I can’t give you that, but in “Seventh Furnace” by Cornelius Boots he has a few measures in 3-and-a-half over 4 time. It’s like 7/8 but breaks your mind trying to site read.
I've been making that joke forever. You are obviously a gentle-being and a scholar. Now I'm going to have to talk about phi and i (while not irrational, it is interesting). But, is phi/i --> ph?
Fascinating. When I was in high school in 1961 I wrote a string quartet that used 1/12 (twelfth) notes, basically the same idea discussed here, where a 12th note is one twelfth of a whole note, basically one eighth note in a triplet. So this allowed me some strange time signatures like 5/12 and 4/12. I put the piece in a box and forgot about it entirely until just a month or so ago when I stumbled across it, now 56 years old. I've been committing some of my old work to digital form (I use Finale), and I discussed this whole concept with my younger brother, who is a professional cellist and composer. In the end I wound up re-notating my quartet just to simplify things a bit for the performers (not that I expect to send it out to anyone), and in the process I eliminated the 12th notes in favor of either simplifying the piece or equivalent tempos changes, also partly because I just didn't really know how to set 12th notes using Finale. What an interesting coincidence that I should have happened across this discussion, which gives an excellent and ... umm ... *rational* explanation of the subject of irrational time signatures. Thank you for this.
"Power of 2" is more accurate than "divisible by 2", since both 6 and 12 are divisible by 2 but they are still "irrational" time signatures when in the denominator.
I was about to write the same comment. I also agree that "irrational time signature" is not a good name. But I am a mathematician and almost everything in common language can be confusing to me... hehehe
@@errolmontespizarro9956 Indeed, that's why I put "irrational" in quotation marks. Very different when it comes to mathematics. Since music has to use some mathematics but then creates its own terms it can get confusing.
No it isn't. "divisible by 2" is something that you've come up with, the original video has "divisions by 2 (from a whole note)". And in this case "power of 2" and "divisions by 2" means the same very same thing, since he is speaking about dividing whole note by 2, over and over again.
I'm a "senior citizen" who happens to love rhythmic patterns. They grabbed me when I first heard "Take Five" two or three hundred years ago (or so it seems). Since then I have searched for and relished pieces that use unusual patterns. Thanks.
CrimSun depending on the context sure. I mean that point was literally made in the video. Writing a whole piece in an irrational rhythm is no different without a contextual time change. That’s like 6/8 not being the same as 3/4 in a Music 101 class. But if I count 3/4 in 8th notes I get six notes. Context is important for song structure, however you can understand it yourself.
"kind of" is the best answer because it is, but it would be very convoluted, impractical, and, as others have said, meaningless without changing from a prior time signature. Let's say you were in 4/4 and you wanted to metrically modulate to 4/20. "4/20" means four 20ths of a whole note in the bar. How do we conceptualise what length of time one 20th note takes? We need to use quintuplets (5 notes played in the same time as 4 would normally take). If we count 4/4 in semiquavers (16th notes), we count 16 beats. There are 4 groups of 4 semiquavers in these 16 beats. If instead of each of these groups of 4 semiquavers we instead play a semiquaver quintuplet, we get 4 groups of 5 notes each, or 20 notes total in one bar of 4/4. We've worked out that one 20th note (in 4/4) is equivalent to one note of a semiquaver quintuplet. Now we just need to play four of them in one bar - and we're playing in 4/20. 4/20 (when modulated to from 4/4) is four semiquaver quintuplet notes per bar.
spoonopoulos on reddit just mentioned that the piccolo theme in Ades's Totentanz I mention at 5:55 is based on the famous Dies Irae chant. Can't believe I never noticed that before!
It begins with the intervals of the dies irae and then transforms into a mode Adès uses in almost all of his pieces which augments by a demi-fond with each note, in this case : d c# b g# e b f etc (descending) . It is a mode with a lot of special properties, for example it never goes out of the octatonic/diminished scale.
And what is even more incredible , if you have the time to go through a lot of his pieces is to see in how much clever ways he is able to use this mode, ranging from harmonic in his violin concerto to melodic in arcadiana and many more
Thank you for making this video! I love these. I do remember telling someone that these can be used for "small" metric modulations where writing one metric modulation and then undoing it in the next bar would be cumbersome. So in an analogy to harmony, irrational time signatures can be like "tonicization" and metric modulation are like "modulation". We don't rewrite the key signature when we use secondary dominants and I think it's the same idea for irrational time signatures.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS VIDEO! I'm doing my honours thesis on irrational time signatures and specifically how they are used by Ades! So this was a lovely jumping off point. I'm looking into the motive behind using irrational time signatures: the composer's motives, how irrational time signatures are perceived (or more likely not clearly perceived) by the audience, and how musicians playing/conductors conducting these works approach rehearsing and performing pieces with irrational time signatures. This was a great short video for me to sink my teeth into and I hope you're ok with me putting your video down as a reference in my bibliography and footnotes!
