I believe Andrew and David said 12/12 was not the answer but did not
say why.
But Creston has a valid point ( and a logical solution) so I feel
duty
bound to ask for clear arguments as to why it is unsatisfactory.
Really, it is elegant and straight-forward albeit (most likely)
doomed.
12/8 is in fact 12/12.
What could be simpler?
Jerry
Almost anything, I fear. If there were such a thing as a twelfth
note,
intuition says it would be shorter than an 8th note; but the beat in
(compound) 12/8 is carried by the dotted quarter, and there are four
such beats in each measure, so the numerator ought to be 4 and if one
insists on making the denominator a number, it ought to be 3, not
twelve. If Creston were advocating for 12/8 = 4/3 I could see his
point, but as it is 12/12 merely compounds (as it were) the
imprecision
of the notation because the absolute central requirement of any
reformed notation of compound meter must be that the top of the
signature reflect the actual number of beats in the bar.
A twelfth note is a triplet eighth note. They are sometimes used in
new music (eg Mark-Anthony Turnage has used it frequently I believe)
Henry Cowell was way ahead of the game with this sort of thinking.
Why is 12/12 not like 12/8? Because 12/8 is not triplets.
Yes, I know it sounds like triplets, but it's not.
Why is there so much confusion over compound time?
In my ideal world time signatures would have numbers over notes to
indicate the number of beats and their duration.
Thus 4/4 would be 4/[quarter-note]
and 12/8 would be 4/[dotted-quarter-note]
THAT is simple. In my experience there is SO much confusion among
teachers about what compound time is that young musicians have a
rather poor chance of understanding it.
_
with best wishes,
John
http://abram.ca/
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