rhythm question

[nuffink]

I thought that the whole idea of tuplets was that they ran contrary to the general time signature.

Which, to be fair, others have said.

[jancivil]

Yes, it's called a hemiola, when one or the other opposes the established 2 or 3.

if you want to have 'tuplets' in 12/8 match the regular quarters of 4/4, you just dot the 8ths.

It's naming. It's a difference of notation:

12/8 is harder to read. At least IMO.

if you were to have a lot of back and forth, hemiola action, 4/4 might be preferable to some actors.
it might be easier to pen a bracketed 3 over a triplet than to make a lot of dots. *shrug*

if you were using say Finale to notate it, and the rhythm was in fact 7+5/8ths, it'd likely be a pain in the ass to make the brackets conform to 7+5 in 4/4.

it's the same difference objectively.

[Sascha Franck]

if you were to have a lot of back and forth, hemiola action, 4/4 might be preferable to some actors.
it might be easier to pen a bracketed 3 over a triplet than to make a lot of dots. *shrug*

if you were using say Finale to notate it, and the rhythm was in fact 7+5/8ths, it'd likely be a pain in the ass to make the brackets conform to 7+5 in 4/4.

it's the same difference objectively.

Of course you're right - it's just that in "normal" contexts, such as swing, shuffle, boogie or whatever rhythms, 4/4 with a "swing" index is easier to read, simply due to the fact that you write down the first and third 8th note triplets as plain 8ths as long as the middle 8th note triplet isn't required.
And well, you won't believe how many musical sheets are still using 12/8 for such occasions, most likely due to the fact that either the composer or musical director (or both) have a classical background. Just like a lot of musical sheets are written down "alla breve" (so instead of writing down 16ths, 8ths are used at double tempo), really.
But as said, in the context you mentioned, it's perfectly valid (and most likely better) to use 12/8.

[jancivil]

For rock 'n roll, if you HAD to write it down for some odd reason, it's 4/4 isn't it.

I always thought of Manic Depression as 9/8 and not 3/4, and I couldn't tell you why. I've had to teach it to bands, and I said: "9/8, boys".

I haven't looked at sheets or written them in eons, is one reason it's all such a moot point to me.

[welcome to the machine]

Time sigantures were devised to give the performer a clue as to how a piece should sound before they have played it in the days before recorded music, sequencers and the like.

A piece in 4/4 is in 4/4, a very standard rhythm. A section that has triplet feel is just a deviation, the piece is otherwise in 4/4 and the time signature tells the performer as such.

A piece in 12/8 is an indication that that feel is the standard throughout, that the feel of 4 should be sidelined in favour of a compound time feel.

sequence it how you like, the terminology was devised for performers and i very useful to them (me) still today. If I came accross a piece meant to be felt in 12/8 but written in 4/4 I would most likely get annoyed with the composer very quickly for having to read all those triplet rests etc.

[VicDiesel]

Yes, it's called a hemiola, when one or the other opposes the established 2 or 3.

I don't think the concept of hemiola includes the polyrhythmic idea of one voice doing 2 and the other 3.

At least in early baroque music it is the playing of 1-2 1-2 1-2 to fill up two 3/4 measures. And that can be done by all voices at the same time, or one against the others.

Example "I wanna be in A-me-ri-ca", from West Side Story. 3+3+2+2+2. The second group of 6 is a hemiola.

Victor.

[jancivil]

America is what my first theory teacher used as a hemiola.

the two groupings, the first is two 3s, the second is three 2s, makes a hemiola because you have one [3], then the other [2].

although not at the same time, it IS 3 vs 2. IE: neither type amounts to any hemiola by itself. the concept of hemiola IS what you just said it 'doesn't include'. 1-2 1-2 1-2 in 3/4 time isn't my understanding of a hemiola. If one of the voices has an accented note or syllable (OR important word textually, to be really precise in this pracice period) on the second '2', by contrast to an emphasis on one, it's a hemiola.

[jancivil]

according to wiki, we are both wrong about the hemiola effect:

Musicians' common speech has extended the definition of "hemiola" to include any occasion of a "three-against-two" metrical feel --- including some mixed meters and polyrhythms --- contrary to the word's original meaning. For example, "America" from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story is often said to contain good examples of hemiola. However, though "America" does alternate between 6/8 time and 3/4 time, this is not strictly hemiola; hemiola is specifically the regrouping of notes in simple triple meter into groups of two beats rather than three.

Likewise, three-against-two polyrhythms are not hemiola, since 1) they may or may not occur over two bars of triple meter, and 2) in hemiola, the triple-meter feel is altogether absent from the two bars in question.

Were the metrical impulse to be not a three beat pattern changing to a two beat one (as in the Mozart example above), but one where a two beat impulse changes to a two [?three] beat one, the pattern of 2:3 would be known as sesquialtera.

