Time Signatures

Do you understand time signatures well?
Which time signature(s) do you work in?
Which do you think are more sonically/psychologically interesting?

I have decided that from now on, probably 99% of the time, I refuse to work in 4/4 - or at least typical, straight 4/4 where each measure is 4 or 8 bars long - because 4/4 is just boring, typical, predictable and we are all so used to it.

If I work in 4/4 again, then the measures will be of alternating lengths, and rarely 4 or 8 bars long unless I can make THAT unpredictable

[GregH]

It is good to play around with time like you are suggesting. When playing real instruments I've often worked without time signatures, using the length of an imagined breath as the distance between notes. There are lots of ways to think about using time without having even distances between beats. But I like 4/4 as well. Depends.

[RikkiSho]

Yes I agree. I love that concept you put forward: without using even spaces between notes. I like that. And playing live instruments without a time signature? Interesting! I'd love to hear that!

[RikkiSho]

I tried to do something similar in my track 'Illusions of Separation' - but instead with uneven spaces between the measures of the central main drum Patterns...

[Thought Experiment]

...playing live instruments without a time signature? Interesting! I'd love to hear that!

Oh I do that all the time :cool:...just not on purpose:sigh2:

[GregH]

I tried to do something similar in my track 'Illusions of Separation' - but instead with uneven spaces between the measures of the central main drum Patterns...

nice!

[ambientsketchbook]

I also regularly explore different timings in my work. Check out this thread:

http://www.ambientonline.org/forum/s...ath-and-groove

We've collected some examples from AO artists and others. :mrcool:

[RikkiSho]

Gotcha! I'll check it!

[Seren]

I once did something that had a 17 beat rhythm

7 and 9 are nice too:

l . l . l l . l . l . l l . l . l . l l .


l . l l . l l l . l . l l . l l l .

or if drumming with both hands:

l . l l . l l l . l l l . l l . l . l . l l . l l l . l l l . l l . l .

l l l . l l . l . l . l l . l l l . l l l . l l . l . l. l l . l l l .

[GregH]

Yes I agree. I love that concept you put forward: without using even spaces between notes. I like that. And playing live instruments without a time signature? Interesting! I'd love to hear that!

here - this is very slow though, (which is actually hard to play) http://greghooper.bandcamp.com/track/one-forgets

[KrisM]

I favor: 3/4, 5/4, 7/4, 5/8, 6/8, and 7/8. And 4/4 is nice because after so much time with it, it just tends to fall naturally into things, and it's nick-named 'common time' for a reason: it's simply used a lot

I know them pretty well, too, but it's simple, really. The top number is the number of beats per measure, the bottom is the type of note that gets the beat. 4=quarter note, 8=eighth note, etc. So, RikkiSho, you can't have different length measures without changing the time signature ;) I think you meant different length sections, or maybe phrasing perhaps?

[GregH]

And for this one I used a recording of the loudest drops of rain falling into a swimming pool as the timing sequence and mapped the pitch sequence of Gymnopedie#1 onto that.

https://soundcloud.com/greghooper/unselected

[RikkiSho]

Ah yes - I was getting confused between labels. I was thinking of beats in a "bar", and bars in a measure. In the book "This Is Your Brain On Music", when talking of time signatures and measures, Daniel Levitin gives the example of Yesterday by The Beatles in which the time signature is 4/4, but in phrases of seven measures (bars). Thus being a slightly unconventional 4/4. We are talking of the same thing, what you are calling a "measure" I have always called a "bar". I mis-remembered what the book said; thinking it was using the word "measure" to refer to a section/phrase.

Thanks for the clarification.

[RikkiSho]

And for this one I used a recording of the loudest drops of rain falling into a swimming pool as the timing sequence and mapped the pitch sequence of Gymnopedie#1 onto that.

https://soundcloud.com/greghooper/unselected

...................wow.........
.........how????
How do you ..........how?

[GregH]

And for this one I used a recording of the loudest drops of rain falling into a swimming pool as the timing sequence and mapped the pitch sequence of Gymnopedie#1 onto that.

https://soundcloud.com/greghooper/unselected

...................wow.........
.........how????
How do you ..........how?

I recorded the rain falling using hydrophones. Then I set Reagate(which comes wth Reaper) to send a midi note when it opened on the loudest drops. So that was a bit of fiddling to get the sort of density of drops that I wanted. Then I imported that midi file into Matlab and used some scripts I've written to map the notes (or velocity or timing) of one midi file onto another, in this case mapping the notes from a piece by Satie. I can't remember if I randomly permuted the notes first, that's something I often do. This one is using permutations of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata https://soundcloud.com/greghooper/someone-will-come