There are a lot of opinions on this, but here is mine.
The time signature should reflect the GROUND beat, not any hemiolas
or incidental accents that may crop up. The melody is not always the
best indicator of metre (what would you do with Fascinating Rhythm,
for example, or any jazz or latin tune that has syncopations AGAINST
the ground beat?) The tipoff for me in your situation is that you say
the left hand has very simple rhythms. This is your ground beat, and
this is what the conducting pattern will be. Let the melody do what
it needs to do in opposition to the ground beat, using any accents or
odd beamings that you must to communicate it.
8/8 is not very informative as a time signature, and it should be
accompanied by a "3+3+2" expression over it or else be actually
written that way. I am suspicious of 8/8 in general. Why not 4/4 and
we can just perform the hemiola-type pattern as the parts require,
either through Q. Q. Q or 3E 3E 2E with contours or accents as required?
10/8 as well does not have any performance practice associated with
it, and should be written as something more recognisable. Clear and
quick communication is the strongest argument in these cases, I
think. Stravinsky rewrote part of the Rite of Spring a few years
later because of lack of clarity in the original metre changes, and
even at that he didn't clean it up as much as I think he could have
(but he was on the cutting edge then, so we can cut him some slack!)
As for how to accomplish this in Finale, you can manually set
beamings in Speedy with the / key, copy the passage to other staves
and re-pitch using the Simple Entry repitch tool and hitting the
notes on your MIDI keyboard. This is the only thing I use Simple
Entry for, and it is marvelous.
Christopher
On Nov 25, 2008, at 10:31 PM, Jane Frasier wrote:
No.
Here is the other challenge. I am transcribing my piano sonata
for band.
There are sections of this where the left hand is playing a
waltz type
pattern but switching from 3/4 to 5/4 to 4/4, etc. The melody in
the right
hand is written as 6/8, 10/8, 8/8 with various groups of 2 or 3
eighth
notes. I think this works ok for piano, but what will the
conductor do with
this? I think it should be one of the other but I am not sure
which meters
would be easier to conduct and follow.
Any ideas?
Jane
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
A Balkan folk-dance beat, perhaps? :)
ajr
I am using Finale 2008 on Mac, OS 10.5.5.
I want a time signature to say 8/8 but I want it beamed 3+3+2. I
created
a composite time signal of 3+3+2/8+8+8 and then a different time
signature 8/8 to display. When I put in the notes all the eighth notes
have separate stems -- no beams. I tried rebeaming according to time
signature and got the same result.
What am I missing?
Thanks so much.
Jane
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