Michael Edwards
Wed, 05 Nov 2003 22:52:02 -0800
I hope I'm not coming in on this too late - but I've just been catching up on this thread, which touches on issues I've personally encountered in the past. It seems best to combine my replies to comments by a few people.
[Johannes Gebauer:]
>How would one indicate a rest for exactly half a measure of 18/8 (which is
>basically two 9/8 measures, with six beats per measure, one beat per dotted
>quarter)?
I suppose 18/8 could also just as much indicate a bar which is three 6/8
bars, could it? I have used it for this, and cannot think of any alternative.
Thus 18/8 could be ambiguous, in that it could signify either three groups
of 2 beats, or two groups of 3. Yet I cannot think of any reasonable
alternative to 18/8 for either of these situations. However, I would imagine
that the actual music itself would usually make it clear which arrangement was
required - just one grouping of beats would seem to fit, and the other wouldn't.
And when it comes to notating long notes or rests, the way you notated them
could reflect one metre or the other.
A few examples that occur to me:
3 notes of two beats each:
two groups of 3 beats (9/8 x 2):
dotted minim, two tied dotted crotchets, dotted minim (in this case it is
syncopated, hemiola-like)
three groups of 2 beats (6/8 x 3):
dotted minim, dotted minim, dotted minim
one note the entire bar long:
two groups of 3 beats (9/8 x 2):
dotted minim, dotted crotchet, dotted minim, dotted crotchet, all tied
together
three groups of 2 beats (6/8 x 3):
dotted semibreve tied to dotted minim; or possibly 3 dotted minims, all tied
together
3-beat note or rest occupying second half of bar:
two groups of 3 beats (9/8 x 2):
dotted minim, dotted crotchet, tied for notes
three groups of 2 beats (6/8 x 3):
dotted crotchet, dotted minim, tied for notes (this version is syncopated)
a rest occuping the first 4 beats in the bar, followed by notes:
two groups of 3 beats (9/8 x 2):
dotted minim, dotted crotchet, dotted crotchet
three groups of 2 beats (6/8 x 3):
dotted semibreve
- and so on. Various long notes or rests notated this way or that would give
clues as to the intended grouping of the beats (2 x 3 or 3 x 2), if applied
logically and consistently.
In the last example, with the dotted semibreve rest: I know some people
don't like using rests (as against notes) that occupy two thirds of a bar of
triple time, and might shy away from a dotted semibreve rest (although a *note*
occupying two thirds of a bar in triple time is apparently more acceptable than
the same rest, for reasons I don't quite understand). However, in compound
metres, where the note-values get more complex, I would consider that there is
some pressure to eliminate complex tied values or complex groupings of adjacent
rests, even if it is not paramount, and I would give more favourable
consideration for relaxing some of the stricter aspects of rules just to
simplify the notation a little. But to avoid the ambiguity of 2 x 3 vs. 3 x 2
in a metre like 18/8, this relaxation would have to be balanced against keeping
sufficient constency of notation to make it clear which of these groupings is to
be followed. But to me, the dotted semibreve (either rest or note) in 18/8
where it signifies 3 bars of 6/8 is perfectly clear and readable.
Of course one possible way to simplify the notation of certain rhythms is
to use triplets in simple metre, instead of groupings of three in compound
metre. But I have a certain aversion (probably partly a personal quirk) to
using triplets for extended passages when triplets are consistently the only way
the beat is subdivided. To me, triplet-style notation (or tuplet notation
generally) has an air of being an abnormal grouping, and when it becomes the
norm, I prefer to avoid using them when possible.
[Christopher B. J. Smith:]
>I couldn't figure out how to make sure
>that everyone read partial measures correctly (three dotted quarter
>rests? A dotted half rest and a dotted quarter rest?
I would write it the same way I would write the equivalent tied notes. If
I came across a piece in 9/8 which required a single note lasting the full bar,
I would expect to see a dotted minim tied to a dotted crotchet. I am pretty
sure I have in fact seen this (in a Stephen Heller "Study" in F minor, in 9/8
metre, which I learned as a child, for instance), and I would find three tied
dotted crotchets a bit odd, although clear enough; I think I haven seen this on
rare occasions, but don't regard it as the norm.
If the 18/8 is to be taken as 9/8 x 2 (as against 6/8 x 3), then I see no
reason not to treat it similarly to one bar of 9/8.
>Or the undotted equivelants: quarter rest/eighth rest three times, or a half
>rest, a quarter rest, and then quarter rest eighth rest, not very good?)
This does seem a bit too complicated: the first is too many rests in a row;
the second just a bit complicated to add up.
I accept that the ban on dotted rests is rather dubious, and certainly
unnecessary; but I do tend to be a little reluctant to use them. I guess it's
just that I don't quite so often come across them, and I'm being a bit
conservative; but I never have any trouble reading and understanding them, and I
do in fact sometimes use them. And in a metre like 9/8 or 18/8, I certainly
think the dotted rests would be preferable to the undotted versions just quoted
from Christopher.
[Andrew Stiller:]
>Anyway, in my own notation of compound meters, I make free use of a
>notational convention pioneered some 70 years ago by Willi Apel for
>musicological purposes: the vertical double-dot, in which the
>placement of a second dot *above* the first dot increases the
>duration of the note by half of its single-dotted value. A vertically
>double-dotted half note (or rest) would therefore have the value of a
>dotted half plus a dotted quarter, and this is precisely the symbol
>needed to fill half a bar of 18/8.
This is an interesting idea; I have sometimes given thought to whether it
might be possible to have a convention to deal with this, and whether I might
adopt one on occasions. However, I have not been aware of the existence of any
such convention, and had never thought of an obvious way to notate this - so I
have never done anything about it.
So, in this convention, with the second dot above the first, is the second
dot placed in the same space of the staff as the first one (just crammed in
tightly above it), or is it the space above? If the two dots share the same
space in the staff, mightn't the two dots sometimes be a bit too close together
for easy reading? And if the second dot is one space higher than the first, how
do you fit in all the double dots for a whole chord that needs to be notated in
this way?
While I'm on a similar topic: is there any convention used by particular
composers for lengthening a note by one quarter instead of one half? Such as,
for instance, if you are using a metre of 5/8, 5/4, and the like, such a
convention would allow a single note (or rest) to represent a minim plus a
quaver, a semibreve plus a crotchet, etc., and fill the entire bar exactly. It
would be very useful in quintuple metres of any kind.
In 7/8 metre, is it a common convention for a note filling the entire bar
to be double-dotted? (Conventional double-dotting, that is - not the new kind
proposed by Andrew.)
[Andrew:]
>I am far from alone among composers in using this (IMO) extremely
>useful notation. George Crumb uses it routinely, for instance.
I've never encountered this notation - perhaps I haven't come across the
right music.
I've often thought, though, that some kind of convention for this situation
would be extremely useful. I've always preferred using compound time signatures
than constant triplets if the triplets are the only beat subdivision used in a
passage - but all the ties and complicated rests that tend to get required in
compound metres are a bit off-putting.
Regards,
Michael Edwards.
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