9/5 beat and 13/5 beat - what do they sound like
Jonboy
Hi there, I am not a drummer but I have just read a story in which the
hero who is fine musician hears a chap drumming with a 9/5 beat and
then he moves to 13/5. I asked my drummer son-in-law to play this for
me but he can't figure out how this is done.
Can anyone help with sheet music or a tune I might know or a sound
clip I can hear?
Jon, much puzzled on Vancouver ISland
Ben Jacoby
Jonboy (NOSPAMj...@oberon.ark.com) spake thusly:
: Hi there, I am not a drummer but I have just read a story in which the
I presume they mean 9 against 5 as opposed to a 9/5 time signature...
I really don't know what a "fifth note" is!
To do this start with a steady but rather slow beat. Now for each beat
say the word hippopotamus. This gives you the "5". Now against that
rhythm you are going to do three triplets per pulse. That gives the "9".
The two rhythms at the same time is 5 against 9. The 13 is a similar
though more difficult idea.
--
Benjamin Jacoby | "Some rob you with a six-gun and some with
| a fountain pen." ..........Woodie Guthrie
(SPAM GUARD! Delete the no spam letters in name to email.)
Shambo Pfaff
Um...if there is such a thing as a 9/5 or 13/5 beat, I want my money back
from Esther Boyer School of Music at Temple U. We were told over the
course of four years that the bottom number is always 2, 4, 8, 16, 32,
some exponent of 2. Maybe Harry Partch has something to say about this.
In article <357d6241...@news.ark.com>, NOSPAMj...@oberon.ark.com
Jesse C. Chang
sha...@bacon-and-spam.timeoutny.com (Shambo Pfaff) writes:
>Um...if there is such a thing as a 9/5 or 13/5 beat, I want my money back
>from Esther Boyer School of Music at Temple U. We were told over the
>course of four years that the bottom number is always 2, 4, 8, 16, 32,
>some exponent of 2. Maybe Harry Partch has something to say about this.
Yup, unless you're using Orff's system, which uses the number of beats (a
number) over the beat duration (a note), or something like that.
Maybe his friend meant 9/5 and 13/5 polyrhythms, or 9:5 and 13:5 uplets?
Who knows...
Jesse
--
!! Jesse C. Chang dru...@netcom.com
[___]
`|' "We always want to believe there is a place
/|\ better than our own." -- Loreena McKennitt
Brandon E Paluzzi
I dunno- my initial reaction was that it can't be correct, but now that I
think about it, it should be possible.
Think of it this way- the bottom number is the type of note that gets the
pulse, right? (1=whole, 2=half, 4=quarter, etc.)
And all that means is how many of those fit in a 4/4 measure--
For example, there are 4 quarters in a 4/4 measure, 2 half notes, 8
eighths, etc.
So, why can't you make "fifth" note, that fits 4 times into a four four
measure. Granted, it's not the easiest thing in the world to count, but
it's very possible (think of a 16th note quintuplet over 16th note
polyrhythm)
Now, make this "fifth" note your pulse, and put 9 (or 13) of them in a
measure: Presto! 9/5 (or 13/5) time signature.
Once again, it would be tough to "hear" this time signature, and it's
probably not of much use in Western music, but once you start dealing with
music of other cultures, our ideas of meter get distorted, and who knows,
something like this might actually pop up =)
brandon
***************************************************************
Carnegie Mellon University
Information and Decision Systems, Class of 2000
bp...@andrew.cmu.edu
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/bp33/
Tartan Ice Hockey Kiltie Tenor Line Pipe Band Snare Line
Neal Prakash
Sure a 9/5 is possible, but it would have to played relative to a time
signature with different denominator(i.e. 4/4, 9/8, 13/7 etc.) to have any
meaning. By playing it against a 13/5, the denominator becomes
meaningless--he might as well call it 9/8 and 13/8.
Now if he said 3/4 and 3/5 repeating, that would be impressive--a "fifth"
note is euivalent to quarter-note quintuplet, so in ascii code 3/4,3/5
would be--
|1....&....2....&....3....&....|1....&..2.-....&3...-...|
3/4 3/5
Each # represents the downbeat of that measure. The dot represents an
increment of time (i.e. you would have to set your metronome to this if
you wanted to hear a click on all the downbeats!). The "&"s show how the
upbeat of the 3/4 measure gets shifted when the time signature shifts to
3/5. The "-"s show where the downbeats from the 3/4 would fall in the 3/5
measure. Notice 3/5 could be called 2.2/8, or both together could be
called 30/40, 24/40.
