Polymeter in Bach

Wow, that is spectacularly unhelpful.

Well, blame me for going OT about the editorial aspect.

Fine, deleted.

Gall bladder acting up today, eh?

I wonder whether Richard was commenting on Scriabinā€™s minimal markings, rather than taking offence at Todd saying that the attitude appeared to be ā€œlet the player figure it outā€?

In any case, letā€™s please give each other the benefit of the doubt and avoid piling on. Iā€™m going to close this thread now, since I believe the original issue has been well and truly resolved.

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Sorry folks - my comments in the Bach polymeter thread were aimed at Scriabin! I meant that his failure to mark the tuplets was spectacularly unhelpful.

Iā€™m very sorry to have caused the upset that I did.

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I apologize for being sassy. I now understand your drift.

LOL, I was sorta off-topic from the original post, so I just deleted it and moved on. No big deal!

I for one wouldnā€™t mind if you reposted it (and maybe for @dspreadbury to merge it with the now-locked thread), as it was by and large instructive with regards to the topic.

Yes, I thought it was a very good example.

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Yes, it all stemmed from a good placeā€¦

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Hereā€™s the first system in Dorico with tuplet signposts turned on:

Thatā€™s leaving a lot for the performer to figure out! Thatā€™s #19 from his 24 Preludes, Op. 11. IMSLP link here.

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I transcribed some Scriabin arrangements for a client last year, and it tested every bit of my Dorico-fu to figure out the hidden tuplets.

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There is one (easily overlooked) bit of functionality that I wish people were more aware of in these scenarios: as long as such hidden tuplets are consecutive* and of equivalent ratios, they can usually be consolidated into a single tuplet per voice, thus keeping the number of Signposts down dramatically.

The left hand staff of the example can be done with just two 30:24 tuplets; or 15:12, if defined in eighths.

Skimming this particular piece, the pattern holds all the way through with a short exception somewhere in the middle. Therefore, I guess, just four tuplets are needed overall for the 5:4 pattern in the lower staff.


*NB: more broadly speaking, ā€œin phaseā€, a distinction which can be useful in certain situations.

You say it took all of your fu to bar it? :grimacing:

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True enough, but they can also be duplicated and repitched, which I find much easier. Once I get lots of the wrong notes with right rhythms in place, I can hide the signposts and see what Iā€™m repitching more clearly.

I did this one a while ago, but once you start tuplet input it stays on, so for the left hand I think I likely started a 5:4 tuplet, then just kept inputting. I use quite a few 2-step shortcuts, and have a bunch set up for filtering, so after inputting the tuplets I probably just selected the whole passage (left hand bars 1-20 here), used Ctrl+F ; to filter all tuplets, then edited the Properties all in one go. Seems like less math anyway! :grinning:

I missed all the previous fireworks but would like to say that polyrhythmic and other passages with 'ā€œunderstoodā€ tuplet markings such as that seen in the Scriabin prelude are commonplace in the keyboard repertoire and have been for a long time. So keyboard players have become adept at quickly understanding them. But this is certainly not recommended for orchestra parts in which the part might be sightread and where another voice is not present to orient the player.

This is true not only for hidden tuplets, but also for hidden rests or the question: which hand plays which notes? Yesterday I had these bars by Schumann:

Schumann - Var.V