The last statement is really nice. Often I tend to think on being a good artist by forcing myself or others around to do the most difficult. But in your way is simpler and better to acknowledge the skills and way of thinking of the musicians, to find the better way to tell them about mu idea. That’s great. That way I too don’t think on forcing myself to do nothing too far from my reality or current understanding. One step at time.
I use sixth and twelfth notes regularly, but notate them with triangles - filled or empty, with stems and flags where required) to avoid the association with triplet quarter and eighth notes and to distinguish the durational value visually. This allows for example a 12th note to appear as the third event in a 10/12 bar consisting of the sequence quarter, quarter, twelfth, quarter note, thus avoiding the time signature (one way of notating this) as a 2/4 + 1/12 + 1/4 bar! In the 1960s I began using sixth and 12th notes often and had either no problem getting musicians to play these values or it proved impossible. I assume the situation is better now. New subscriber here and love your channel. Thanks for sharing.
Last year, I had the great opportunity to preform at Tanglewood, and as a student, we got passes to all the TMC and BSO performances. As a big fan of Benjamin Britten, I went to all the concerts with his music, and noticed that they were all being conducted by a composer I had never heard before, his name being Thomas Adés. Naturally, he also conducted some of his original works, one of which had a ton of off stage brass, which was really gratifying, as a horn player myself.I wish I had seen this before I went, but all the rhythms really make sense after hearing his music!
Great and informative video! Coming from an Early Music background, I hadn’t seen irrational time signatures. So interesting how composers from different ages find different solutions for their problems!
Funly enough I have been using irrational time signatures in my compositions for a few years now, but in a different way: I wright "4/3:4/8", indicating, that there are 4 tripplet eight notes (3:4) in a bar, wich would look like this: 4 3:4 8 (PS: love your videos)
Hey David - one of my favorite examples of this occurs in “Mississippi” by the Jonathan Scales Fourchestra. The first bar is in 11/4, and the second bar repeats the exact same line but is written in 11/6 as to speed it up a bit.
I've been thinking about irrational time signatures quite a bit ovet the last few weeks and this video cleared up the things i was missing!! really creative, informative, and well made. keep up the good work, can't wait to see more!!
Like many others, I discovered your channel thanks to Adam Neely discussing irrational time signatures and my hunger to know and find more. I would say I'm very new to this world of composition, and I'm glad to have found this channel to feed this curiosity of mine!
I love the concept. It always has bothered me that some time feels required obscene amounts of ties to execute or ludicrous usage of metric modulation and tempo change. This solves some of those issues.
I love this explanation! although if the nondyadic irregularity is only triple and not anything more complex, i'd probably end up using a compound meter and switching to duple meter when necessary.
Oh, after some reading, the man means non-dyadic time signature for the term irrational time signature. It is not that it cannot be divided by two (2), but that the note that gets the value of a beat is not evenly divisible by a POWER of 2. Dyadic division are like what we see in Imperial units. Inches are divided dyadically: 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, etc. 4 6 time is non-dyadic, and maybe in musicology, irrational, but mathematically, 4 6 time is rational indeed.
That was pretty awesome. When I have to learn odd signatures I have to drink alcohol first so I don't over think and I play with feel and then when I sober it longer difficult. Thank you again.
What about writing the figure @ 2:13 as a two 12/8 bars with a 4/4 bar in the middle. 4 dotted quarters followed by 4 quarters and 4 more dotted quarters.
Thanks for this great video! Very informative.I have an old french book from the sixties from a teacher at the paris conservatory where there is an alternative way to notate this, it is a lesson with time signatures with irrational added values. In your case , the second measure would be notated 2/4 (+1/3) with a bracket with 1of 3 on the last G note.
Hey David, thanks for all of your videos, that are simply amazing. May I ask you how you write those time signatures and get correct interpretation of those in a notation program? Thanks!
Irrational time signatures are very interesting to me, though I try to be sparing with them whenever I use them. I am working on a piece at the moment called 'Sunflower' which, in one section, features a bar of 4/20, then later, a bar of 6/28, and later a bar of 4/20 again. It turned out to be the best way of notating my idea.
This is a brilliant film David - clear, informative and fun! Thanks - keep making more. Eduqas A level music has Ecstasio from Asyla as a set work - I hope teachers find out about this film.
Don't you think it would make more sense (and be more consistent with mathematics) to call these time signatures non-dyadic rational time signatures, rather than "irrational?" Mathematically, there is nothing irrational about 3/5 or 4/3 or 2/7. These are all "rational" numbers. When mathematicians speak of "irrational" numbers, these are numbers that CANNOT be expressed by a fraction of integers (for example, pi or Euler's constant, e). 3/5 is definitely a number expressed by a fraction of integers, and consequently NOT irrational. To me, calling these time signatures "irrational" is irrational (forgive the blatant intentional pun). They are totally rational; even the Ancient Greeks would have agreed. These time signatures are just simply non-dyadic. Calling them "irrational" just makes musicians and composers look stupid and misinformed in the eyes of mathematicians and anyone familiar with the basic premises of mathematics. I know it's not your label, but shouldn't we, as composers, be doing something to correct this misconception? Please let me know what you think.
