fc
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Melbourne, Australia
Devieus wrote:
vinpous wrote:

Just a minor addendum to some of the above posts: there is a BIG difference between 6/8 and 3/4. 3/4 has 3x evenly spaced crotchet beats (and is thus a TRIPLE metre), 6/8 has TWO evenly spaced DOTTED CROTCHET beats, making it a DUPLE metre.

You count them like this (the capitals are the emphasis or "down" beat):

3/4 | ONE two three | ONE two three | ONE two three | ...

6/8 | ONE two three FOUR five six | ONE two three FOUR five six | ...

So from that perspective, 3/4 is actually more closely related to 9/8 than to 6/8, because 9/8 has THREE groups of (three) quavers per bar.

9/8 | ONE two three FOUR five six SEVEN eight nine | ONE two three FOUR five six SEVEN eight nine | ...

That's just a technicality. Imagine splitting the bar in half and pretend it's 3/8, then double the note length and half the tempo, you get 3/4. There might be some arcane reason why things don't work that way, but in practice things tend to fall into place either way. One example of which would be a waltz, where every other bar is tapped differently, but still in 3/4.

No it's not.

3/8 has ONE impulse (it's the same as 1/4 time with a triplet instead of a duplet), 6/8 has TWO impulses (the same as 2/4 with triplets instead of duplets), 9/8 has THREE, 12/8 has FOUR, etc.

1/4 has ONE impulse, 2/4 has TWO impulses, 3/4 has THREE impulses, and so on.

The technicality is that you can subvert those all you want, but that doesn't make a single bar of 6/8 the same as two bars of 3/8 or 3/4.

Devieus
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NL
vinpous wrote:

No it's not.

3/8 has ONE impulse (it's the same as 1/4 time with a triplet instead of a duplet), 6/8 has TWO impulses (the same as 2/4 with triplets instead of duplets), 9/8 has THREE, 12/8 has FOUR, etc.

1/4 has ONE impulse, 2/4 has TWO impulses, 3/4 has THREE impulses, and so on.

The technicality is that you can subvert those all you want, but that doesn't make a single bar of 6/8 the same as two bars of 3/8 or 3/4.

I see what you're saying, it took me a while until someone pointed out this song, one inherently in 6/8 for very specific reasons, mixing the 2 and 3 pulses into one, making transcribing into 3/4 impossible; I feel this is only a thing if you do combine them, unless you specifically want the second pulse to be less strong than the first.

kevanatkins
Offline
Melbourne, Victoria

To vinpous & Devieus:
While some theory books do suggest a convention of 3/4 being 3 impulses and 3/8 being one, in practice it hasn't been consistently adhered to that consistently in the literature (the classic Beethoven 9 Scherzo example comes to mind). Where the aural equivalence between 3/4 and 6/8 would lie would be in 3/4 with 2 bar hypermeter at twice the tempo of the 6/8, but not when the span of 3/4 is the same as that of the 6/8 bar, then they are not equivalent. The the hyper meter and the compound meter are only notationally different. There are some who will make the claim that the different notations would yield different performances, but that's edging into the territory of pseudo-science.

Then there's all the fun of hemiolas and polymeters (multiple perceived meters). Then metrical dissonance. Then Brahms. Some stuff in between. Then Ferneyhough broke music (in a good way). And now? The Python, Lilypond and LaTex don't want to play nice and give me my damn A1 sized score in 21 different meters at once. Bleh. Sod it, I'll just curl up and Netflix all the old shows I loved as a teenager because life's all too hard.

But seriously, this paper might be of interest:
Cohn, Richard, Theory of Musical Meter, November 2015, Yale University/University of Sydney
if you can get ahold of it... I might still have a copy somewhere.

It provides a pretty good first principles definition of meter and pretty good way of thinking about it, though limited after a certain point (damn it Ferneyhough), it could be useful within the scope of this discussion. What's nice about it is that it shifts the focus towards the aurally perceived time events.

Last edited by kevanatkins (January 9, 2016 6:35 pm)

fc
Offline
Melbourne, Australia

It's dependent upon tempo, sure. But that doesn't change the structure of the metres under discussion. As I said, subverting those structures is entirely up to the person making the music. Of course people are going to NOT adhere to those structures (and then consider how one might conduct those subversive structures!), imagine how boring music would be if everybody wrote in accordance to these time signatures.

Given the topic of the thread, however, I stand by everything I said and my disagreement with Devieus on the interchangeability of the metres.

kineticturtle
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MJP

neeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrds





heart

kevanatkins
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Melbourne, Victoria
kineticturtle wrote:

neeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrds

I feel no shame.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that the notation of the meter and the resulting aural experience are not as strongly tied together in practice. So, the notation is an inadequate definition of meter. Subversion in an artistic sense is irrelevant here. Subverting the notation does nothing to music in this case. Notation ≠ music.

Pocaille
Offline
Montreal

I don't know if somebody allready post it, but this is cool (and free)
https//gumroad.com/l/tldrmusic

Devieus
Offline
NL
kevanatkins wrote:
kineticturtle wrote:

neeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrds

I feel no shame.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that the notation of the meter and the resulting aural experience are not as strongly tied together in practice. So, the notation is an inadequate definition of meter. Subversion in an artistic sense is irrelevant here. Subverting the notation does nothing to music in this case. Notation ≠ music.

It's still important to know the rules and why they exist before you can go break them.

I also noticed the flaw in my argument, I should've said 6/4 is closer to 6/8, instead of going to 3/8. I'll just keep it at that, I admit my wrong. 6/4 is only sometimes 3/4, sometimes it's 2/4, sometimes it's 4/4 and 2/4, but it is practically identical to 6/8, just with notes being twice as long and tempo twice as fast.