On 29 Jun 2005 at 18:00, Christopher Smith wrote: > On Jun 29, 2005, at 3:22 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > > If the meter is 6/4 and the subdivision is 3x2/4, then I'd say that > > the meter is wrong, not "uncommon." > > OK, you lost my support there. I see LOTS of divisions of all kinds of > things these days (and write them, too!) but wouldn't call them > "wrong."
I worded it badly. It's only wrong if the music has as its only subdivision 3x2/4 and is notated as 6/4. In the example you cited, it wasn't really 3x2/4, except in the same way that 4/4 is 2x2/4. You still really wanted 6 beats, just as in 4/4 you want 4, even though we might say it's 2x2/4. Skip to my next response... > > What's the utility of using 6/4 instead of 3/2 for 3x2/4? > > > > That would be like using 6/8 for the meter of 3 quarter notes (i.e., > > 3/4). Nobody would do that, so why should they do it with 6/4? > > Hmm. I think I see the problem with our communications. > > In the kind of music Darcy and I mostly do (jazz and jazz-influenced > music) the quarter note has a special meaning and interpretation, as > does the eighth, which is not mathematically transposable to eighths > and sixteenths, at least not usually (it DOES happen, but usually > needs a special note to the performer, like "double time feel" or > something to indicate that the "normal" feel is altered.) The pulse IS > the quarter note most of the time in jazz, and it is as hard to > communicate swing sixteenths as it is to communicate swing quarter > notes. Obviously, there is nothing STOPPING anyone from swinging a > quarter note, but it is so contrary to the usual notation of jazz > rhythms that most musicians would have trouble with it if it showed up > arbitrarily. I have difficulty doing inegal on French music in the original note values when it's in 3/2, whereas the same passage with note values halved probably wouldn't bother me. In one of the Couperin Lessons of Tenebrae that my group performed this past Easter I encountered this exact problem. The original edition I started working with had the note values halved, whereas I ended up switching to a different edition after having started learning the music (the original edition was score only, while the other edition had a printed bass part), and when I hit the passage in 3/2, it through me for a loop -- it did not automatically scream "this is a place where you should consider inegal." Same thing, seems to me. But the reason I had a problem was because I wasn't used to thinking inegal in quarter notes, whereas in the original notation, they would have used inegal there. > Part of the reason, I suppose, is that syncopations are so complicated > to notate (our system is badly set up for that) and they are so common > in jazz that we have settled on using mostly the same subdivisions all > the time, so as to reduce the number of different rhythmic notations > we are expected to be able to sight read effectively. Well, time signatures suck, too. 3/H or 2/H. make much more sense. Then you could also have 6/Q being its own separate meter, rather than in our system where 6/Q and 2/H. are indistinguishable without some kind of understanding of a tradition, or a note from the composer. > So you see that a bar of 3/2 showing up all of a sudden in a context > of medium jazz 4/4 is likely to cause a momentary confusion, more than > 6/4 would. . . . All along I've been talking not about a single measure occuring in the middle of a different meter, or pieces in which there are shifting subdivision patterns. I've been talking about relatively straightforward music, where the subdivision is 3x2/4 throughout the whole piece, with no significant exceptions. In that case, I just don't see 6/4 as justified. In your jazz repertory, I don't think you'd not notate that with the half note at the beat -- you'd notate it as 3/4. You'd only choose 6/4 in a context where you didn't really want anything other than a maintenance of the underlying quarter-note beat, and it's neither 3x2/4 nor 3x3/4, but 6x1/4 -- the ideal situation for the 6/Q time signature. > . . . And I hope you see, too, that once one has started a /4 > denominator, one must be very careful about what one does with the > denominator after that (to ensure clearest communication in a jazz > situation, that is.) I'm not sure how much more explicit I could have been in syaing that the whole context of my remarks has been limited to pieces that don't change meter and that aren't exploiting a shift between the two alternate subdivisions. > I could cite a couple of examples of jazz 6/4 without a clear 3+3 > subdivision, but I wouldn't think they would mean much except to > specialists familiar with the repertoire. "All About Rosie" by George > Russell is one, "Down By The Riverside" arranged for Jimmy Smith by > Oliver Nelson is another one, "I Got What" which is I Got Rhythm > arranged by either Chuck Owen or Steve Owen (I forget which one) is a > third. Hihat on 2,4, and 6 in all these, more or less, which clearly > contraindicates a 3+3 subdivision. Are you really talking about notation there? What I mean by that is that isn't the musical content coming before the writing down? And in that case, you have a couple of choices for what you choose for the notated beat. > Just to thoroughly discredit my own argument, though, here are two > exceptions. There are two pieces of common repertoire which are > ordinarily written in 6/8 (divided 3+3) with swing SIXTEENTHS "All > Blues" by Miles Davis, and "Better Get Hit in Your Soul" by Charles > Mingus. In the case of the former, I am convinced that jazz musicians > read this in 6/8 for no other reason than because the first published > lead sheet was notated that way, without reference to Miles or any of > his musicians. In the case of the second, Mingus himself described it > as 6/8, but he never wrote it down for his musicians, preferring to > teach it to them by ear (that's a whole 'nother story). When Andrew > Homzy transcribed it and published it in the Charles Mingus More > Than A Fakebook, he notated it in 6/4 (like two bars of jazz waltz) > which I thoroughly agree with, since it agrees more closely with > conventional jazz notation. I hadn't read this paragraph when I wrote what I wrote above. I think we all agree that our system of notating time signatures is filled with potential confusion. I wish Finale supported the notation of time signatures with the denominator as a note. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
