# Time signature changes



## Aurelian

The irregular meter of the 3rd movement of Mozart's 40th Symphony is interesting. On paper and on the computer I rewrote the melody - including adding notes - with frequent time signature changes. I don't know what it accomplished, but it was fun.

For you, do time signature changes "add spice" to the music, or do you try to keep a consistent meter?

And...


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## Crudblud

It depends on the piece, how it develops and what it calls for. I'll provide a couple of examples from my own work, though people should bear in mind that I do not write for human performers, so these are likely to be not all that relevant to most of you.

In the case of _Frozen Bob's Estranged Wife_ I was consciously writing very danceable music, and indeed I purposely exploited the oft-lamented metronomic quality of MIDI rendering, frequently changing but strictly adhering to time signature except for minor points where I wanted to create specific effects. In the first 30 seconds I think there are something like 10 changes, but in later parts I often specifically explore single meters for long stretches; _Milonga_ is all 2/4, _Ersa Pamungae_ 5/4 etc.

To contrast that, my most recent work _Emergent_ is technically in 4/4 from start to finish, but there are very few points where I even try to stick to it on the surface. The rhythmically complex parts are achieved entirely through extreme tempo and subdivision abuse, and there are hints of time signatures here and there, but at no point am I writing in them. From a listener's perspective I could say it's in 9/8 and it wouldn't matter, but behind the scenes all of the tempo changes occur on the beat, so 4/4 is something like an invisible anchor for the piece.


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## Mahlerian

Aurelian said:


> The irregular meter of the 3rd movement of Mozart's 40th Symphony is interesting. On paper and on the computer I rewrote the melody - including adding notes - with frequent time signature changes. I don't know what it accomplished, but it was fun.
> 
> For you, do time signature changes "add spice" to the music, or do you try to keep a consistent meter?


I think that time signature changes used simply to "add spice" are a neat trick at first, but the better technique is to work on making irregular phrasing feel natural. Listen, for example, to the chorale from Mahler's Urlicht. The time signature changes practically from bar to bar, but there's no sense of dislocation, because all of the extra beats match the accents in the lines.


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## Anterix

By the way, good exemples with wonderfull music, Crudblud! Amazing music really. Loved it.

Proof that one doesn't need gigantic orchestras to build rich musical textures.

Congratulations!


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## Crudblud

Anterix said:


> By the way, good exemples with wonderfull music, Crudblud! Amazing music really. Loved it.
> 
> Proof that one doesn't need gigantic orchestras to build rich musical textures.
> 
> Congratulations!


Thank you very much, sir, I'm glad you like it. Orchestras, although I love the sound, I find entirely too cumbersome to write for comfortably. But I don't wish to derail the thread, so I'll try to steer it back towards time signatures.



Mahlerian said:


> I think that time signature changes used simply to "add spice" are a neat trick at first, but the better technique is to work on making irregular phrasing feel natural. Listen, for example, to the chorale from Mahler's Urlicht. The time signature changes practically from bar to bar, but there's no sense of dislocation, because all of the extra beats match the accents in the lines.


Right, it's easy to let the changes become a gimmick rather than an integral element of the piece. It may be striking on first listen but will soon lose its appeal if all is surface and "hook," revealing itself to be a case of rapidly diminishing returns. I was actually not aware of the metric complexity of _Urlicht_, but it brings to mind the importance of underlying structure and understanding one's materials, and just how vital it is to the creation of a cohesive work that they inform and influence each other. A case like _Urlicht_ (or any good song) is especially illuminating in that one can see how the text informs the composition in one way or another, and this knowledge can then be adapted and made relevant to any kind of material.


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## aleazk

Most of my pieces don't have a general metric structure. 

Often, I write them in 12/8, where I use the bar lines just for keeping track of the different entries. I construct rhythmic accentuations by addition of fundamental pulses (the african music/minimalism/late Ligeti technique), I take the sixteenth notes as the fundamental pulses.

The rhythmically complex parts arise from the combination of irregular phrasing and the polymetric/polyrhytmic interaction of the different voices.


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## hreichgott

Also, Bartok.


extra characters


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## PetrB

Thinking of the mixed meters written as compound (Bartok, Microkosmos, Bulgarian Dances-- 3+3+2+ etc. / 8) or any irregular rhythm, or set sequence of mixed meter bars, then it gets 'fixed' pretty quickly, and I think we see these most in some format referential to something like the Bartok Bulgarian Dances.

I do not approach time at all the way Aleazk has explained -- so what I make is more 'conservative' or old fashioned. That out of the way, a bar of a different meter comes up often enough, simply because the music seems to require 'no more, no less.' and I don't 'make anything' of it, but allow it to be. I agree there is a 'constant' micro pulse, the value usually either eighth or sixteenth, and the rest should not be at all written in stone.

Short answer: it has to be a construct which is handled in a way to not become merely another fixed and repeated set, which gets boring / deadening very quickly / OR I believe the reason for a bar of 13/16 in between two of 11/8 should be rather 'organic' and also be written that way to make the phrasing clearest to the performer.

"How I Work, Think Of IT" -- I write with no bar lines at all, initially beaming the notes to indicate phrase (and yes, those are generally 'metric' whether even or odd.) If a solo piano piece, and in mixed meter, a bit later in the drafting I draw bar-lines. _I put no time signatures on unless there is a majority within those beamed groups of the same amount of beats_ (this would have to be abandoned in a score for over, say, three players) A time signature for me is then more usual than not, but of late, eh....

Time signatures and bar lines are to me a matter of making notation more readily accessible for the player to read and understand. Unless your goal is something highly defined as rhythmic, i.e. pulsed groups are very much 'what it is about, then that will matter so the rendering of it can be or felt to be 'danced.' Metric groupings and bar-lines are a notational convenience with no other musical meaning as only a very slight 'directive' for performance.

I've heard far too many 'cool' and 'neat' pieces written in 5, 7, etc (I'm guilty, past and present, I'm sure), but so many of those go against a tenet of mine: no technical premise on its own is a good ennough first impulse upon which to make a piece of music, i.e. your musical thinking should either have the technical in a sort of intuitive drawer, or you first have the idea and then see what technical means are needed to execute it.

No doubt, as Aleazk pointed out so well in a 'genius' thread, the more you know, the more your intuitive imagination has to play with, assemble and make something interesting from... so this technical first or after the fact is a sort of _was the chicken or the egg first?_ question. I'd say if a student, then work the premise to learn what and how it does so later that data is in your imagination for freer and later use.


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## Aurelian

Thanks for this discussion. Yesterday I got a collection of 20th-century solo piano music. Bartok changed the time signature frequently, and Prokofiev and Stravinsky, much less. 

I saw a pop song that alternated a lot between 2/4 and 4/4. Would having the whole song in 2/4 have been better?


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## eilrahc

I think it really depends on how you approach a piece. Someone like Debussy has a sense of rhythm that's similar to plainchant in that it feels completely free of a strict metre. Rather the sense of time and cycle comes from the space between the repeated ideas from the down up rather than within an imposed and ongoing metric space. Metre seems to be there pretty much for performance practice I think. 

On the other spectrum is something like Math Rock which takes the form of repeated riffs in strict but changing metres. I bet Stravinsky would have dug some of the stuff!


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