weirdest time signature

[lalalockstep]

try to find the weirdest time signature u ever heard, or at least realised...

13 : 8

living forest by dan forden.

[Diatonic Dissonance™]

Ones that I've actually heard in songs? Or just ones I make up?

25/16 is a good one

Or 33/32 :p

21/32 maybe.

And so on.

[moaner]

33/32 but....


with syncopation

[ebv-dave]

I've done some compositions with pretty obscure time signatures, and the most obsure tend to be the ones that start with a prime number, as far away from a multiple from the second as possible, and the second number being high, it creates really shocking bar lengths.

[moaner]

an entire suite of a single bar, anyone?

[Diatonic Dissonance™]

I like polymeters a lot.

Something like an 11/16 subriff over a 4/4 master riff always sounds good.

[Trigger_003]

Some flamenco compases can legitimately have no time signature... does that count?

[moaner]

I like polymeters a lot.

Something like an 11/16 subriff over a 4/4 master riff always sounds good.

only when the sig is

4x^3.x^2.4x.3
SQRT(sinx)

[miku]

an entire suite of a single bar, anyone?
That sounds fairly pointless.

Probably the weirdest I've heard is 23/16 (Ganondorf Battle theme in Zelda Ocarina of Time). Grouped like 10+13.

I've written a piano piece that starts in 5/4 and then changes later to 17/16.

[Diatonic Dissonance™]

only when the sig is


4x^3.x^2.4x.3
SQRT(sinx)
:lol:

That sounds fairly pointless.

Probably the weirdest I've heard is 23/16 (Ganondorf Battle theme in Zelda Ocarina of Time). Grouped like 10+13.

I've written a piano piece that starts in 5/4 and then changes later to 17/16.
Heh, I think he was being facetious.

Anyway, Zelda is a great game, and I had no idea the Ganondorf theme is in 23/16!

[miku]

I wanna correct myself here, the 23/16 Ganondorf Battle theme is grouped as 13+10, not 10+13.

[idspispopd]

i hate playing songs that go 7/8 and then to 4/4. i have to pay so much attention to where i am i cant move around

[Diatonic Dissonance™]

i hate playing songs that go 7/8 and then to 4/4. i have to pay so much attention to where i am i cant move around
I love songs with odd time signatures!

[Hadji]

17/512

[MRDuCran]

You make 4/4 sound odd if you phrase it properly.

[miku]

You make 4/4 sound odd if you phrase it properly.
Yeah. I've heard Tool/APC do a bit of that sort of thing. I can't really name songs as I don't listen to them much.. but yeah. Like, that one APC song with the part where he keeps talking about someone taking "what's mine" (heh sorry I don't know what it's called) has a section in 4/4 that's phrased in a cool way.
Also, in Schism, depending on how you look at it, the main part of it is either 5/8+7/8, or 6/4 with cool syncopation.

[Diatonic Dissonance™]

Meshuggah do it all the time. It's called a polymeter.

[Dingbats]

One of the songs from the soundtrack of SimCity 3000 was in 13/16.

[azguitar92]

how can you tell what time signature a song is in? i mean, for example, if a song was in 6/8, you would say that it's in 3/4 just by listening to it, right? how can you tell that it's different?

[miku]

how can you tell what time signature a song is in? i mean, for example, if a song was in 6/8, you would say that it's in 3/4 just by listening to it, right? how can you tell that it's different?
6/8 and 3/4 are very different, even though they are both comprised of 6 quavers. 6/8 is a compound meter, comprised of two main pulses which are subdivided into three (triplets). 3/4 is a simple meter with 3 pulses, each divisible in half.

In other words, 6/8 is 1-&-a 2-&-a, where as 3/4 is 1 & 2 & 3 &.

[Trigger_003]

In case anyone's wanting more info on time signatures:
http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=318711 :thumb:

[Malice]

Christ, Trea. Didn't expect you to be on MX, letalone this thread lol.

[PigeonRat]

In the solo to In The Name of God by Dream Theater, theres a passage that's 15/8.

[pudding time]

what about stuff like 3.5/ 4 or something like that. that actually exisits although ive never seen a piece of music with it. also lateralus by tool.....a measure of 9 beats, then 8, then 7 and that makes up the main riff....pretty cool

[Hadji]

what about stuff like 3.5/ 4
I'd imagine that you would write that as 7/4 or 7/8 instead.

[Ad Absurdum]

You make 4/4 sound odd if you phrase it properly.
Yeah, if you think about it, a time signature could pretty much always be looked at as 4/4 accented in a strange way.