Pretty wacky stuff. Now lay a beat over those downbeats!
I never understood why music books call 4/4 with triplet feel "12/8"?? Why
not 12/12. Or maybe it's to avoid putting the little "3"s above the notes?
-Neal Prakash
Department of Psychobiology, College of Medicine
http://meded.med.uci.edu/~nprakash
Lab-949 824-5031
Fax-949 824-2447
On Fri, 12 Jun 1998, Shambo Pfaff wrote:
> Um...if there is such a thing as a 9/5 or 13/5 beat, I want my money back
> from Esther Boyer School of Music at Temple U. We were told over the
> course of four years that the bottom number is always 2, 4, 8, 16, 32,
> some exponent of 2. Maybe Harry Partch has something to say about this.
>
Russell m. Gellman
12/8 wouldn't be 12/12 because the 8 represents "eight notes". I don't
think there are "twelph notes"....
Russell
Neal Prakash (npra...@meded.med.uci.edu) wrote:
: Sure a 9/5 is possible, but it would have to played relative to a time
: >
: >
:
:
Shawfour
Ben replied:
>I presume they mean 9 against 5 as opposed to a 9/5 time signature...
>I really don't know what a "fifth note" is!
>
>To do this start with a steady but rather slow beat. Now for each beat
>say the word hippopotamus. This gives you the "5". Now against that
>rhythm you are going to do three triplets per pulse. That gives the "9".
>The two rhythms at the same time is 5 against 9. The 13 is a similar
>though more difficult idea.
>
Ben's idea is on the right track, but I think it needs a slight change.
Placing 3 triplets on every beat gives 45 pulses per 5-beat measure. Now, play
only every 5th note in those 45 notes and you get the 9 pulses required.
1 2 3
4 etc.
1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 etc.
x x x x x x
etc.
Best regards
John
Thatcher97
>12/8 wouldn't be 12/12 because the 8 represents "eight notes". I don't
>think there are "twelph notes"....
> Russell
For the sake of wasting bandwidth.. (heh)
Twelfth notes are eighth-note triplets in any quarter note based time
signature...
More useless info.. hehe
-Rob
Bill Ray
The divisions of time go like this: 1, 2 ,4 ,8 ,16, 32 ,64, 128 ,256
etc......... so there is no classical way that an instrumentalist could be
playing 13/5. There is no 5th note! Unless of course, the drummer were
playing quintuplets and 13 of them. It would still have to fall over some
sort of pulse, such as a quarter note, 8th, 16th, etc. I dunno.....now I am
thinking of ramifications. Any takers?
Jonboy wrote in message <357d6241...@news.ark.com>...
Squash
I think to maybe sum up what everyone is trying to say I could say this.
I've had quite a few years in music theory training so I think I may be able
to help. In our "traditional" or western music a time signature (which is
what I'm thinking this person meant) of 9/5 is impossible. The top number
dictates the number of beats per measure (and 13 or 9 is plenty fine) and
the bottom number tells what KIND of note gets one beat (i.e. 1=whole note,
2=half note, 4=quarter note, 8=eigth note, 16=sixteenth note, and so on to
other powers of 2). We divide our measures in equal parts. In our
traditional way of writing music a "fifth note" does not exist. But that's
really not to say it can't happen, concievably it could happen but it would
take alot of consideration and thinking to have some sort of pulse. Anyway I
probably think that this person was probably just boasting thinking of some
odd time to sound impressive, I once heard an amatuer say they played a
piece in 4/5 and after many an argument I gave it up just figuring they had
probably confused it with 5/4 which is just fine. Just my thoughts.
Squash
squa...@usa.net
Jesse C. Chang
thatc...@aol.com (Thatcher97) writes:
>>12/8 wouldn't be 12/12 because the 8 represents "eight notes". I don't
>>think there are "twelph notes"....
>> Russell
>For the sake of wasting bandwidth.. (heh)
>Twelfth notes are eighth-note triplets in any quarter note based time
>signature...
Yes, but 12/8 is compound meter - dotted quarter note based.
