.

A couple months ago, someone posted a link to a video of a bassist whose "performance" consisted of scratching indiscriminately with the bow, then banging it loudly into the strings, then more scratching and more banging for about 10 minutes. This was performed by another highbrow "artiste" who was also a highly esteemed professor of music, and while I was watching it, I was thinking about how I had been playing bass for about 6 months and could play that piece no problem. Yet nobody has highbrow discussions about my caterwauling because I'm a beginner and he was a tenured professor.

One major difference between a beginner caterwauling and an esteemed professor expirimenting with sound is that the esteemed professor has enough technique and experience to precisely repeat his sound, while the beginner caterwauling is still discovering how to generate sound, and is probably fairly random about it. A large chunk of "noise" and "random" events in this form of music are precisely thought out, sometimes with complex math behind the ideas, and (hopefully) have a specific purpose in the tune, intending to provoke an emotional response from the audience (besides grabbing for earplugs or throwing something, I mean )

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

What I would disagree with is the idea that modern composers, inventing or discovering a new way of doing things,

I said before I don't see this as anything new at all -
Stockhausen was inventing his own notation in the 1950s - that was new!!

Many others have developed new methods of notation - just to say : I'm specifying this existing notation as something else just sounds plain lazy to me...

 

[WalterBush]

Many others have developed new methods of notation - just to say : I'm specifying this existing notation as something else just sounds plain lazy to me...

I don't believe so. The reinterpretation of something existing in order to produce something entirely new is Ferneyhough's whole modus operandi. It sounds like a careful consideration of how far he can push that reinterpretation without losing the ability to communicate, not laziness, to me.


EDIT: As a side note, I couldn't find any of Ferneyhough's CDs at my local record store. I finally ordered one online, but it's not here yet, so I still don't know what this guy's music actually sounds like. I'm just looking at what he's said, and some small examples of his written music I've been able to track down. I very well may get the CD and decide the guy's just awful and should be avoided, along with written-for-film-ballads, at all costs That wouldn't necessarily invalidate the ideas behind his music to me, though.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

I don't believe so. The reinterpretation of something existing in order to produce something entirely new is Ferneyhough's whole modus operandi. It sounds like a careful consideration of how far he can push that reinterpretation without losing the ability to communicate, not laziness, to me.

But you can hardly call it "inventing or discovering a new way of doing things," - it's a very old idea and his take adds very little, apart from confusion!!

 

[Mike Crumpton]

I can't get past the fact that there is really zero difference between 4/4, 4/8, 4/12, and 4/3.14159265358!

The ONLY reason to choose one over another is to make it easier for the musician to read.

And...

How could 4/12 possibly be easier to read, when nobody in the entire world seems to have the slightest clue what a 12th note looks like?

Honest to god, give me one good reason why this man's piece is not in 4/8. He puts four eighth notes in each bar.

And please, please do not turn this into some issue of people not accepting different sounds or different types of music. I have no problem with pieces that sound far out, many of which have NO NOTATION AT ALL! This composer can write (or not write) whatever stirs him, but writing 4/12 where the time signature goes is nothing other than a typographical error. He puts four eighth notes in each bar. His piece is in 4/8.

Again speculation, but my asumption would be that in 4/12 the pulse crosses the bar line since the pulse would be 1 beat for a quaver triplet (- for the first time I find a justification fo calling something quavers - it doesn't assume) just like 6/8 has two pulses to the bar.

Now if you were to write in all the triplet figures your page would be a mess wouldn't it - so what's the problem?

If someone wrote for me a solo peice that was written in crotchet triplets say, I would feel and hear it differrently as a performer (becuase I'd have the pulse in my head) to a piece in crochets. Would the effect on the audience be different? hmmm - tricky. The three against 2 feel does create a ponderous sort of floating mood to me, if you'll forgive the purplue prose, but whether this would come accross I wouldn't like to say.

However, many composers and jazz composers (Bill Russo) have written on and tried to get away from the so called 'tyrrany of the bar line' (see Bill's Jazz Composition and Orchestration).

It could be a bit like the joke about a bloke in the pub betting a drummer that he can play a hemidemisemiquaver (64th), banging the table once, saying there you are! and walking out with the foolishly staked fiver.

 

[WalterBush]

Quaver is a term I'm familiar with. What's a crotchet?

 

[Ed Fuqua]

It's where I'm gonna kick somebody if we all don't stop this nonsense and start practicing soon!

 

[oliebrice]

EDIT: As a side note, I couldn't find any of Ferneyhough's CDs at my local record store. I finally ordered one online, but it's not here yet, so I still don't know what this guy's music actually sounds like.

I'd never heard him before, but this thread inspired me to have a look in the library at the local university, where I found and listened to some of his string quartet music which I liked a lot.
so the argument wasn't entirely useless!

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

It's where I'm gonna kick somebody if we all don't stop this nonsense and start practicing soon!

Aw, yer jus' sayin that because you can't lay down a burning 12th note line over Giant Steps at any kind of tempo.


Seriously, though...AMEN. This is one of the silliest DB discussions I've seen since the Traeger thread.

 

[Mike Crumpton]

It's where I'm gonna kick somebody if we all don't stop this nonsense and start practicing soon!