The strangest I've come across is 23/16 in 'New Millenium Cyanide Christ' by Meshuggah.

[moaner]

what about stuff like 3.5/ 4 or something like that. that actually exisits

are you sure?

There is no such thing as a half crochet. Only a quaver.

The only way i could think of 3.5/4 notation being correct would be a bar of 3 crochets and a quaver. But even that would probably be written 7/4.

[HaVIC5]

That sounds fairly pointless.

Probably the weirdest I've heard is 23/16 (Ganondorf Battle theme in Zelda Ocarina of Time). Grouped like 10+13.

I've written a piano piece that starts in 5/4 and then changes later to 17/16.
Many composers have written entire [listenable] pieces without bothering to write a time signature or barlines simply because no unified meter is implied. Erik Satie first did it in his first Gnosienne in the late 19th century, and many others have taken this route, freeing themselves of the restriction of time signatures.

[miku]

Many composers have written entire [listenable] pieces without bothering to write a time signature or barlines simply because no unified meter is implied. Erik Satie first did it in his first Gnosienne in the late 19th century, and many others have taken this route, freeing themselves of the restriction of time signatures.
Well, yeah, that is useful for some types of pieces. "Build 2" from The Sims (solo piano piece) is a piece I imagine as being free-meter or whatever it's called. I believe pretty much any piece of music can be defined by a meter, whether the meter changes throughout the peice, with every measure, additive or whatnot; But sometimes when a piece is very flowy and arhythmic feeling, there isn't much point of writing in time signatures.

However I consider a piece without a time signature or barlines to be a completely different thing from "an entire suite of one bar" which is what he said. An entire suite of one bar, meaning perhaps for example the entire piece has 573 quaver counts in it, being written as 573/4 with it all being in one bar, I still think is pointless. It defies the purpose of meter, which is to organize a piece of music into smaller temporal groupings. Either you apply that purpose to a piece of music, or you don't use meter altogether. That's how I see it.

[PHAT_M0NKEE]

any stuff by Dream Theater, so much of it is 9/8, 7/4, you name it they've done it.

[Diatonic Dissonance™]

any stuff by Dream Theater, so much of it is 9/8, 7/4, you name it they've done it.
35/32?

[Ned]

Paul Creston wrote pieces with numerals such as twelve in the "denominator", 4/12, etc. On the other hand, he was manifesting symptoms of senile dementia at the time.

The idea, which he took from Henry Cowell, is that an eighth-note triplet is really a twelfth-note. This is true, of course, but in 6/8, for example, the eighth notes are NOT eighth-note triplets (in contradistinction to 2/4 WITH eighth-note triplets).

[Ned]

are you sure?

There is no such thing as a half crochet. Only a quaver.



Let's see: breve, minim, crochet, quaver, semiquaver...hemisemidemiquaver....
What do you silly Brits do when confronted with a 128th note? Faint? Or have you even more synonyms for "half" that rhyme with "semi"? I love how Holst's daughter has to resort to the American system in her little primer.

[Ned]

an entire suite of a single bar, anyone?

A suite is a set of dances (and a "single bar" is a singles bar for onanists, or rather, an onanist).

[Ned]

how can you tell what time signature a song is in??

You can't. I hope no one here will maintain that 4/8 SOUNDS different from 4/4.

i mean, for example, if a song was in 6/8, you would say that it's in 3/4 just by listening to it, right? how can you tell that it's different?

And we can go much further. Measures are called so because they measure sections of equal duration, and time signatures only tell you what that duration is, which is strictly a visual thing. A given piece of music will sound precisely the same no matter what time signature you notate it in. When one notates music, however, one does have to decide what that duration should be, and in order to make the music easier to read it is usually best to make the measure correspond to the prevailing grouping, if there is one. Thus, a time signature of 3/4 IMPLIES, but does not DICTATE, groupings of three, whereas 6/8 IMPLIES, but does not DICTATE, groupings of two.

[SoleFactionBassist]

6/8 and 3/4 are very different, even though they are both comprised of 6 quavers. 6/8 is a compound meter, comprised of two main pulses which are subdivided into three (triplets). 3/4 is a simple meter with 3 pulses, each divisible in half.

In other words, 6/8 is 1-&-a 2-&-a, where as 3/4 is 1 & 2 & 3 &.

Yeah in 6/8 the strong beats fall on the 1,2, in 3/4 the strong beat falls on only the one (i think)

[Before Your Time]

A given piece of music will sound precisely the same no matter what time signature you notate it in.
Only if it is played by a machine or a human who does not understand phrasing.

