marshall wrote:
PhosphorusDecree wrote:
...and if you want to be pedantic, a lot of swung 4/4 can be considered to be 12/8 "really".
What would you consider this...
It is written out in 4/4, but if you listen it isn't easy to count. It's a sequence of short beats interspersed with single longer beats that are 3/2 the length of the shorter beats. The music itself is pretty simple, but the off-length of some of the beats gives it a really eerie feeling. It has a feeling of being "too slow" as well.
I'd consider it confusing!
I couldn't work it out by ear, try as I might, so I found the sheet music. (
http://www.onlinesheetmusic.com/pyramid ... 90128.aspx) It's 4/4 but so riddled with cross-rhythm that the piano chords only coincide with one beat in eight! The off-beat cross-rhythm is slow and stays the same, which is why we want to hear it as the beat. I reckon if Bartok had written this, he'd have called it "3+3+4+3+3/8", but that's before you find out it's /swung/ as well. (9+9+12+9+9/16?! Not so useful.) How they played this together, I don't know. Still, 4/4 is probably the clearest way to write it. A nice reminder that there are other ways of creating rhythmic complexity.
Some modern classical composers are guilty of using "precise" notation (like my 9+9+12+9+9/16) that fails to get the point across. I've had composer friends who seem to forget that someone actually has to READ the score. And there's a tale of a kettledrum player who sucessfully wrote out his part for the finale of "The Rite of Spring" again all in 4/4 because he got fed up of Stravinsky changing the time signature every. bloody. bar.
I got the ratio's wrong. The long beat is actually 2 fourth notes combined, i.e. 4 eighth beats, while the short notes are 3 eighth beats). When I listen to it the piano melody, it comes across as having 6 beats with the third beat slowed down and the last beat overlapping the first beat of the next melodic line. The melody "tessellates" in a way. The time is filled with overlapping melodic structures.
Actually lot of 5/8 (5/4) signatures sound like this to me, like overlapping melodies. 5/8 (5/4) sounds like 6/8 (6/4) with overlap in the last/first beat. The time signature isn't always relevant to the melody I hear in my ears. 5/8 (5/4) will often sound kind-of "waltzy". Of course, the rhythm in Pyramid song has the additional complication of the third not being slowed by a 4:3 ratio.
18 Aug 2016, 3:40 pm