Yes I totally agree. After some resistance I'm now convinced 'non-dyadic' is the way to go. It's accurate after all. But it will still cause confusion -even in this video I mistakenly say I'm talking about time signatures that "can't be divided by two" which isn't correct (6 can be divided by 2), that's because 'dyadic' wasn't familiar to me in this sense before, as I suspect will be case for most people. But still, we should use it as it is the correct description!
Yeah, it's an issue of language and in any issue of language the group prevails. Irrational is probably going to "win" as the common usage since that's what it's been for so long but they're still a rarely seen device so if anyone with sufficient clout can both popularize their use and a better term then it might not be too late to correct it.
Hello, new to the channel and enjoying it very much! I have often thought about this but one problem that still needs addressing (imho) is the actual notation (note-head + stem). In these examples you used the typical tuplet-bracket over the notes, but I find this a bit confusing to read (you expect to see 3 notes in case of triplets, etc.), but most importantly oI think it would become quickly impractical in more complex, non-repeating, passages (say I go from 4/4 to a pattern of 3+4/5 for a few bars, then to 5/3 etc. You get my point.) I think one idea would be to have note-heads with numbers *inside*, or numbers *above/below* the stem indicating the alternate division of the whole note. That way we can continue using otherwise typical notation for long passages without cluttering the score with tuplet-brackets. Anyway, just a though. Thanks for the video!
Hi David, great topic! In the 4/6 example, the triplet notation is omitted but in your score, the 2/6 bar included the triplet notation. What is the rule of thumb here?
Do you think irrational time signatures make sense, or are they easier to read if notated conventionally? I'd love to hear your thoughts, please comment below.
I defintely think notating them conventionally will, in most instances, work better. Unless you play music where this comes up, it is extremely confusing, even though it gives a neater visual look to the page in some cases. (and not always that). Your explanation is terrific, though and if I had to explain it to someone I would use your video to help people understand.
I strongly prefer using irrational time signatures mainly because I like the convenience of being able to count everything in a song with a single quarter note pulse.
The way you managed to explain them, everyone should be using it from now on! I'll include a link to this video in the parts for my next piece. :) (I mean, if everyone's reading from iPads already...Why not)
Nice video! I play and write progressive metal and find this to be a neat thing to experiment with in a riff. And I also find you have a Neely vibe in the videos, informative and fun. Keep up the good work!
oh thankyou so much! this answers many of my perplexion's about the subject, id given up on finding pragmatic information on such! yay for your efforts, David!
Do note that in your example of the repeated C in 4/4, that the "triplet" feel can also be accomplished by making the odd measure a 3/4 with a quadruplet group of four notes; no metric modulation necessary. In other words, by combining conventional whole note derivatives (2, 4, 8 etc.) with appropriate multiple groupings (triplet, quintuplet, etc.) within a rhythmic phrase. This also removes the confusion of what a "sixth" note or a "twelfth" note looks like. Remember that the top part of the time signature (erroneously referred to as the nominator, as it is not actually a fraction!) defines how many note values of the denominator--oops! I mean, the note value component--there are within the measure. Because musical notation is a guide, a "suggestion," of how to perform, it is not at all difficult for the performer to discover proper interpretation and feeling when conventional notation is utilized.
pretty sure you meant to say "is a power of 2" x is the exponent in the expression 2^x. The powers are the actual values of that expression for integer exponents.
Hi David, firstly thanks for the channel! Very interesting things. A question, would you know how to creat irrational time signatures on Finale? All the best
Fantastic way of explaining this! BTW how do you get Sibelius to "accept" a 4/6 time signature? I use Finale and it doesn't seem to be able to do it very easy
I've been thinking about these oddities for years now. It seems to me that there are times where non-dyadic time signatures are the most effective way to compose something that is easily performable, since I think rapid metric modulations would actually be harder to read.
Here's an example. 4/4. The first three beats are quarter notes. The last beat is 5 16th note quintuplets. The next measure is going to have 4 notes, and a quintuplet is going to get the value, so it will be in 4/10, and then the next measure it will go back to 4/4. Oh wait- this is basically the example he used, just with different notes. Guess I should have watched the whole video first! It's still worth mentioning that with metric modulation, we could say a quintuplet = a 16th note, and then after the new measure of what now is 4/16 (or 2/8 or 1/4), we'll have another metric modulation- damn it he's covering this now in the video too. Props David!!!
I invented this over 30 years ago. My notation was much easier to grasp: 3:2 + 1 or 3:2 - 1 -- meaning 1 more of the notes of the triplet or one less. You could have 3:2 + 2 also, etc.
2:40: But this notation is wrong. I see 4 quarternotes in the measure with 4/6. I am supposed to see 4 6th notes (with a triplet marker abouve it), not 4 quarternots.
I’ve studied music for awhile but getting into non dyadic rhythms hasn’t been a strong suit of mine to wrap my head around. I get that meters can be re notated different ways but it’s the purpose of that re notation I don’t get firmly. When you get into Tuplets and ratios like 9:8 or etc it gets really confusing on counting and all. Any information out there or videos to help on non dyadic rhythms and tuplets broken down from the ground up to better understand?