[Ned]

Only if it is played by a machine or a human who does not understand phrasing.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You've got it completely backward. The time signature says nothing whatsoever about phrasing. The time signature is NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT a musical instruction. Only the crudest, most ignorant non-musician will play "count one" louder simply because it begins the measure. You really have no clue whatsoever. A REAL musician uses the MUSIC, not the time signature to tell him what's happening rhythmically in the piece and adjusts his interpretation accordingly.

[moaner]

A suite is a set of dances.

right you are, sorry.



Back in my piano days I was always taught o accent the first note of a bar is playing in 3/4 time. I taker it my piano teacher had 8 grades and 30 years of ignorance and crudity?


And once you run out of prefixes, i think you start again. a hemidemisemihemidemisemiquaver would exist, i guess.

[moaner]

Also, ned, how would you explain the concept of syncopation?

[Knifeboy]

Heh, Ned, are you a drummer?.. If you said that in the drum forum, you'd get your *** kicked

[miku]

Paul Creston wrote pieces with numerals such as twelve in the "denominator", 4/12, etc. On the other hand, he was manifesting symptoms of senile dementia at the time.
That concept is perfectly useful, and I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who's done it.

The important thing though, is the only point of using nonstandard 'denominators' is for proportional tempo changes. There's no point of writing a piece entirely in 4/3 when it could be entirely in 4/4.

A good example of a proper application is one of my piano compositions. It's mainly in 5/4, but for one part the tempo picks up to 1 1/2 times faster, I think of it as a change to 5/6. I find it to be much more intuitive than 5/4 132bpm -> 5/4 198bpm.

It was originally sort of an arbitrary and noncalculated tempo change, but then I noticed I was changing the tempo by the exact same amount every time, and it felt right. And so I discovered that the reason for this was because it was a proportion of 3/2.

[Zjanarhi]

try to find the weirdest time signature u ever heard, or at least realised...

13 : 8

living forest by dan forden.
I wrote a song in 13/8. And it's really cool cuz the drums go into 4/4 while the guitars stay in 13/8 so it makes for an interesting polymeter.

[Toaster]

How about 141/64, with a swing feel.

[Ned]

Back in my piano days I was always taught o [to?] accent the first note of a bar is playing in 3/4 time. I taker it my piano teacher had 8 grades and 30 years of ignorance and crudity?

Well, he may have intended that as an exercise to keep your rhythm steady or he may have been trying to explain to you that 3/4 IMPLIES but does not DICTATE groupings of three and you misunderstood him. On the other hand, if he really thought the first note of a 3/4 piece should always be played louder in performance, then there's no question whatsoever that he was ignorant and crude and unmusical however many years it took him to achieve these atributes. It's not at all uncommon, I'm very, very sorry to say, and that's WHY I'm trying to be as clear and emphatic about this as I can. I really hate to see (and hear) that ****.

[Ned]

Heh, Ned, are you a drummer?.. If you said that in the drum forum, you'd get your *** kicked

Not ****ing likely. I happen to hang out quite a bit in the drum forum, and I more than hold my own.

[Ned]

How about 141/64, with a swing feel.

I trust you have an actual piece in mind. Doesn't count otherwise.

[Ned]

That concept is perfectly useful, and I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who's done it.

The important thing though, is the only point of using nonstandard 'denominators' is for proportional tempo changes. There's no point of writing a piece entirely in 4/3 when it could be entirely in 4/4.

A good example of a proper application is one of my piano compositions. It's mainly in 5/4, but for one part the tempo picks up to 1 1/2 times faster, I think of it as a change to 5/6. I find it to be much more intuitive than 5/4 132bpm -> 5/4 198bpm.

It was originally sort of an arbitrary and noncalculated tempo change, but then I noticed I was changing the tempo by the exact same amount every time, and it felt right. And so I discovered that the reason for this was because it was a proportion of 3/2.

Creston does indeed have pieces that keep a "12" in the "denominator" throughout. I don't really know if he was suffering from senile dementia, but he got very strange in a number of ways toward the very end, which is a shame considering that he was so eminently reasonable for the bulk of his life.

As for your practice, you yourself may "find it to be much more intuitive than 5/4 [q=132]-> 5/4 [q=198]," but no performer is likely to--trust me. Always notate music in such a way as to HELP, not HINDER a performer and keep the theory to yourself (in other words, stop trying to show off; it's tough enough to play music without having to deal with that ****).

[Ned]

Also, ned, how would you explain the concept of syncopation?

