[OT] Fractions on musical notation

[Dafydd Hughes]

> > Time signatures are crap. They should have switched to a number
> > over a note value a long time ago; we could have easily avoided
> > abominable travesties like the time signature on the 2nd
> > movement of Beethoven's 9th (B needed four over dotted quarter). If
> > music notation had been invented by a computer scientist we
> > wouldn't be stuck in the current mess in which 6/8 means two
> > completely different meters (3 over quarter, or 2 over dotted
> > quarter).
>
> That was proposed by (some great musician from XIX century that I can't
> remember) but it's hard to change habits.
> The idea was to use: above, number of beats, and below, the note lasting
> one beat, *always*. So conventional 6/8 would be 2/"dotted quarter" with a
> dotted quarted drawn as itself, not implied by a number. This allows for
> more meaningful signatures, like 3+3+2/"eight note" for some Piazzolla
> tangos that are now written as 4/4 (but don't have the stress pattern for
> 4/4 at all).

Hi! While I wouldn't agree without reservation that time sigs are crap
(more like they're making the best of a bad situation) I do agree that
number over note value is way better. In fact, the college I teach at
starts with time signatures that way (based on Kodaly): 2 over quarter
note, 2 over dotted quarter etc. It's amazing how well everybody
understands until we switch to 6/8. Then everything falls apart,
because it's no longer intuitive.

cheers
dafydd

-- 
www.sideshowmedia.ca
skype: chickeninthegrass