Tl;dr: why don't the "sixth notes" look different from the regular quarter notes? The only thing that doesn't make sense with the notation to me is, why are the two notes in the 2/6 bars still visibly quarter notes (implying they are the same note value as the quarters in "rational" bars)? Considering that a time signature change doesn't equate to a tempo change, I would read all seemingly quarter notes as receiving the same beats-per-minute tempo as specified in the tempo marking, and then be terribly confused as to how two quarter notes can fit in a 2/6 bar where the span of the measure is one third of a whole note in rhythmic value. I would think that a notation for a "sixth note" would have to be procured by the composer and specified in an explanation of the notation at the start of the piece. Otherwise how could the composer actually use a quarter note (I mean, a quarter of a whole note) or any of the other note values we use in common practice in an "irrational" bar? (Not that this would be something done often - it would probably be rather confusing - but potentially required in some circumstances. Say you wanted a 4/6 bar made up of two quarter notes - real quarter notes - and a sixth note, for example.)
Yeah. I think it would make more sense to still use tuplet notation within the 4/6 bar, so that what looks like a quarter note has the same length everywhere. The 4/6 notation would just make the bar end earlier than if it was a 4/4 bar, but the notation inside it wouldn't be different from that when notating it in a 4/4 bar.
When I try to play this video, a message says "This video requires payment to watch," but I don't see any way to provide payment or actually do anything. Why is that happening (if you know) and how can I watch the video?
Hi David - Thanks for the video. It was extremely helpful, but isn't 6 also divisible by 2? I'm still a bit confused by the term "irrational". I was talking to another composer and he used the term "hyper-irrational" time signatures. Which one is correct?
non dyadic is technically the correct term, so not 2 4 8 16 etc Irrational is incorrect from a mathematical perspective but it's the term that's stuck so far.
Have read the score of Adés Totentanz in one shot. Overall it's very well done and orchestrated, but when it comes these sort of irrational rhythms I would had notated much more easier and makes more sense for the performers as such. Instead of using for example 2/4 switching to 2/6, why not doing in 5/8 stating in the parts "slightly dragged and wonky" as playback feature?
:(
I was hoping for some e over pi time signatures
I can’t give you that, but in “Seventh Furnace” by Cornelius Boots he has a few measures in 3-and-a-half over 4 time. It’s like 7/8 but breaks your mind trying to site read.
@Phi6er yes, they are the epitome of irrational since they can't be expressed as ratios at all
Colon Nancarrow , lots of square roots, e , i , and pi going on. Just not playable by humans.
I've been making that joke forever. You are obviously a gentle-being and a scholar. Now I'm going to have to talk about phi and i (while not irrational, it is interesting). But, is phi/i --> ph?
Pretty sure anything over anything else is rational, even if the anythings aren't. :-)
Fascinating. When I was in high school in 1961 I wrote a string quartet that used 1/12 (twelfth) notes, basically the same idea discussed here, where a 12th note is one twelfth of a whole note, basically one eighth note in a triplet. So this allowed me some strange time signatures like 5/12 and 4/12. I put the piece in a box and forgot about it entirely until just a month or so ago when I stumbled across it, now 56 years old. I've been committing some of my old work to digital form (I use Finale), and I discussed this whole concept with my younger brother, who is a professional cellist and composer. In the end I wound up re-notating my quartet just to simplify things a bit for the performers (not that I expect to send it out to anyone), and in the process I eliminated the 12th notes in favor of either simplifying the piece or equivalent tempos changes, also partly because I just didn't really know how to set 12th notes using Finale. What an interesting coincidence that I should have happened across this discussion, which gives an excellent and ... umm ... *rational* explanation of the subject of irrational time signatures. Thank you for this.
How does one actually write out the 12th note?
@@patrickv.3979 A triplet eighth note is technically a twelfth note, in the same way that a triplet quarter note is technically a sixth note.
"Power of 2" is more accurate than "divisible by 2", since both 6 and 12 are divisible by 2 but they are still "irrational" time signatures when in the denominator.
I was about to write the same comment. I also agree that "irrational time signature" is not a good name. But I am a mathematician and almost everything in common language can be confusing to me... hehehe
@@errolmontespizarro9956 Indeed, that's why I put "irrational" in quotation marks. Very different when it comes to mathematics. Since music has to use some mathematics but then creates its own terms it can get confusing.
@@errolmontespizarro9956 "divisible by an odd prime" = "irrational" in this video.
No it isn't. "divisible by 2" is something that you've come up with, the original video has "divisions by 2 (from a whole note)". And in this case "power of 2" and "divisions by 2" means the same very same thing, since he is speaking about dividing whole note by 2, over and over again.
@@mrkv4k yes, you are correct. He says "the unit of measurement can be divided by 2"
I'm a "senior citizen" who happens to love rhythmic patterns. They grabbed me when I first heard "Take Five" two or three hundred years ago (or so it seems). Since then I have searched for and relished pieces that use unusual patterns. Thanks.
