Can all musical rhythms be identified?

[jancivil]

I have to read into syncopation. I'm just wondering now in relation to a piece of music in 3/4 time signature - what if I don't strictly use 3 beats in each measure? so I break the rules and use only 1 beat instead of 3.

It seems that in 3/4 by convention, if I want to have only one note in the bar then I'm forced to use a dotted minum in that bar to make up the 3 beats.

There is no musical reason to consider this as changing meter, and I'll tell you why: the phrase is two bars of 3 or one bar of 6. Preferably 3; because 6, as containing a factor of 2, is considered a compound meter with a basis of 2 beats; 6/4 is two dotted half notes. or minims if you like that. 3/4 is 3 quarter notes. You may introduce some ambiguity and hemiola*, but that's the first principle for that choice conventionally.

It seems that composers tend to stick to the same time signature the entire piece.


That's not the problem and that's not necessarily anything, it's about the idea.
For an example, Sondheim/Bernstein America exploits a *hemiola in 6/8, ie., it alternates between the bar being two beats and then 3:
I want to be in A mer_i_ca.
It's written in 6/8 with no change; why? The 3 feel is obvious and nobody in the orchestra really needs to see 3/4 to follow it. So it's just simpler. If you wrote 6/8 and 3/4, a change at every bar, it's a perfectly cromulent way to write it but why bother?

Or let's say something is all notated in 4/4, but a lot of it is a definite up/down 2 feel. Why bother? OTOH the conductor may well conduct those bits in 2/4, or even all of it. No problem, but why create work for the copyist?

Considering the meaning of 1/4 is illustrative: 1/4 can show emphasis, you could for instance write 5/4 or 4+1/4, or the 1/4 has some musical meaning. '1/4' could contain a musical idea which is significant per that measure (just spitballing here), eg., you have an upbeat of say pentuple 16ths the one time (and every time?), or essentially the meaning is an insertion of an anacrusis. IE: some actual idea, such as a way to convey some weight or sudden brilliance or shock for example.
1 2 3 4 YIKES! 1.

These considerations are about the idea before rules. But your actual idea is so clearly 3 + 3 that 1/4 has no real moment.

[jancivil]

But composers tend to stick to the same time signature the entire piece, you're right. Frequent metric changes in music are redundantly complex for the majority of listeners. Because of a repetition listeners can catch a rythm, groove etc. Music is a repetition in many, many cases.

This is an argument to conservatism and conformity. "redundantly complex"?
(I have to point out that's not what redundant does as a modifier. Redundant means you already have the thing and you make it again; and it's not always pejorative. "NASA builds redundancy into all systems.")

People have ideas, and for one thing there are cultures on this planet where the folk musics do more than you insist on.
I make things by impulse improvising which I quantify later and they are what they are; I don't make music for people that don't like what I like.
"composers" is a very broad term here and composers do not necessarily fall in line to that kind of notion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD3GMJJ ... ex=58&t=0s

[jancivil]

People are digging this. We are free to advance and individuate and deviate.

[lobanov]

@jancivil

I have not meant anything pejorative. Redundantly = excessively. My mistake? Sorry

Simple things isn't bad things. Making something simple but really beautiful and profound isn't an easy task. It's more difficult than making something complicated.

I think simple meters (not in the strict sense) are more "natural". They are salient, we have not to be trained to grasp them. 2 and 3, the simplest numbers, combined. Plus repetition. Odd meters are more complex and difficult. Music with a constantly changing meter is much more complex.

Folk music isn't necessarily primitive. There are traditions, somebody invented and developed them. Excellent example, Bulgarian music (25/16, hehe):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG5MNYfJWmQ

But it's 3+2+2+3+2........

[lobanov]

People are digging this. We are free to advance and individuate and deviate.

Absolutely. Yes. But the simplest things are a base. And the simplest things are sometimes more appropriate, it depends on our intention.

[Auplant]

I think by talking about time signature, I'm over-complicating my original question actually. Either way, I'm grateful for your replies because I also find this interesting. But coming away from jazz, and rare time signatures... I'm thinking that there's some other phenomenon in relation to drums. Time signatures make so much more sense to me with melodic voices.
When talking about drums - i'm simply interested in the time that some percussion hits. If you analyze a drum machine (TR909) sequence, the beat is usually common 4/4. Like "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and".
But you don't often find a clap or hihat playing in the 1/16 grid notation - what I mean is the time exactly between "1", "and".
Would simply be called "drum syncopation"?

So think 1/16 grid:

1 + e + and + a

I put one of the clap sound on the "e" subdivision in that audio clip, if you noticed

[vurt]

drum machines with the xox type sequencers dont lend themselves well to "groove" the push and pull a live player will add to a rhythm.

[Auplant]

Maybe we can conclude this as a:
Regular rhythm in 3/4 with syncopation

I don't mean to be oddly analytical, I just wanted to really understand.

[thecontrolcentre]

Sounds like 4/4 to me ...

[Auplant]

Sounds like 4/4 to me ...

Since it's just a vague drum beat with no voices on top, it could be seen as 2/4, 3/4, or 4/4.
That's why I thought time signature over-complicated things a little in relation to my question.
But maybe any one of those time signatures were correct anyway.

[jancivil]

defunct youtube

[jancivil]

HIGHLY recommend learning how to excute actual time signatures reliably before one will be ready to cast all convention aside and go experimental, and worry about Adam Neely and 7/12 or whatever is going on there. You have a four-on-the-floor thing only the period is in all likelihood 6.
(A 12 would indicate taking a triplet 8th division as the pulse. Not seeing a real application for that, there are other ways to say the same thing that won't throw people.)

The reason it's not up in the air is the periodicity of it, the odd syncopation is consistent and the period is perceived as 6 beats long.

I would more encourage trying to know what that is exactly but one needs to really know where ONE is first

[MusicFanForever]

without instruments, it's hard to identify