LOL A crotchet is what we get taught to call a quarter note BTW. They go:

brieve - whole note
semi-brieve - half note
crotchet - quarter note
quaver - eigth note
semiquaver - sixteenth note
demisemiquaver - thirtysecond note
hemidemisemiquaver - sixtyfourth note

Because they are so ingrained they even get used in jazz-class here. Right - off to the woodshed.

 

[WalterBush]

Great, next theater gig I get I'm going to talk about playing with my crotchets the whole show

 

[JimmyM]

What I would disagree with is the idea that modern composers, inventing or discovering a new way of doing things, are a) out only for the money b) just trying to convince us how much smarter than the great unwashed they are c) stupid, arrogant, or clueless for making something much more difficult than it needs to be.

Ever hear the story about the Emperor's New Clothes? I'm just saying that the Emperor is naked. And so far, the proof against him being naked isn't working out too well from what I can see.

One major difference between a beginner caterwauling and an esteemed professor expirimenting with sound is that the esteemed professor has enough technique and experience to precisely repeat his sound, while the beginner caterwauling is still discovering how to generate sound, and is probably fairly random about it. A large chunk of "noise" and "random" events in this form of music are precisely thought out, sometimes with complex math behind the ideas, and (hopefully) have a specific purpose in the tune, intending to provoke an emotional response from the audience (besides grabbing for earplugs or throwing something, I mean )

The emotional response from the parents of kids who have him as a professor would be, "We're paying all that money so my kid can learn how to do -that-?" I get emotional response from Mingus playing "Goodbye Porkpie Hat," or from Edgar Meyer playing Appalachian folk tunes with Yo Yo-Ma and Mark O' Connor. Sorry, but the only emotional response I got from that bow-banging is "What kind of crap is that?"

Here's a very telling quote from Prof. Ferneyhough himself:

"I find that such 'irrational' measures serve as a useful buffer between local changes of event density and actual changes of base tempo, which latter I interpret as being a more thorough-going radical intervention. Other composers have taken this particular technique much further than I in the meantime, with the result that the Law of Diminishing Returns has begun to apply".

Seems to me like he's admitting the more-or-less useless nature of his TS's. There is no law of diminishing returns with other forms of music notation. A time signature of 10/8 or 7/4 has no diminishing returns, odd though it may be. But he's saying that a 4/12 time signature does. Of course it does because it's bogus.

The more this conversation goes on, the more I'm convinced that he's: a) out only for the money b) just trying to convince us how much smarter than the great unwashed they are c) stupid, arrogant, or clueless for making something much more difficult than it needs to be.

Next you all will be telling me John Cage was a genius for recording 4 minutes of silence and calling it music. Huey Lewis may not have been a great musician in the tradition of John Cage and Brian Ferneyhough, but one thing he said resonates true throughout the ages: "Sometimes bad is bad."

 

[jazzbassnerd]

Next you all will be telling me John Cage was a genius for recording 4 minutes of silence and calling it music. Huey Lewis may not have been a great musician in the tradition of John Cage and Brian Ferneyhough, but one thing he said resonates true throughout the ages: "Sometimes bad is bad."

I think in some ways one could argue that some of John Cage's music is maybe more art through sound than music. So, I guess this has nothing to do with 4/12, but I think Cage has an interesting artistic statement. besides, a lot of people at school tells us to "play the spaces." (hehe).

The story I heard is that Cage went into a "silent room" and felt that he could hear his heartbeat and the "electricity" going through his nervous system. At this point he decided silence had a sound. I can't really confirm this because I haven't researched it, but it sounds cool to me.

Oh yeah, 4/12.... resume fairly interesting discussion

 

[ToR-Tu-Ra]

art through sound? isn't that called music? maybe I'm wrong, but, isn't music one of the fine arts? anyways... back to the 4/12 topic... Once a teacher told me you can write music as complex as you want, for example instead of writting a whole note, you could write eight 1/8 tied together one after another... But by doing your writting as complex as possible you make it harder to read for other people. Maybe you know what you meant when you wrote it, but other people are not psychics and can't get into your mind unless you translate it clearly and simply.

I think this has already been said so I'll stop right HERE

Man, I can't believe this thread keeps on going...

 

[Mike Crumpton]

Talking of Cage, Mike Batt, a famous UK pop producer and songwriter of not inconsiderable talent (US bretheren may have heard Bright Eyes sung by Garfunkel for the cartoon film Watership Down) brought out a record of silence with a title which made an oblique allusion to Cage's minutes 33 seconds or whatever it was called. Anyway, Batt was successfully sued for breach of copyright. If they'd have sued him for being a smart-arse he might have deserved it but this was surely ridiculous.

I guess JimmyM ain't gonna take out a subscription to improv magazine then? (see off topic).

There is a whole lot of philosophising behind a lot of free jazz. These players were trying to push the bounds of expression and make statements. One wouldn't have happened without the other IMO. On reflection, some of it might sound pretensious now but the two went hand in hand to push the boundaries of what a lot of audiences will now listen to. If Fernyhough's simmilar screed sounds too much for everyone we could always re-visit the thread asking what the £$%"$£% harmelodics was all about.

On second thoughts more practise is called for!

 

[velvetkevorkian]

pah! why practice when you can philosophise?!