So... Does that mean that the meme about stoner metal musician trying to write music in a 4/20 time signature is possible?
kind of :-)
Funny enough, I just made a video explaining this on my personal social media. 4/20 is just 4/16 or 4/4 without the proper context around it
BradsGonnaPlay well...4/20 would then be the same as 20/16.
CrimSun depending on the context sure. I mean that point was literally made in the video. Writing a whole piece in an irrational rhythm is no different without a contextual time change. That’s like 6/8 not being the same as 3/4 in a Music 101 class. But if I count 3/4 in 8th notes I get six notes. Context is important for song structure, however you can understand it yourself.
"kind of" is the best answer because it is, but it would be very convoluted, impractical, and, as others have said, meaningless without changing from a prior time signature.
Let's say you were in 4/4 and you wanted to metrically modulate to 4/20. "4/20" means four 20ths of a whole note in the bar. How do we conceptualise what length of time one 20th note takes? We need to use quintuplets (5 notes played in the same time as 4 would normally take).
If we count 4/4 in semiquavers (16th notes), we count 16 beats. There are 4 groups of 4 semiquavers in these 16 beats. If instead of each of these groups of 4 semiquavers we instead play a semiquaver quintuplet, we get 4 groups of 5 notes each, or 20 notes total in one bar of 4/4.
We've worked out that one 20th note (in 4/4) is equivalent to one note of a semiquaver quintuplet. Now we just need to play four of them in one bar - and we're playing in 4/20.
4/20 (when modulated to from 4/4) is four semiquaver quintuplet notes per bar.
spoonopoulos on reddit just mentioned that the piccolo theme in Ades's Totentanz I mention at 5:55 is based on the famous Dies Irae chant. Can't believe I never noticed that before!
In the piece you composed, the accordion line sounds like the melody from Queens "Innuendo"
It begins with the intervals of the dies irae and then transforms into a mode Adès uses in almost all of his pieces which augments by a demi-fond with each note, in this case : d c# b g# e b f etc (descending) . It is a mode with a lot of special properties, for example it never goes out of the octatonic/diminished scale.
Semitone, sorry autocorrect :) not Demi fond
Wow!!! That's crazy I didn't even notice that either... THAT'S GENIUS!!
And what is even more incredible , if you have the time to go through a lot of his pieces is to see in how much clever ways he is able to use this mode, ranging from harmonic in his violin concerto to melodic in arcadiana and many more
that was a very clear explanation and well produced! love the piece of yours quoted in it as well.
thank you very much! I just enjoyed your 'Clapping on the subway' video!
I wonder if you saw my clapping video which mentions the Reich piece?
Thank you for making this video! I love these. I do remember telling someone that these can be used for "small" metric modulations where writing one metric modulation and then undoing it in the next bar would be cumbersome. So in an analogy to harmony, irrational time signatures can be like "tonicization" and metric modulation are like "modulation". We don't rewrite the key signature when we use secondary dominants and I think it's the same idea for irrational time signatures.
Oh yeah....I also made a Max/MSP metronome that can handle all of these -> github.com/ZachRHale/MaxMetronome
Always good to see more people giving their take on Irrational Time Signatures! Keep it up man
vsauce font and music
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS VIDEO! I'm doing my honours thesis on irrational time signatures and specifically how they are used by Ades! So this was a lovely jumping off point. I'm looking into the motive behind using irrational time signatures: the composer's motives, how irrational time signatures are perceived (or more likely not clearly perceived) by the audience, and how musicians playing/conductors conducting these works approach rehearsing and performing pieces with irrational time signatures. This was a great short video for me to sink my teeth into and I hope you're ok with me putting your video down as a reference in my bibliography and footnotes!
OMG! Where Contemporary Music is moving into! Thanks for making us old time aficionados aware! Great job!
I LOVE the production value on this video. Your enthusiasm is contagious!
The last statement is really nice. Often I tend to think on being a good artist by forcing myself or others around to do the most difficult. But in your way is simpler and better to acknowledge the skills and way of thinking of the musicians, to find the better way to tell them about mu idea. That’s great. That way I too don’t think on forcing myself to do nothing too far from my reality or current understanding. One step at time.
I use sixth and twelfth notes regularly, but notate them with triangles - filled or empty, with stems and flags where required) to avoid the association with triplet quarter and eighth notes and to distinguish the durational value visually. This allows for example a 12th note to appear as the third event in a 10/12 bar consisting of the sequence quarter, quarter, twelfth, quarter note, thus avoiding the time signature (one way of notating this) as a 2/4 + 1/12 + 1/4 bar! In the 1960s I began using sixth and 12th notes often and had either no problem getting musicians to play these values or it proved impossible. I assume the situation is better now. New subscriber here and love your channel. Thanks for sharing.
