Help needed, metre

[rhomboid]

For someone who has a good ear...
is this piece in 13/8 ?

http://www.youtube.com/v/nR0Z8bkkguQ


Thank you very much in advance !

[Sandra]

This kind of music does not conform to metric standards. Assigning a meter to it is a useless undertaking.

[Luke]

This kind of music does not conform to metric standards. Assigning a meter to it is a useless undertaking.

That's an odd thing to say, both halves of it. What are metric standards and why doesn't this piece conform to them? And why is working out its metre useless. Not in the slightest. I found it fun to listen to and both fun and informative and thought-provoking to try to work out the metre. Thus, not useless at all.

FWIW - I only listened once, and there are moments when the thing breaks down somewhat in tempo which made the metre hard to discern during that one listen. But, the music seems to be in 7 throughout, strongly so in the instrumental passages between verse, and also in the voice by the end of each verse. At the begining of each verse there seems to be a decrease in tempo and an intentional slackening of rhythmic precision which obscure the beat a little, though as it seemlessly merges into 7 I suspect it's in 7 there too. The interesting thing about the 7 is that there is a tiny hiatus before the first beat every time - one could think of this as extra-metrical, a kind of super-imposed feature. Alternatively, if it's part of the metre then the piece could be in 7+1/2 or even 7+1/4 beat metre. I'd favour the former, but to choose either could be seen as imposing western notational norms on a non-western music not designed with them in mind....

might listen again later when I'm not in a rush!

[rhomboid]

Thanks for your analysis, Luke.


This is mexican folk:

http://www.youtube.com/v/44jJo8_XSII

Begins in 5...

[Luke]

Nifty piece! 

[Mn Dave]

Luke, your avatar looks like a woman's crotch.

Good show!

[Luke]

Luke, your avatar looks like a woman's crotch.

Good show!

Yes, it does, somewhat, doesn't it? It's from the front cover of the score of Janacek's The Diary of One Who Disappeared, which is of course a very highly erotic piece of music, so I suppose that's not exactly inappropriate! I didn't choose it with that in mind, I promise, but once I realised (and you aren't the first other person to notice, either!) I didn't want to change it

[Sandra]

Luke, I think you're contradicting yourself by calling this music "extra-metrical" and dismissing my comment in the same breath.

I could be wrong about my skepticism, and I am looking forward to more convincing arguments.

[Luke]

Luke, I think you're contradicting yourself by calling this music "extra-metrical" and dismissing my comment in the same breath.

I could be wrong about my skepticism, and I am looking forward to more convincing arguments.

I didn't say the music was extra-metrical. Read more carefully. I said it had features that were extra-metrical, that is features which alter or add to the underlying metre. Exactly as western music does with pauses, commas, ritardandi, accelerandi etc. The music itself is no more extra-metrical than Beethoven. My rider to that observation was that, as the music is unnotated and as I can't chat to the performers, I do not know if these features are indeed extra-metrical (that is, little hiatuses imposed on the metre that the performers conceptualise as such) or if they are in fact built in to the metre (that is, that the last limb of each 'bar' is of a slightly longer length). Hence my ethnomusicological hedging (just as I was taught to do!)

[Sandra]

I just doubt that our Western system of music notation can successfully apply to this kind of music. It does OK with a lot of European folk musics. But the ethnic music from india and some other Asian and African cultures seem to be outside of our associations of rhythm and harmony. I really tried hard to assign meter to this particular song. But whatever I come up with seems like a forced application of Western terms and systems to music that operates on a different paradigm.

[Luke]

@ Sandra

I didn't find it hard (bear in mind I only listened once and think I essentially got the gist of things, though other listenings would help me be more precise with the breakdown moment where the tempo changes; I found the drum patterns underneath hard to hear on the youtube clip). Certainly it was no harder than transcribing pieces of classical music from CD, which I've had to do sometimes. The issues in the one task are similar to issues in the other (though in one the question is usually 'what did the composer write' and in the other 'what did the composer/performer intend'). It's only the difference in my familiarity with each style and its aesthetic which makes me more cautious with the music I understand less.

