My guess is this is more of a problem with the idea itself than it is with expressing it (edited: Had it backwards.
)That is: She may be envisioning it wrong. This happens because there are no barriers setup in our heads - we gravitate unconsciously to a certain time signature, but we expect to write in 4/4 and that causes confusion.
It's a very common thing to happen to musicians in their first 5 or so years, and they lack the experience and know-how, the sort of understanding of their music and how they write it to solve these apparent problems.
For example, when I first started out, I would find myself trying to fit 3/8 patterns into 4/4 time. Sometimes I'd be able to tweak them to fit into 4/4 time, and other times, the song would fall apart for obvious reasons.
And I knew I loved 3/8 time, but I didn't realize how much of my music wanted to be written in it.
I think we all have an "internal time signature" that we gravitate to, and it's not always 4/4, but the way we hear it in our heads could make it sound that way.