>More useless info.. hehe
Amen to that! :)
Neal Prakash
I think you missed my point from my previous post-- What makes a eighth
note different from a sixteenth note--at twice the *tempo* the eighth note
will be played the same as a sixteenth note at the original tempo.
Therefore time signatures depend on tempo to derive their meaning.
Now what is triplet? In 4/4 time their are 16 16th notes, 8 8th notes, 1
whole note, etc. Their are 12 triplets, therefore a triplet is 12th note.
Hence 12/12 is equivalent to 4/4 with a triplet feel. 12/8 on the other
hand is equivalent to 6/4. The Western convention has been to reassign a
quarter note to a dotted quarter note and thus convert the 12/8 to 4/4!
This is essentially reassigning the tempo to 2/3 its original value.
Therefore, a fifth note is one of the notes played in a 4/4 measure
that is divided into 5 equal parts. This would be a
quarter-note-quintuplet!
Now 9/5 by itself is a meaniningless time-signature--might as well call it
9/8, just like calling 4/4 "4/8" would be meaningless. 9/5 only has
meaning if its played right after a measure of 4/4, just like 4/8 only
becomes meaningful after a measure of 4/4.
So in summary, time signatures depend on 3 things--1) The tempo, which
sets the value of time between notes, 2) the numerator, which defines the
number of downbeats in a measure, and 3) the denominator, which defines
what kind of note the downbeat is.
Historically, musical notatators don't like to make the denominator
anything other than 4 or 8. When then is a time change, either the
numerator gets changed or the tempo gets redefined. But it is just as
feasible to change the denominator, just more confusing!
-Neal Prakash
Jesse C. Chang
Neal Prakash <npra...@meded.med.uci.edu> writes:
>Hence 12/12 is equivalent to 4/4 with a triplet feel. 12/8 on the other
>hand is equivalent to 6/4.
No it is not, because 6/4 has 6 beats per measure, while 12/8 has 4.
With the way you are thinking of time signatures, the only thing that
is important is the number of SUBdivisions, and you're completely
ignoring the first order division of the measure into beats. Yes,
6/4 and 12/8 have the same number of eighth notes, but the eighth
note is not what is used to count beats, which is something else we
would infer from the time signature (in common practice).
>The Western convention has been to reassign a
>quarter note to a dotted quarter note and thus convert the 12/8 to 4/4!
>This is essentially reassigning the tempo to 2/3 its original value.
Again, this is incorrect, because 12/8 has 4 beats per measure, not 6.
>Therefore, a fifth note is one of the notes played in a 4/4 measure
>that is divided into 5 equal parts. This would be a
>quarter-note-quintuplet!
While this is, in a sense, true, and it probably makes more sense to
nonmusicians ("1/5th of a measure is a 5th note"), musical convention
describes a measure with 5 beats as 5/4 and not 5/5. However, if the
musical world thought that way, it would make more sense to have time
signatures be one number, the number of beats a measure is divided
into. Unfortunately, this would also require a different specified
tempo for every meter change.
It's probably easier to write something like 9/5 as 5/8 + 4/8, and
either every eighth note gets a beat, or only the first note of each
measure does (a tough thing to specify I guess, since something like
5/8 tends to imply groupings of 3 and 2 - a quintuplet bracket avoids
such implications).
>Now 9/5 by itself is a meaniningless time-signature--might as well call it
>9/8, just like calling 4/4 "4/8" would be meaningless. 9/5 only has
>meaning if its played right after a measure of 4/4, just like 4/8 only
>becomes meaningful after a measure of 4/4.
Then that would automatically invalidate it as a time signature. It
cannot be used on its own. Having it depend on a measure of 4/4
before it is the same as a quintuplet bracket, since uplet brackets
depend on the meter of the measure it's in to help you figure out how
to play it.
>So in summary, time signatures depend on 3 things--1) The tempo, which
>sets the value of time between notes, 2) the numerator, which defines the
>number of downbeats in a measure, and 3) the denominator, which defines
>what kind of note the downbeat is.
Unless the tempo is very slow, compound meters assign the beat to the
dotted quarter note, not the eighth note.
>Historically, musical notatators don't like to make the denominator
>anything other than 4 or 8.
2 is also very common, and 16 is sometimes used as well. I'm sure
there are some pieces written with 1 (besides _Carmina Burana_,
which has parts in 3/(whole note) meter (as per Orff's system of
notating meter) or 32+ as well.