Syncopation is putting an accent on a beat or a part of a beat that wouldn't normally get one. There are two things to keep in mind here: 1) Many kinds of accents exist besides dynamic accents--agogic accents, pitch accents, pattern accents, etc. 2) Syncopation only works if there is some established rhythm to contrast it to, whether preceding the syncopation or simultaneous with the syncopation. In other words, the time signature has no bearing whatsoever on syncopation or the lack of syncopation. Again, it has to be found in the actual music.

While we're on the subject, consider the very common rhythm (or more precisely, series of durations) dotted quarter, dotted quarter, quarter (which in 4/4 would be more clearly expressed as dotted quarter, eighth tied to a quarter, quarter). If it were to continue throughout a piece (or for a fair length of time within a piece) without an underlying or superimposed contradictory rhythm, it would NOT be syncopation, but, rather, a sequence of unequal beats.

[Popup-Box]

This is quite an interesting discussion for one who's a rookie when it comes to time signatures.

May anyone give a few examples on songs in 5/4 as well as a couple in 3/4 and 6/8? I'm most eager about 5/4 at the moment, but I'd also like more examples on 3/4 and 6/8 to back up my exisiting impressions of the two last mentioned time signatures.

[Diatonic Dissonance™]

Oh man, Ned, dude. Do you have a messenger of some sort?

I really really want to talk to you, man.

AIM - godhatesyouall69
YIM - cahtatha
MSN - god_hates_us_all1@hotmail.com (<-- I'm on that the most).

Please dude.

[Liam Gaughan]

Let's see: breve, minim, crochet, quaver, semiquaver...hemisemidemiquaver....
What do you silly Brits do when confronted with a 128th note? Faint? Or have you even more synonyms for "half" that rhyme with "semi"? I love how Holst's daughter has to resort to the American system in her little primer.

amen to that. Im british and all, but it makes so much more sense to use numbers. In music class, im like whats a semiquaver? and then the teacher tells me :P Im glad he accepts my choice. theres little keys at the top of each pagein my music book, for when in a lesson someone has used a british name and i dont know what it equals hehe

[CabbageStabbage]

Some songs in my classical guitar book have 5/8 7/8 compound time. Another one has 7/16 time. I like improvising or writing in 5/8 or 7/8 or compound time. It gives a nice strange dance feel.

Stravinsky was always crazy with time signatures. Rite of Spring is nuts.
whoah (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ae/Stravinsky%2C_The_Rite_of_Spring%2C_Sacrificial_Da nce.PNG)

[Ned]

Oh man, Ned, dude. Do you have a messenger of some sort?

I really really want to talk to you, man.

AIM - godhatesyouall69
YIM - cahtatha
MSN - god_hates_us_all1@hotmail.com (<-- I'm on that the most).

Please dude.

Okay. I've never used a messenger, but I'll try to track you down and give you an e-mail address. Talk to you soon.

[Diatonic Dissonance™]

That'd be great, thanks.

[miku]

As for your practice, you yourself may "find it to be much more intuitive than 5/4 [q=132]-> 5/4 [q=198]," but no performer is likely to--trust me. Always notate music in such a way as to HELP, not HINDER a performer and keep the theory to yourself (in other words, stop trying to show off; it's tough enough to play music without having to deal with that ****).
First, how can anyone not find my way to be more intuitive? In order for a quick switch from 132bpm to 198bpm, thinking of it that way (and not proportionally), you'd need to have 'perfect tempo' or something. But simply starting to count in triplets and making two [triplets] the new time for one beat works very well and easily, especially in comparison to the alternative.

Second, I play piano, I'm the performer, so it doesn't matter. Anyway, what should I care if the most logically intuitive way to notate something is "too weird" for someone else? Yes, I believe it's what logically is the most intuitive way. If you don't think of tempo changes as proportional/relative, then what, absolute? I don't know many people who know 153bpm the second you tell them to play at 153bpm. And you can't freeze time at the brink of the measure change to change the speed of your metronome either.

I firmly believe that, as far as tempo changes that need to be very precise go, things like 5/4 to 5/6 is a very intuitive way of notating it. The only reason anyone disagrees with that is because the concept hasn't been used much yet. So it's "weird" and "avant garde." Screw that. John Cage's 4-and-a-half minute piece of silence is avant garde; The concept I'm talking about is a perfectly sensible idea.


Anyway, "no performer is likely to" eh? I guess that's why they're performers and not composers. All technical ability and no thought.

