I’ve been practicing “Retreat from the Somme” a lot - great bagpipe tune. It’s in 9/8 time, as is another well-known pipe tune, “The Hills of Dargai.” Got to wondering about the time signature. I’ve done a bit of piano and guitar, but don’t recall ever seeing a 9/8 time except when piping.
So, is 9/8 unique to piping, or did I just not happen to encounter it on the other instruments?
It’s unusual, but’s it’s not a pipe thing. I’ve sung a Christmas carol - can’t remember the title, but the words begin “Born in a stable so bare, Born so long ago, Born 'neath light of star, He who loved us so” - that’s in 9/8.
I vaguely recall 9/8 from high school concert band.
Quite a few Scottish Gaelic songs are in 9/8 but they “correct” the timing when accompanied. Now I have to find a cite for this, but it really is true.
It’s not nearly as common as 6/8 or 3/4, but I wouldn’t say by any means it was unique to piping. I would guess, though, that a compound triple meter is almost always going to be fast and folk dance-related just by its nature, so you’ll see more of it in pipe and fiddle music than, say, in the standard orchestral repertoire.
That is the meter for a “slip jig”. The intro music for the Thistle and Shamrock (an NPR radio program) is a good example. here’s a page with a few more:
http://members.aol.com/boynehunt/slipjig.html
Bach’s Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring is also in 9/8.
I think 9/8 as (3+4+2)/8 is also common in modern works by composers.
Is Jesu in 9/8? I just assumed it was in 6/8 (yeah, yeah, ass-u-me). While it is unusual, it still has the general feel of 6/8 most of the time, as in 3-3-3 rather than xejkh’s 3-4-2 syncopated feel.
Thanks, now I have a 7/8 3-2-2 beat in my head from something played long ago and I can’t get rid of it. 
Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo a la Turk is in 9/8 and Time Out the album it is off is so named because all the tunes have odd time signatures. Take Five his biggest hit is in 5/4 time.
OK theoreticians, what’s the difference between 9/8, and 6/8 with all triplets (ie. 3-3-3)? I know a Bach Courante that is triplets or dotted notes all the way through with a couple of bars of 3-3 at the end. I think there are probably plenty of pieces with the form 3-3-3 which are designated 3/4 or 6/8. I have seen 9/8 for fiddle probably a jig/reel/thingy.
I read your entire post 3 times and I have no idea what you are trying to ask here. Simply put, 9/8 is (traditionally) three groups of three, 6/8 is two groups of three. What was the question?
LONG and TECHNICAL
IANAPMT (I am not a professional music theorist) but
as far as I can remember from my long ago theory days, a lot of the difference comes from the relative stress upon the subdivisions of the bar, and the groupings of those subdivisions within a greater rhythmic pattern. Okay, that’s a little obtuse, let’s see if I can clarify it:
In 4/4 or other examples of duple time, there is inherently a downbeat and upbeat - certain styles of music stress one or the other, but they’re always there. The stress can be 1 2 3 4 or 1 2 3 4, but you’re always feeling the duple nature of the beat
In 3/4 time (and 6/8, 9/8, 6/4 and other types of triple time) however, the beat structure breaks down thusly:
1 2 3 | 1 2 3 |1 2 3
Now you can of course stress other beats in triple time, I’m just trying to delineate the difference between duple and triple (and yes there are other types, such as 5/4, 7/4 etc but I was always taught that while yes, there are specific and distinct feels to 5/4, 7/4 etc. the easiest and commonest way to feel them, play them and analyze them is as multiples of 3 and 3 (5/4 = a “bar” of 2/4 and a bar of 3/4, or vice versa)
So…(and I apologize for the above diversion, just trying to forestall the inevitable cry of ‘but what about x?’ where x is irrelevant to my point)…
3/4 or 3/8 is going to be one grouping of 1 2 3
6/8 is going to generally be two groupings:
1 2 3 |1 2 3 written as 1 2 3 4 5 6
with a superimposed stress on one of the subgroups, either in whole or only on the first beat. (Italics indicate a greater stress than just bold)
So you can see that the subgroups are still triple in nature, but the overall bar is duple - 2 groups of 3
9/8 is the same principle - but a triple superimposed beat, so every bar stays triple:
1 2 3 | 1 2 3 |1 2 3 written as
1 2 3 4 5 67 8 9
and played as
1 2 3 4 5 67 8 9
12/8 keeps moving on along, although the superimposed group carries the feel of 4/4 rather than 2/4
And so on…although stress can be put on any beat at any time by the performer or composer, these are the most common, and would tend to be the “default” feels.
Please note that I did NOT discuss triplet feel, swing etc and so no inference should be made about those rhythmic feels.
That’s the tune that popped into my head as well. The 9/8 tempo is interspersed with 4/4 segments, which creates an interesting piece.
Note also that Blue Rondo is not the traditional (3+3+3)/8, but rather (2+2+2+3)/8.
Soundgarden wrote in 9/8 quite a bit. “Never the Machine Forever” was in 9/8, and I think “Spoonman” alternates between 7/8 and 9/8. They were fond of the unusual time signatures.
Actually, it’s both. The opening is 2/2/2/3 repeated three times, then 3/3/3.
To Krebnar and others: Brubeck’s “Unsquare Dance” is in 7/4 time. I learned it in music appreciation class in college; the instructor said “It’s called ‘Unsquare Dance’ and Brubeck ends it with ‘Turkey in the Straw’ which is as square as you can get!” (This music teacher, who bore a strong resemblance to Martin Balsam [whom Anthony Perkins kicked down the stairs in Psycho], was born on an Arizona cattle ranch but there seems to be nothing he didn’t know about music.)
In From Bach to Verse, a book of comic mnemonics for classical themes, compiler Josefa Heifetz gives 9/8 as the tempo for “Jesu Joy.”
In a French textbook we used at Redondo High, the sheet music for “En Passant par Lorraine” gives its tempo as 9/8.
Indeed, Chefguy. I believe the 4/4 that comes later could reasonably be interpreted as actually a 12/8, with the 8th notes being the same tempo as the opening 9/8. That’s how I’d write it if I was doing the transcription, anyway.