Neal Prakash
Well now we're going in circles.
On the 12/8 discussion, Jesse, why don't you consider triplets 12th
notes???
The bottom line is I say 9/5 and 4/4 time signatures can coexist in the
same musical piece.
You say they can't.
I say 9/5 by itself is meaningless, it should be called 9/8 by convention.
You say the binary noation convention (i.e. 1,2,4,8,16) makes it
impossible to ever use 5 in the denominator of a time signature.
So, If I were to play a piece for you in 4/4: 9/5: 4/4: 9/5 etc. And ask
you to notate it, you would probably either call it 4/4: 9/8 with a
different tempo for each measure, or call it 20/16 (i.e. 4/4 with a
quintuplet feel): 45/16.
All three methods would be equivalent in denoting the piece. By convention
the 20/16:45/16 would probably used. However, depending on the piece,
4/4: 9/5 might better capture the feel. However, 4/4: 9/8 with a tempo
change would be the easiest to interpret for sight-reading!
-Neal Prakash
http://meded.med.uci.edu/~nprakash/trans.html
UmpaDiDoo
>because 6/4 has 6 beats per measure, while 12/8 has 4.
actually, 12/8 has 12 "beats," but the emphasis is put on the first, fourth,
seventh, and tenth.
Matt Heinrich
umpadidoo at aol dot com
Jesse C. Chang
umpa...@aol.com (UmpaDiDoo) writes:
>actually, 12/8 has 12 "beats," but the emphasis is put on the first, fourth,
>seventh, and tenth.
Well, I guess you can look at it any way you want. But here's how I
look at it:
4/4, for example, is considered to have 4 beats (metrical units, or
whatever) per measure, and is also called "simple quadruple". 12/8
is called "compound quadruple" because it also has 4 beats.
Also, here's a quote from a very well-known theory textbook (well,
well-known among theory freaks anyways), _Tonal Harmony in Concept
and Practice_ by Allen Forte, a professor at Yale University:
"Each group of three notes is called a _triplet_. When such
a triplet pattern is continued throughout a composition it
becomes in effect a new metrical pattern and is usually
notated as a _compound meter_: a triplet subdivision
superimposed upon a simple meter.
[...]
"Compound meters retain the unit and the accent pattern of
the simple meter from which they derive. Thus in 6/8 the
unit is the dotted quarter note and the metrical pattern
remains duple in essence."
Not that Mr. Forte is/was the be all end all of music theory knowledge,
but I'll accept his answer more readily than that of anyone in this
newsgroup. :)
13612
There is a book entitled "New Musical Resources" by Henry Colwell....It
covers these types of concepts.
Jesse C. Chang wrote in message ...
aaronf...@gmail.com
> Um...if there is such a thing as a 9/5 or 13/5 beat, I want my money back
> from Esther Boyer School of Music at Temple U. We were told over the
> course of four years that the bottom number is always 2, 4, 8, 16, 32,
> some exponent of 2. Maybe Harry Partch has something to say about this.
>
> In article <357d6241...@news.ark.com>, NOSPAMj...@oberon.ark.com
> (Jonboy) wrote:
>
> > hero who is fine musician hears a chap drumming with a 9/5 beat and
> > then he moves to 13/5. I asked my drummer son-in-law to play this for
> > me but he can't figure out how this is done.
> >
> > Can anyone help with sheet music or a tune I might know or a sound
> > clip I can hear?
> >
> > Jon, much puzzled on Vancouver ISland
delphi....@gmail.com
> Hi there, I am not a drummer but I have just read a story in which the
> hero who is fine musician hears a chap drumming with a 9/5 beat and
> then he moves to 13/5. I asked my drummer son-in-law to play this for
> me but he can't figure out how this is done.
>
> Can anyone help with sheet music or a tune I might know or a sound
> clip I can hear?
>
> Jon, much puzzled on Vancouver ISland
i've got a gig tom singing an playing me electric..Luckily, pulled in the right person to accompany me, on a Cocktail drum kit...no bass then. So we had this 4 hr rehearsal down me shed and this one song we were playing has this extra bars thing... Now I listen back to our play, I realise that's it 9/5... My classically trained papa..tells me the top is the crotchets and below is the tempo..? Thank Da I love ya so ..Good luck wit ya timing and friendships ha ha OAO Delphix