Time Signature

I started composing (term used extremely loosely) something using Rhapsody4 and it just sounded weird. I had a semibreve (4 beats) followed by two crotchets (one beat each) and that should have been a bar, with six beats per bar. To try to work out what was happening, I turned on the metrognome and played the bar.
Tick/Chord, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick/chord, tick, chord, tick, tick.

Huh?

Granted, my music lessons were 33 years ago, but if I can remember the names of the notes you’d have thought I’d remember the length. And why was that last chord not even synchronised with the ticker?

Turns out, I had chosen 6/8 time. This means six beats in a bar, sure enough, but the bar timing is twice the regular (or six eighth notes per bar). This is “compound duple time”, which means a crotchet, to remain with the beat, needs to be a dotted crotchet (the dot makes it 1.5). Gah!
This time signature is odd, almost like a double waltz designed to trip everybody up, it goes 1 2 3 4 5 6, with the timing being half of common time and being subdivided into two groups of three as shown above. The group-of-three is why it’s a compound time, and the duple is because there’s two groups of three. It’s a pain, and since the timing is faster, each bar would be six quavers or two dotted crotchets. Gah! Gah!

Note: Common time or 4/4 is the traditional 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4….

Thankfully I found the option to set a time signature of 6/4, which means the beats run at the expected regular time, there’s just six of them per bar, like I wanted: 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6…

Entering music using Rhapsody is a bit irksome. I think I’ll need to make myself a cheat sheet to remember the keypresses as it is a lot less faffy than using the icons.

PS: For any Americans reading: Semibreve = whole note, Crotchet = quarter note, Quaver = eighth note. I prefer the British naming as the American one only makes sense if you’re using 4/4 time. In my 6/4, a minim (two beats) wouldn’t be a half note, it would be a third!

This time signature is odd, almost like a double waltz designed to trip everybody up

Various groups have done unusual signatures, two examples: Genesis before they went pop style, and notably King Crimson (checkout the content of the Disciple album particularly the title track Query “king crimson discipline time signature”)
Fripp is a stickler for precision, Bill Bruford is a drummer who likes to do different

There was a piece from a game, in 4/4. A copy on YouTube, which I can’t find now, was apparently recorded from a buggy MIDI sequencer because one particular bar had an extra quaver and was therefore 4.5/4! That error didn’t occur in the actual game, and it messed with my head until I realised what was going on.

Glad to hear from a Rhapsody user :-)

Reminder: A time signature has two numbers, it is not a ratio. the second number indicates the time unit and the first the number of time units in a bar
ex 6/8 the time unit is a quaver and ther are 6 in a bar.
Fortunately Rhapsody does the job for us and we choose the desired key signature.

I use the panel to enter music, it takes some getting used to, but it’s quite logical.
@Rick,
I am interested in testing to enter music via your keyboard, in the 3 possible modes?
When the keyboard I’m using wants to be recognized, I can get Capture/StepTime to work but not the others.I don’t know if it’s a problem with the software keyboard or your module, especially the timing. Still some debugging to do!

For information in the Doc.KStrip directory of the package there are 2 Draw files that I made to use keyboard shortcuts. the first is a keystrip and the second is in the format used by the card supplied with !Sibelius.
An other in config file there are all the names of the different elements of the panel as well as the keyboard shortcuts, so an internalization must be possible, I haven’t tried yet :-(

@Chris
I often use the iport of MIDI files, the problem of quantification is not simple and there are often errors of this kind, (Bad MIDI output from score software?)
The !MelIdi demo (under Aemulator) serves as a comparison and allows me to see the quantification of the notes in a measure.

Fripp is a stickler for precision, Bill Bruford is a drummer who likes to do different

Of “Discipline”:

“During the piece the two guitars of Belew and Fripp, respectively, move through the following sequence of pairs of time signatures: 5/8 and 5/8, 5/8 and 4/4, 5/8 and 9/8, 15/16 and 15/16, 15/16 and 14/16, 10/8 and 20/16, 15/16 and 15/16, 15/16 and 14/16, 12/16 and 12/16, 12/16 and 11/16, 15/16 and 15/16, 15/16 and 14/16.