Last year, I had the great opportunity to preform at Tanglewood, and as a student, we got passes to all the TMC and BSO performances. As a big fan of Benjamin Britten, I went to all the concerts with his music, and noticed that they were all being conducted by a composer I had never heard before, his name being Thomas Adés. Naturally, he also conducted some of his original works, one of which had a ton of off stage brass, which was really gratifying, as a horn player myself.I wish I had seen this before I went, but all the rhythms really make sense after hearing his music!
Great and informative video! Coming from an Early Music background, I hadn’t seen irrational time signatures. So interesting how composers from different ages find different solutions for their problems!
This is activating my djent brain
*Q U I N T O O P L E T S*
*_Q U I N T Ö Ö P L E T S B R Ö T H E R_*
This comment popped up right as he said that.
Funly enough I have been using irrational time signatures in my compositions for a few years now, but in a different way:
I wright "4/3:4/8", indicating, that there are 4 tripplet eight notes (3:4) in a bar, wich would look like this:
4
3:4
8
(PS: love your videos)
@@mcfahk ?
Hey David - one of my favorite examples of this occurs in “Mississippi” by the Jonathan Scales Fourchestra. The first bar is in 11/4, and the second bar repeats the exact same line but is written in 11/6 as to speed it up a bit.
I've been thinking about irrational time signatures quite a bit ovet the last few weeks and this video cleared up the things i was missing!! really creative, informative, and well made. keep up the good work, can't wait to see more!!
Thank you so much, I really appreciate that!
David Bruce Composer of course!!!
Like many others, I discovered your channel thanks to Adam Neely discussing irrational time signatures and my hunger to know and find more. I would say I'm very new to this world of composition, and I'm glad to have found this channel to feed this curiosity of mine!
welcome! Hope you find it useful.
Very interesting and helpful. Shall be having a play with these ideas in the future for sure. Thank you!
I love the concept. It always has bothered me that some time feels required obscene amounts of ties to execute or ludicrous usage of metric modulation and tempo change. This solves some of those issues.
I love this explanation! although if the nondyadic irregularity is only triple and not anything more complex, i'd probably end up using a compound meter and switching to duple meter when necessary.
Excellent your video. Regards from Ecuador!
Oh, after some reading, the man means non-dyadic time signature for the term irrational time signature. It is not that it cannot be divided by two (2), but that the note that gets the value of a beat is not evenly divisible by a POWER of 2. Dyadic division are like what we see in Imperial units. Inches are divided dyadically: 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, etc. 4 6 time is non-dyadic, and maybe in musicology, irrational, but mathematically, 4 6 time is rational indeed.
Great! I should try it in my techno compositions :)
great content, already back then! love your stuff
New sub, here! Great content. Incidentally, this is the best video on irrational time signatures that I've seen this month.
That was pretty awesome. When I have to learn odd signatures I have to drink alcohol first so I don't over think and I play with feel and then when I sober it longer difficult. Thank you again.
What about writing the figure @ 2:13 as a two 12/8 bars with a 4/4 bar in the middle. 4 dotted quarters followed by 4 quarters and 4 more dotted quarters.
Thanks for this great video!
Very informative.I have an old french book from the sixties from a teacher at the paris conservatory where there is an alternative way to notate this, it is a lesson with time signatures with irrational added values.
In your case , the second measure would be notated 2/4 (+1/3) with a bracket with 1of 3 on the last G note.
Hey David, thanks for all of your videos, that are simply amazing.
May I ask you how you write those time signatures and get correct interpretation of those in a notation program?
Thanks!
Excellent video. Thanks!
This is a great channel! Thx.
Awe baby channel!! Thanks David!
groanbox is so good
Irrational time signatures are very interesting to me, though I try to be sparing with them whenever I use them. I am working on a piece at the moment called 'Sunflower' which, in one section, features a bar of 4/20, then later, a bar of 6/28, and later a bar of 4/20 again. It turned out to be the best way of notating my idea.
Thanks, you blew my mind
I was initially really skeptical with the purpose of the existence of these weird time signatures.
This was helpful
thank you for being one of my music teachers!
digging the vibes on groanbox. thx for the great vid
Is this jake chudnow’s music? I love jake.
Great video by the way.
This is a brilliant film David - clear, informative and fun! Thanks - keep making more. Eduqas A level music has Ecstasio from Asyla as a set work - I hope teachers find out about this film.
Thanks Pat, that would be great, and thanks for the encouragement!
Don't you think it would make more sense (and be more consistent with mathematics) to call these time signatures non-dyadic rational time signatures, rather than "irrational?" Mathematically, there is nothing irrational about 3/5 or 4/3 or 2/7. These are all "rational" numbers. When mathematicians speak of "irrational" numbers, these are numbers that CANNOT be expressed by a fraction of integers (for example, pi or Euler's constant, e). 3/5 is definitely a number expressed by a fraction of integers, and consequently NOT irrational.
To me, calling these time signatures "irrational" is irrational (forgive the blatant intentional pun). They are totally rational; even the Ancient Greeks would have agreed. These time signatures are just simply non-dyadic. Calling them "irrational" just makes musicians and composers look stupid and misinformed in the eyes of mathematicians and anyone familiar with the basic premises of mathematics.
