Poly Rhythm capable?

• Oct 26, 2011 - 17:28

Is it possible to; (example) create a 7/4 piano time signiture over a 6/4 bass? (afro poly-rhythmic)


Comments

If you mean literally create measures with two different time signatures in different parts, no. If you just mean, creating a septuplet in 6/4 time (or sextuplets in 7/4 time), then yes - see Tuplets in the handbook. That would be the normal way indicate these types of polyrhythms anyhow. Actually restoring to multiple simultaneous time signatures would be rare; appropriate for extreme cases only. If you really have a lot of 7 against 6 in a piece, that would indeed seem like a situation where you might want this, though.

In reply to by speez

Oh, so you don't mean 7 beats in one part in the same time frame as 6 beats in another part, but rather a seven beat pattern and a six beat part that go out of phrase and come back together after 42 beats? For the record, that would be more accurately described as "hemiola", but the answer is still the same - it can't be done in MuseScore, but also, you don't ordinarily notate that by giving people different time signatures. This sort of thing happens all the time in published music, but it is virtually never notated that way. You say it would be much easier, and maybe you meant for you as the person writing the music, but it's definitely not easier for the guy charged with actually keeping the ensemble together in performance, nor does it make life easier for the guy who is reading his part in a different time signature from everyone else. First thing I'd do as a pianist when faced with that unpleasant situation is write in the downbeats that everyone else is reading from, so when we make eye contact or watch the director (if there is one), I know where the *real* beat one is.

And really, it's actually not necessarily easier to enter using different signatures, either. If it's a literally or almost literally repeating part, you can enter those seven beats then copy and paste them in 6/4 just as easily as in 7/4. If the part doesn't literally repeat significantly so you have enter each iteration individually and you find it helps to see the barlines every seven beats while entering the notes, you could create a section in 7/4 later in the score (or on another score), enter the piano part that way, then copy and paste the whole passage where it belongs.

But if you really need to break with standard practice and actually notate two time signatures simultaneously - like if you are positive the people playing the score will prefer that - then you *can* kind of be fake it. Notate the thing as 42/4 (!), then hide the time signature, then add 6/4 and 7/4 "time signatures" as ordinary text, then draw in bar lines where needed. It would be no fun to notate this way, so you'd have to be sure that your layers really did prefer this (and again, it's very rare, so most players would *not* be expecting to see this, and would more likely be confused than helped). But if you needed it done, it would at least be possible.

The only cases where I'd personally consider this worthwhile if the specific figures involved were such that writing it in the traditional hemiola manner would result in tuplets that crossed the barline.

But in any case, because the need does very occasionally arise, I would agree that this is the sort of thing Musescore should probably eventually support - as is the notation I thought you meant originally.

In reply to by xavierjazz

That is also a hemiola, but under a different definition. The Wikipedia article is pretty good here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiola

Your example is similar to the usage of the term they label "archaic" - taking a 6/8 bar and phrasing it as three quarters instead of two dotted quarters. In my experience, that usage isn't really archaic - it's just *different* from the case I am talking about. The most basic case is that of the first example in the Wikipedia article, which seems to be abstracted from the Mozart example that occurs a little later. In 3/4 time, the bottom part starts off going "oom, pah, pah; | oom, pah pah;" - clearly two bars of 3/4. But then changes briefly to "oom, pah; oom, | pah; oom, pah" - feeling as if it had switched briefly to three bars of 2/4, with the pulse staying the same . The OP's example is more the example they allude to at the end of the article, where they mention a 5-quarter ostinato in common time.

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