complex polyrhythm (7:5)

• Aug 22, 2019 - 03:23

I am writing a snare drum solo in Musescore 3.0.3, and i need a way to notate 7 notes in the space of 5 8th notes. I'm having trouble finding the feature in the program.


Comments

Unfortunately, for tuplets in cases like these, where 5 8th notes can't be condensed into a single rest, Musescore gets a bit convoluted. What you'll want to do is create a new measure of 5/8, select the "whole note" of rest in the measure, and press ctrl + 7. This will create your 7-let. You can copy this tuplet and paste it into wherever it needs to be in context of the music. If you mean you want one hand playing 7 while the other plays 5, you can make the 7-let voice two, and enter five eighth notes in voice one.

In reply to by underquark

Oh, the tuplet plugin will be nice - wasn't aware of it. Thanks for the pointer!

As for the reason for choosing to notate in 7/4 instead of 5/4 in the example, it's as you say easier for 5 in duration of 1 beat, rather than 7.

The drums begin by playing in 5, which I suppose is what you focus on when counting. However, the bass and cello are playing the 7. This forms the polyrhythm for the 1st verse. Is it recognizable?

For the bridge section (see bar 15), the bass plays 5 with the drums, but the cello is in 7. It's a different 5:7 polyrhythm than the verse.

In reply to by caindoherty

Why so much ink and so many lines, though? Surely the object of engraving is to give the musician a score that they can read with the maximum chance of reproducing what you want to hear and the minimum chance of making mistakes? With quintuplets + syncope my old brain gets confused. My bass-player brain certainly appreciates the simpler version I have outlined in the section I have changed to 7/8. It might break the mental pattern you have in your head of the piece but it sounds the same and there's less math involved.

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Bittersuite_Trajectory.mscz 32.85 KB

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