I know it's not your label, but shouldn't we, as composers, be doing something to correct this misconception? Please let me know what you think.
Yes I totally agree. After some resistance I'm now convinced 'non-dyadic' is the way to go. It's accurate after all. But it will still cause confusion -even in this video I mistakenly say I'm talking about time signatures that "can't be divided by two" which isn't correct (6 can be divided by 2), that's because 'dyadic' wasn't familiar to me in this sense before, as I suspect will be case for most people. But still, we should use it as it is the correct description!
Yeah, it's an issue of language and in any issue of language the group prevails. Irrational is probably going to "win" as the common usage since that's what it's been for so long but they're still a rarely seen device so if anyone with sufficient clout can both popularize their use and a better term then it might not be too late to correct it.
So, to clarify, is a ""rational"" time signature, one where the bottom number is a power of 2, e.g. 2, 4, 8, 16?
Yes.
Yes. I clicked on this video fully expecting to hear some music in Pi time. The reality is suuuuch a let down.
Hello, new to the channel and enjoying it very much! I have often thought about this but one problem that still needs addressing (imho) is the actual notation (note-head + stem). In these examples you used the typical tuplet-bracket over the notes, but I find this a bit confusing to read (you expect to see 3 notes in case of triplets, etc.), but most importantly oI think it would become quickly impractical in more complex, non-repeating, passages (say I go from 4/4 to a pattern of 3+4/5 for a few bars, then to 5/3 etc. You get my point.) I think one idea would be to have note-heads with numbers *inside*, or numbers *above/below* the stem indicating the alternate division of the whole note. That way we can continue using otherwise typical notation for long passages without cluttering the score with tuplet-brackets. Anyway, just a though. Thanks for the video!
Excellent explanation!
Hi David, great topic! In the 4/6 example, the triplet notation is omitted but in your score, the 2/6 bar included the triplet notation. What is the rule of thumb here?
Do you think irrational time signatures make sense, or are they easier to read if notated conventionally? I'd love to hear your thoughts, please comment below.
I defintely think notating them conventionally will, in most instances, work better. Unless you play music where this comes up, it is extremely confusing, even though it gives a neater visual look to the page in some cases. (and not always that). Your explanation is terrific, though and if I had to explain it to someone I would use your video to help people understand.
Thanks! I have to admit, when you work through re-notating a lot of the examples, there are often easier options...but not always!
I strongly prefer using irrational time signatures mainly because I like the convenience of being able to count everything in a song with a single quarter note pulse.
It looks very theoretical on paper but sounds natural. Sometimes the irregular beats sounded like one of Messiaen, Stockhausen and Nancarrow.
The way you managed to explain them, everyone should be using it from now on!
I'll include a link to this video in the parts for my next piece. :) (I mean, if everyone's reading from iPads already...Why not)
Could I ask how you inputted the time signatures in Sibelius, and how you got them to play back?
off to check out Groanbox in full right now. that snippet sounded interesting to say the least.
Nice video! I play and write progressive metal and find this to be a neat thing to experiment with in a riff. And I also find you have a Neely vibe in the videos, informative and fun. Keep up the good work!
oh thankyou so much! this answers many of my perplexion's about the subject, id given up on finding pragmatic information on such! yay for your efforts, David!
Do note that in your example of the repeated C in 4/4, that the "triplet" feel can also be accomplished by making the odd measure a 3/4 with a quadruplet group of four notes; no metric modulation necessary. In other words, by combining conventional whole note derivatives (2, 4, 8 etc.) with appropriate multiple groupings (triplet, quintuplet, etc.) within a rhythmic phrase.
This also removes the confusion of what a "sixth" note or a "twelfth" note looks like. Remember that the top part of the time signature (erroneously referred to as the nominator, as it is not actually a fraction!) defines how many note values of the denominator--oops! I mean, the note value component--there are within the measure.
Because musical notation is a guide, a "suggestion," of how to perform, it is not at all difficult for the performer to discover proper interpretation and feeling when conventional notation is utilized.
I love playing with irrational time signatures!
This is a perfect element to add to prog rock composition! Cool stuff, I am inspired!
but.... 6 is divisible by 2....
pretty sure you meant to say “is an exponent of 2”
pretty sure you meant to say "is a power of 2"
x is the exponent in the expression 2^x. The powers are the actual values of that expression for integer exponents.
6 is a multiple of 2. 6 would have an exponent of log(6)/log(2).
cheers bud, subscribed - I wish to produce electronic music , it's something I did years ago. Now I'm going to approach it with a bit of music theory.
Hi David, firstly thanks for the channel! Very interesting things. A question, would you know how to creat irrational time signatures on Finale? All the best
Fantastic way of explaining this! BTW how do you get Sibelius to "accept" a 4/6 time signature? I use Finale and it doesn't seem to be able to do it very easy
I've been thinking about these oddities for years now. It seems to me that there are times where non-dyadic time signatures are the most effective way to compose something that is easily performable, since I think rapid metric modulations would actually be harder to read.
