Music in other than 4/4 time

[Johanna]

and here is one (in MIDI format) I composed that shifts in mid-stream from
3/4 time to 18/8 as
1…4…7…10…13.15.17., [3+3+3+3+2+2+2]
(you’ll know when! )

Nice one, AHunter3. You really grooved on that rapid asymmetrical beat. It just goes to show that no one needs to be afraid of asymmetrical meters; once you get the feel for the pulse, you can really groove to it. Bulgarian peasants have known that for centuries.

[manhattan]

This thread is way past due for IMHO.

So here we go. Anna one anna two…

[LazarusLong42]

*Originally posted by Cervaise *
ZenBeam: There’s no such thing as a “third note.” Western music is built on powers of two, as Ethilrist originally pointed out.
…
In order to get three beats per measure, you can use the time signature 3/4, i.e. three notes of quarter length (waltz time), or you can use 4/4 and group three half notes into a triplet. Western music, again, doesn’t have a “third note,” and simply isn’t built to accommodate it.

I was thinking about this last night, and I realized that, no, Western music does have something that is realized as, effectively, a “third” note: The triplet. Any given note inside a triplet is two-thirds the length of its parent note. Thus, in common time, triplet halves are one-third of the measure; triplet quarters are one sixth of the measure; and so forth.

What the existence of these notes allows one to do is to create a hemiola effect, pitting triplets versus duplets. It doesn’t do anything to the time signature, but it does change the flow of the music itself.

**
It would theoretically be possible to construct such a musical system, and I suppose a more expert musicologist might weigh in and say the little-known Upper Intestinal Tract’s tribe of Zandorian Newt-Milkers in the High Himalayas have a musical tradition built on the square root of five, but that’s a separate discussion. **

Well, hey, current Western music (not ancient Western music) is based on the twelfth root of two. The pitches, at least.

LL