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The Multiverse ::: [CA, Sac]

Yes. Couple ways to look at it: 4/3 is 4/4 with a swing beat (but more mechanical) or 3/4 played much faster but without the accent on 2 and 3. More on 1. To me it's the way of saying "swing" in a time signature. The best way to visual see it is to go in a DAW like flstudio and change the time signature to 4/3.
Glad you like the song. I just went and tried to play it on the piano again. smile

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Aside: IMO "weird" isn't just defined as the time signature you choose. You can make really natural sounding material in any time signature just as you can write absolutely bizzare timings within 4/4

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Auxcide wrote:

The best way to visual see it is to go in a DAW like flstudio and change the time signature to 4/3.


AHA, there's your problem. FL Studio is notorious for putting "4/3" as a representation for four dotted quarter notes in it's pattern matrix, however you'd be hard pressed to ever find somebody say "time signature is in 4/3." It's more just a thing FL Studio does to help conceptualize that grouping better. I can attest that some other DAWs don't do that or if so, they're referring to the grouping of notes in the grid rather than the time sig.


Discussion on FL's mystery "4/3" here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CGFNNscXWg

top comment:

some dude wrote:

This is NOT 4/3 time. That does not work out theoretically in the slightest. This consists of four beats - each of them subdivided into groups of three ie: either 12/8 as was stated by itsmark123 or 4/4 using a triplet pattern. It's reminiscent of the swing pattern used in jazz. Peace

Last edited by an0va (Apr 25, 2012 7:50 pm)

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Lexington, KY

Well, now let's put this to bed. The bottom number in a time signature dictates the size beat on which the upper number is counted. Our options being: 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 (No one uses 16.... but, you totally can). That's because we divide notation by halves, where a 1 on the bottom would denote a "whole" note as the note to be counted upon.

Now, I suppose one could argue that you could count on "triplets", but time signatures do not account for triplets, as one would just say 3/4 or 3/8 and so forth.

As for swing, this doesn't actually affect the time signature in any way, as all the notes will still add up in length to the number of beats we are counting (which is the top number of a signature)

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Auxcide wrote:

Glad you like the song. I just went and tried to play it on the piano again. smile


Record this on piano!!!

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The Multiverse ::: [CA, Sac]
Solarbear wrote:

Well, now let's put this to bed.

Put to bed. And rest. I stand knowledged.

an0va: I will try. It might come out really muddy. And my piano is a half step out of tune. I'll have to re-learn it today.

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post it up when you can! smile

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Matthew Joseph Payne
Solarbear wrote:

1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 (No one uses 16.... but, you totally can)

16th note (and worse - 32nd, 64th...) time signatures are pretty common in contemporary "classical" music, but usually only for passing bars.

Last edited by kineticturtle (Apr 25, 2012 9:29 pm)

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Philly

I'm really glad how this was settled!

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The Multiverse ::: [CA, Sac]

Okay, an0va, I did 2 quick versions and put them up on my soundcloud. Not the best quality or playing but one day I'll do a better one in a better area.
Edit: and their really quiet because I used soundcloud app. Also the second one is much faster lol

Last edited by Auxcide (Apr 25, 2012 9:54 pm)

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Check out Danimal's stuff for sure; I've done a bit, but nothing too specific. G and H commands are your friend.

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Chicago IL
Auxcide wrote:

I'm curious of stories of people dabbling with time signatures

one time i was using an odd time signature and then all these events happened because of it

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The Multiverse ::: [CA, Sac]

Riveting stuff. Thank you.

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Saskrotch wrote:
Auxcide wrote:

I'm curious of stories of people dabbling with time signatures

one time i was using an odd time signature and then all these events happened because of it

I bet this happened a lot to classical musicians trying to pioneer in odd time signatures.

"One time I presented a tune in a weird time signature. People started leaving the opera house, and when I tried to debut another piece, no one wanted to sign me!"

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BOSTON

i think people love talking about time signatures because they think it's like some arcane classical music science or something, a la fugue form or invertible counterpoint. it becomes so much less zazzy when you realize that it's basically just groupings of 2 or 3 pulses grouped together to suit an arbitrary bar line, for the sake of sight-reading or to match a form for melodic purposes. not that I don't love me some odd meter (clearly its a fundemental part of music), its just that it seems to be such a constant topic of conversation!

polymeter is similar in that it's all granulated subdivisions. 3:2 and 4:3 sound cool, 5:4 occasionally finds a use, but beyond that it gets into either iannis xenakis / conlon nancarrow territory, where its "zomg weird mechanical polymeter for the sake of polymeter" or if it's going to be performed by a human, it might as well just be written in a legible (if approximate) form using connected dotted eights/sixteenths whatever.

sorry for snob

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Rochester, NY

THE DRUMS ARE FOUR ON THE FLOOR
SHE'S BACK TO THE BEDROOM FOR ONE MORE