I remember once - for reasons to complex to go into now - transcribing the slow movement of a violin concerto by Thomas Linley Jr (a fantastic one, BTW), trying to get as close to what I imagined the original score must look like as possible. It was fine up to a point - repeated listening helped me get the piece down in what I was fairly confident was the right orchestration. But beyond that point came in questions of detail - that little pause in the music, is it in the score, or is it the performer's interpretation; that ornamented cadence, how much of it is indicated in the score and how much is extemporised; those stressed inner parts, were they indicated by the composer or suggested by the conductor. Etc. etc. The point is, these are the same (sort of) issues that arise when listening to music from a non-Western culture. As a Western-trained musician familiar with the intricacies of Western musical style and history, I am more automatically sensitized to these issues than I am to issues in non-Western music. That's why I feel able to say that, for instance, the pauses I heard in the Linley were probably put in there by the composer, whereas in the sample at the top of this thread, I really can't say whether the hiatuses are interpretative or part of the 'basic' music. I don't even know if that is a relevant question. That's why I leave the answer open.

But OTOH if you asked me simply to notate what I heard, ignoring aesthetic question, I think I could do it successfully in this case, and that is why I disputed your original post. The 7-beat division seems very clear indeed, and I would probably just write a note in the score that one should pause very briefly (it's almost imperceptible sometimes) on the last beat of each bar. And that, after all, is the type of note-from-the-composer one sees frequently in Western music of the 20th century. There are, undoubtedly, some non-Western musics in which metre is hard to find, and maybe in these cases there isn't much point in trying to do so, as you say. I have indeed seen a few transcriptions which try to do this (mostly very old transcriptions, though - modern musicology doesn't make this mistake very often). But even in these cases, of course, notation is still very possible (it isn't necessary to include a metrical indication to notate rhythm, naturally). But this piece seems to follow a fairly distinct pattern.

[Luke]

The piece above reminded of my past experience and I thought it was possibly in 7/8 with some adjustments.

My problem with trying to assign time signatures to this sort of thing (in fact, any sort of thing) is not the 7 part of the above, it's the 8! Because the feeling 'the beat is an eighth note' is a) a very Western thing and b) a very subjective thing. There's no definite right or wrong about it even within the Western tradition. Together, those two issues make a double reason why assigning the time signature 7/8 to the piece is problematic - why not 7/4 or 7/16?  In actual fact, I agree with you, of course, and I would write the thing out in 7/8 too, but this is just another of those issues which makes transcription such a strange task - as soon as one begins, one is imposing one's own opinions.

[karlhenning]

. . . - as soon as one begins, one is imposing one's own opinions.

Is it in Italian, the punning proverb? — Translation is treason.

[Ten thumbs]

This music sounds very similar to some folk dance music I heard in Croatia many years ago (i.e. in Jugoslavia!). If you want to put it into a more understandable Western context, listen to some of Bartok's arrangements. From a dance step point of view, I have the impression that the beat is something like *o*o*o**o*o*o**o*o*o* etc.

[Luke]

Yes, I agree - and am uncertain why it is important to try to nail down the meter.  Maybe if one has to try to teach this music to someone who can read music but has no experience with the style giving them some metrical scheme might help - but I generally find that repeated listening and playing along with a recorded track works much better than trying to notate it and then get someone to play it back.

Well, and another reason would be for ethnomusicological study and elucidation - though a recording obviously conveys the sound of a piece of music most accurately, it is moving through time, and this makes it hard if one wishes just to sit down and study the piece. To be able to pin the whole piece down on paper, to be able to point to it and say, look, bar x is expanding on what happened in bay y (or whatever) is a valuable thing, when used in the right way. But that is why this question of notation is so absolutely important - because if it is done carelessly then any analysis that uses it risks drawing conclusions from facts that are not in the music itself but only in its transcribed notation.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Is it in Italian, the punning proverb? — Translation is treason.

Traduttore, traditore. Translator, traitor.

[Sandra]

Thanks Luke. If I was a professional composer I would probably be able to make better sense of the music and the extent to which it may be applied to Western notation. If you say it's easy for you to put a meter to it, then there's no point for me to argue about it. I'll bookmark this thread and try figuring this out again in a few years maybe.. )

[karlhenning]

Traduttore, traditore. Translator, traitor.

You see? I've already betrayed the Ur-text! ; )

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

You see? I've already betrayed the Ur-text! ; )

Ever true to the spirit, is Karl. 

[rhomboid]

I'd favour the former, but to choose either could be seen as imposing western notational norms on a non-western music not designed with them in mind....

This is western music and at the same time non-western:

http://www.youtube.com/v/OZ4xVoLQ-1c