[Ned]

First, how can anyone not find my way to be more intuitive? In order for a quick switch from 132bpm to 198bpm, thinking of it that way (and not proportionally), you'd need to have 'perfect tempo' or something. But simply starting to count in triplets and making two [triplets] the new time for one beat works very well and easily, especially in comparison to the alternative.

Time signatures do not indicate tempo, and neither do time signature changes indicate tempo changes (with one idiomatic exception, which I’ll get to later). Thus when we change “denominators” going from one time signature to another, we must specify the effect on the tempo. If we go from 2/4 to 6/8 we must specify whether or not the former quarter note is equivalent to the new dotted quarter note. If so, we write a quarter note above the staff followed by an equal sign and a dotted quarter note. Since you yourself in your example (5/4 to “5/6”) are really only changing tempos, not relative measured duration or grouping, you need only a tempo change indication, not a time signature change. If you want to show proportion, then show proportion: above the staff simply write three quarter notes below a bracket including the numeral “3” followed by an equal sign and three quarter notes.

Your method is not intuitive (for anyone besides your self) for two reasons: 1) It is unfamiliar. As has been said many times, an invented notation is unlikely to supplant an EVOLVED notation. 2) It is illogical. Since all our note values are based on powers of two, it follows that all our time signature “denominators” must be powers of two. Our exclusively powers-of-two note values present a notational dilemma, and we resolve that dilemma in various ways (dots, ties, and proportional notation), but none of these methods extend the set of possible note values, they merely work around the limitation. If you put quarter-note triplets in a measure of 5/4, then, yes, these quarter-note triplets ARE effectively sixth notes, but obviously you can’t write 5/6 and then put five conventional quarter notes in a measure (your time signature would be lying), and neither would it make sense to write 5/6 and then put five quarter note triplets in a measure (the 5/6 would be superfluous at best).

(By the bye, there is no such musical indication as "bpm". You need to specify a note value. Whether that note value is perceived as a beat or not depends subjectively on the person perceiving it.)

Second, I play piano, I'm the performer, so it doesn't matter.

It matters because 1) you are advertising your notation here and 2) because only a solipsist or a schizophrenic speaks his own personal invented language.

So it's "weird" and "avant garde." Screw that. John Cage's 4-and-a-half minute piece of silence is avant garde; The concept I'm talking about is a perfectly sensible idea.

Be weird and avant-garde with your music if you must. Don’t be weird and avant-garde with your music NOTATION.

(The single idiomatic exception to time signatures indicating tempo changes I alluded to above is "cut time". I call it idiomatic because it is widely practiced and yet thoroughly illogical. Suppose we go from 4/4 to 2/2: Without any indication to the contrary we should assume q=q, and the effect would be to slow the tempo rather than speed it. As a performer you have to beware the idiom, but as a composer, arranger, or transcriber you should write 2/2 rather than a bisected semicircle--because the semicircle is an atavistic relic from the sixteenth-century which does not comport with our modern system--and write above the staff how you mean the tempo to be affected--or not affected.)

[Diatonic Dissonance™]

Time signatures do not indicate tempo, and neither do time signature changes indicate tempo changes (with one idiomatic exception, which I’ll get to later). Thus when we change “denominators” going from one time signature to another, we must specify the effect on the tempo. If we go from 2/4 to 6/8 we must specify whether or not the former quarter note is equivalent to the new dotted quarter note. If so, we write a quarter note above the staff followed by an equal sign and a dotted quarter note. Since you yourself in your example (5/4 to “5/6”) are really only changing tempos, not relative measured duration or grouping, you need only a tempo change indication, not a time signature change. If you want to show proportion, then show proportion: above the staff simply write three quarter notes below a bracket including the numeral “3” followed by an equal sign and two quarter notes.

Your method is not intuitive (for anyone besides your self) for two reasons: 1) It is unfamiliar. As has been said many times, an invented notation is unlikely to supplant an EVOLVED notation. 2) It is illogical. Since all our note values are based on powers of two, it follows that all our time signature “denominators” must be powers of two. Our exclusively powers-of-two note values present a notational dilemma, and we resolve that dilemma in various ways (dots, ties, and proportional notation), but none of these methods extend the set of possible note values, they merely work around the limitation. If you put quarter-note triplets in a measure of 5/4, then, yes, these quarter-note triplets ARE effectively sixth notes, but obviously you can’t write 5/6 and then put five conventional quarter notes in a measure (your time signature would be lying), and neither would it make sense to write 5/6 and then put five quarter note triplets in a measure (the 5/6 would be superfluous at best).
Oooooooooooooooooh dang!

Very nicely said, Ned.