Here's an example. 4/4. The first three beats are quarter notes. The last beat is 5 16th note quintuplets. The next measure is going to have 4 notes, and a quintuplet is going to get the value, so it will be in 4/10, and then the next measure it will go back to 4/4. Oh wait- this is basically the example he used, just with different notes. Guess I should have watched the whole video first!
It's still worth mentioning that with metric modulation, we could say a quintuplet = a 16th note, and then after the new measure of what now is 4/16 (or 2/8 or 1/4), we'll have another metric modulation- damn it he's covering this now in the video too. Props David!!!
I invented this over 30 years ago. My notation was much easier to grasp: 3:2 + 1 or 3:2 - 1 -- meaning 1 more of the notes of the triplet or one less. You could have 3:2 + 2 also, etc.
your editing is very endearing
2:40: But this notation is wrong. I see 4 quarternotes in the measure with 4/6. I am supposed to see 4 6th notes (with a triplet marker abouve it), not 4 quarternots.
Very beautiful piece. 💙congrats.
Keep it up! I like your stuff
This is great! How often do you compose for accordion?
wonderful video
so would an example of this be blips, drips, and strips by stereolab?
i love that song
As a pop writer. I Dont know if I'd ever really use this but damm in real fascinating
Subscribed, liked and commented!
OMG thanks! I have a song that does this but I could never figure out the time!
Very, very well explained.
David Bruce on helium
thanks for clarifying irrational signatures are non dyadic rationals
Fabulous!
This is all nice and peachy, but how do you add them up? What are the rules, cuz I seem to be getting it wrong.
I like your humour man! Very well explained too :)
“Seventh Furnace” by Cornelius Boots has a few measures in 3-and-a-half over 4 time. It’s like 7/8 but breaks your mind when trying to site read.
Can you put those rhythms in standard notation softwares like Finale or Sibelius? And does the program play them correctly?
I write them in Sibelius by creating a hidden tempo change and adding time signatures in “Text”.
any tips on how to get your notation program to write out the time signature?
Where is the ending clip from? I like it.
I’ve studied music for awhile but getting into non dyadic rhythms hasn’t been a strong suit of mine to wrap my head around. I get that meters can be re notated different ways but it’s the purpose of that re notation I don’t get firmly. When you get into Tuplets and ratios like 9:8 or etc it gets really confusing on counting and all. Any information out there or videos to help on non dyadic rhythms and tuplets broken down from the ground up to better understand?
Fascinating!
Tl;dr: why don't the "sixth notes" look different from the regular quarter notes?
The only thing that doesn't make sense with the notation to me is, why are the two notes in the 2/6 bars still visibly quarter notes (implying they are the same note value as the quarters in "rational" bars)? Considering that a time signature change doesn't equate to a tempo change, I would read all seemingly quarter notes as receiving the same beats-per-minute tempo as specified in the tempo marking, and then be terribly confused as to how two quarter notes can fit in a 2/6 bar where the span of the measure is one third of a whole note in rhythmic value. I would think that a notation for a "sixth note" would have to be procured by the composer and specified in an explanation of the notation at the start of the piece. Otherwise how could the composer actually use a quarter note (I mean, a quarter of a whole note) or any of the other note values we use in common practice in an "irrational" bar? (Not that this would be something done often - it would probably be rather confusing - but potentially required in some circumstances. Say you wanted a 4/6 bar made up of two quarter notes - real quarter notes - and a sixth note, for example.)
Yeah. I think it would make more sense to still use tuplet notation within the 4/6 bar, so that what looks like a quarter note has the same length everywhere. The 4/6 notation would just make the bar end earlier than if it was a 4/4 bar, but the notation inside it wouldn't be different from that when notating it in a 4/4 bar.
love it!!
oh ur videos have changed a lot
4:31 sounds like the soundtrack to Zelda: Breath of the Wild. lol
subbed! nice explanation thanks
When I try to play this video, a message says "This video requires payment to watch," but I don't see any way to provide payment or actually do anything. Why is that happening (if you know) and how can I watch the video?
Later: the problem went away! Did you change something?
Hi David - Thanks for the video. It was extremely helpful, but isn't 6 also divisible by 2? I'm still a bit confused by the term "irrational". I was talking to another composer and he used the term "hyper-irrational" time signatures. Which one is correct?
non dyadic is technically the correct term, so not 2 4 8 16 etc
Irrational is incorrect from a mathematical perspective but it's the term that's stuck so far.
Very Nice Indeed
How can i write that on musescore? I've tried but i cant. Please help me...
the bottom number is an exponent with a base of 2, not simply divisible by 2
thankx great!
how do you notate this on a notation software? Because this technique is only known in small circles, softwares like Sibelius can't do it.
Another interesting show..
Have read the score of Adés Totentanz in one shot. Overall it's very well done and orchestrated, but when it comes these sort of irrational rhythms I would had notated much more easier and makes more sense for the performers as such. Instead of using for example 2/4 switching to 2/6, why not doing in 5/8 stating in the parts "slightly dragged and wonky" as playback feature?
I'm going to use all of these