THIS claims that the dotted feel (6/8 for 3/4, basically) subbing for the quarter note feel in 3/4 (and NOT the other way around) IS hemiola, period. Which seems totally arcane and pedantic to me, certainly...

[herodotus]

THIS claims that the dotted feel (6/8 for 3/4, basically) subbing for the quarter note feel in 3/4 (and NOT the other way around) IS hemiola, period. Which seems totally arcane and pedantic to me, certainly...

Yes, it is.

This is why theory moves forward so slowly. It is largely a backward-looking scholasticism that would rather discuss the same minutiae over and over than ever discuss anything new. There is never even the slightest hint of an attempt at the sort of systematic understanding that most disciplines strive for as a matter of course.

I would love to see your average theorist try to analyze something like Ligeti's 'Three Pieces for Two Pianos'. It would take them months to cover it in a class room.

But of course, there is no chance of that ever happening.

[jancivil]

I have had two theory teachers (Webb Wiggins and James Galatin). Neither was a pedant, both pushed me to use the information to gain knowledge about how things worked enough to work a thing my own self.

I count myself really lucky in this regard.

[VicDiesel]

THIS claims that the dotted feel (6/8 for 3/4, basically) subbing for the quarter note feel in 3/4 (and NOT the other way around) IS hemiola, period. Which seems totally arcane and pedantic to me, certainly...

So it's only a hemiola if 3/4 + 3/4 gets divided into 2/4 + 2/4 + 2/4, but not if 3/8 + 3/8 is divided 2/8 + 2/8 + 2/8? That's silly.

Anyway, I only mentioned "America" because it's the most likely to be known by people on this forum. My favourites would have been pieces by Simpson, Susato, Praetorius, &c. Especially The Fairie Round by Holborne, which hemiolas like crazy, in 5 voices, with multiple interpretations of the rhythm at any given bar.

Victor.

[Kim Lajoie]

Can I have a go?

As a composer, 4/4 with triplets is useful if you want to switch between (or juxtapose) 8/8 (eight quavers) with 4/4 triplets. Juxtaposition would give you the three-over-two rhythm.

6/8 is useful if you want to switch between 2/4 triplets and 3/4 straight (with quavers). Think "I want to live in America" from West Side Story.

I suppose it's a decision of what you want to do with the pace of striaght timing against triplets. Use 4/4 if you want straight timing to have the same pace in accents (it's all crotchets), but quavers slow down. Use 6/8 is you want the same pace in quavers, but accents speed up.

12/8 is just an extention of 6/8, but obviously with more scope for grouping into composite time.

-Kim.

[jancivil]

THIS claims that the dotted feel (6/8 for 3/4, basically) subbing for the quarter note feel in 3/4 (and NOT the other way around) IS hemiola, period. Which seems totally arcane and pedantic to me, certainly...

So it's only a hemiola if 3/4 + 3/4 gets divided into 2/4 + 2/4 + 2/4, but not if 3/8 + 3/8 is divided 2/8 + 2/8 + 2/8? That's silly.

That thing claims, (mayhaps with historical accuracy, which IMO is good for music history class more than music theory class), that Hemiola is when you treat 3/4 essentially like it's 6/8, and only in this case.

Which - I wanted to address the question about tuplets. Tuplets isn't different than using dotted values in simple (3/4) time. IE: 2 in the time of 3 (which, I call hemiola.)

IE: the two dotted quarters used in 3/4 to get the 6/8 effect can be written as tuplets. In 20th c. and subsequent musics it's often done when the dotted quarters are doubled up as dotted 8ths, 16ths etc.

(Though this tends to occur in more complex contexts.)

[fidelio67]

They are different. It's subjective though. They do suggest different feels as. Like 2/4 and 4/4. Which is sort of weird as one earlier poster used Good Thing by FYC as an example of something in 4 and I would have said it was in 2.
As for programming it into a sequencer and them sounding exactly the same, of course they would. But you could also program it into a sequencer in 2/4, 6/8, 6/4 and it would sound the same. No one is, I hope suggesting that these are all the same too.

[jancivil]

Since you're being strictly from argumentative, hey!:
IF the math works to where the thing/the idea lands on ONE, how is any of this different, objectively?

12/8, sure as shootin, = 6/4, at the self-same tempo. Difference between 6/8 and 12/8 is 'how many bars per phrase'. Triplets in 4/4 = 12/8, therefore Triplets in 2/4 = 6/8. Two dotted quarters {6/8} only differs from 2 quarters 2/4 in terms of tempo, when you get right down to it.

In terms of your sequencer, which is objective, what's the diff, was my point, and you can't refute it.

(when you need to translate to a person, you probably need some subjective criteria, sure)