“Throughout the drums play in 17/16 – the Bill Bruford drumming video, ‘Bruford and the Beat,’ builds up to an explanation of the 17/16 pattern used (including the fact that the 4/4 bass drum pattern is maintained as a ‘dance groove’) and includes a live performance of the track interleaved with an interview with Robert Fripp about aspects of the track.

IIRC there is something like a 13 bar cycle for the guitars being in synch.

“Happiness Is a Warm Gun” (Beatles) has some interesting time signatures, but the weirdest mindscrew (if you try to count it out) is “Schism” (Tool).

Even things that seem simpler can hide surprises. “Wuthering Heights” (Kate Bush) seems like it’s simple common time, except for the chorus that changes to 3/4.

Jean-Michel:

I can enter music via the (piano) keyboard, but the timing is messed up (not a surprise, I’m not actually using any timing here) and I’ve not yet found the way to change a note from this to that.
So currently I’m playing it on the keyboard and trying to reproduce it in the notation. It’s slow going, but I’ve only just started.

Thanks for the pointers for the keypresses.

Even things that seem simpler can hide surprises.

Genesis: “Keep It Dark” – rarely ever played live as it was so difficult for each member to avoid playing the other part.
and that’s one of their later, pop friendly, ones

Anyone noticed that this is a progressive rock? Prog tends to equal “standard? why would I do that?”

Prog rock is what you can do when you know more than four chords. ;)

Speaking of which: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ

Prog rock is what you can do when you know more than four chords. ;)

Quo-o-o-o-o

Genesis: “Keep It Dark” – rarely ever played live as it was so difficult for each member to avoid playing the other part.

Reminds me of what a colleague was a fan of Led Zeppelin. He told me that there is one of their popular songs that they never played live. The drummer never remembered how he played it while they were recording the song. He knew was was a certain trick to it but never figured it out.

The drummer never remembered how he played it while they were recording the song.

That would be Four Sticks from Led Zeppelin IV, but it wasn’t a specific trick he couldn’t remember.
John Bonham (Bonzo) had difficulty with in the studio sessions and required multiple takes before he got it right, and the rest decided that it was too painful to repeat the attempt live.

That’s something I’ve been paying a little more attention to recently. For music I’m not so keen on, the drum is basically tish, tish, tish, tish, all the way through. Maybe a full in before the chorus, but meh, ’80s keyboards had a button that could do that. ;)

Music I do like has the drum being a lot more expressive and subtly varying the pattern from one bar to the next, plus changing tempo and rhythm at various points in the song.

Examples: “Human” (Beyond The Black) and “Harvest” (Nightwish).

@ Rick

An important element for time signatures (as you’ve mentioned) is how one wish to express the accents in a melody, however when things get Prog (I played and composed prog tracks for years), things becomes more complex.

For instance, a 7/8 could be played both as a 2+2+3 OR as a 3+2+2 in terms of accents, or 7/8 time signature has 2 simple beats and 1 compund beat.

This also allows very interesting possibilities BTW, but that is a story for another time.

For the note length’s names, I still love the way I have learned music composition back in Italy an dusing the Italian names, but I guess I am biased on this, however for the record: Breve, semibreve, minima, semiminima, croma, semicroma, biscroma, semibiscroma, centoventottavo.

@ All
Tested this morning, For Rhapsody actually the text of the command panel items is in the Symbols file.
Nice for internationalization.
@ Rick
Can you capture with Rhapsody the “tish, tish, tish, tish…” coming from your keyboard?
To encourage you you can download the first page of Happiness is a war gun. This is the result of a scan + the excellent SharpEye.
https://jeanmichelb.riscos.fr/Rhap4_Scores.html

Can you capture with Rhapsody the “tish, tish, tish, tish…” coming from your keyboard?

I might be able to, but since it’s Rhapsody that is doing it…

(play options → play beat via MIDI)

;)