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Do you have a favourite time signature?


Fernito
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I once heard a song in 11/11

How do you draw an eleventh note?

I'm not too concerned about meter in my music, so 4/4 is just fine for me. Other time signatures are cool for variety. I always think it's cute when my heavy metal ends up in 3/4. Odd time signatures in metal are pretty rare, though, so I'm afraid I might not have had enough exposure to really say what my favorite is.

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On a mathematic level, 11/11 = 4/4 = 1, but in music it makes no sense, so I'm sure he was being flippant, SLyGeN.

IF people want to use 11th notes, they just subdivide a set of notes into 11 parts. Yes, it does happen (and if you REALLY want to see a messed up score, look up 'Bone Alphabet'... holy shit...).

on sheet music, that would consist of taking a ruler, measuring the major axis of a whole note and then dividing that distance by 11. Then, You measure your new distance across the whole note from the side and draw a line down the whole note where it stops. Erase the other 10/11 of the whole note. The remaining mark is an eleventh note (or at least an eleventh of A note). :D

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I once heard a song in 11/11, which was pretty kick ass for a song that sounded like accordian-based irish prog rock.

There is no such thing as 11/11. People don't write 11th notes. Saying something is written in 11/11 just means that you don't really understand time signatures.

Any composer that does write something in "11/11" is just being a pretentious snot who feels like making his or her sheet music difficult to read.

Also, time signatures aren't fractions.

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Any composer that does write something in "11/11" is just being a pretentious snot who feels like making his or her sheet music difficult to read.

to be honest this applies to pretty much any time signature that isn't 2/4, 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 5/4 or 7/8

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There is no such thing as 11/11. People don't write 11th notes. Saying something is written in 11/11 just means that you don't really understand time signatures.

Any composer that does write something in "11/11" is just being a pretentious snot who feels like making his or her sheet music difficult to read.

Also, time signatures aren't fractions.

well techically 11/11 would be 1/1... and technically, you could divide a whole note into 11 beats... it would just be really hard to play and not very practical :<

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Any composer that does write something in "11/11" is just being a pretentious snot who feels like making his or her sheet music difficult to read.

Completely agreed, there. Anything that's written in 11/11 can just as easily be written in 11/8, without any of the hassle.

Also, time signatures aren't fractions.

Never heard the term 'dividing the meters into x/y' ('division' is fractions)? They actually are fractions, when you think of them as a part over a whole (how many parts/beats are in the whole measure), or as a proportion (beats per measure).

Just sayin', is all (the math teacher in me is now coming out - considering this was one of the things I liked to show students when teaching fractions as a neat application :<).

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What about good old 4/4? It's the most natural signature, so why not?

4/4 is great and all but it's only natural to westerners because we're used to hearing it so much. other cultures have histories of using (to our ears) much more irregular time signatures all the time, because they feel them as "natural."

but i mean where else do you get that pumpin 4 on the floor, i mean come on

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And then came the waltz. How lurid!

I'm much more partial to bands/songs that can switch time signatures in a song and make it work.

This exactly. Though it doesn't have to be weird: any changeup can add spice... so long as it doesn't sound forced. Or do as Taucer indicated: mix up the rhythm (triplets, syncopation, and so on) within the time signature. Or just don't have a time signature at all!

And yeah, it's all what you do with them. Time signatures are just frameworks. I guess I can see having a favorite, especially if you're a composer and come to think in (and become good working with) certain time sigs, but as a listener I can't be bothered with it. After hearing enough things in odd time sigs - or more correctly, after hearing both good and bad (to my tastes) in sorts of time sigs - I am no longer fascinated by them or give preference based on them.

But waltz time is indubitably the best when it comes to dancing.

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