Hey everybody,
I am going to be entering this piece (by another composer) into Dorico. The composer wrote some unusual meters. I wonder if anyone can think of any way to replicate these in Dorico. Thanks for any help!
I figured out how to do this. Looks great. Donāt know if I can add the ā1/2ā in any way though.
Itās not possible to write 3 1/2 / 4, I think.
Of course you could just write 7/8 but, thatās not what you want probably.
EDIT: You could do this though:
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I was able to do this in a Project. Fortunately, I wasnāt using any 7s or 9s so I repurposed them by editing them to show 1 1/2 and 2 1/2, Then using irregular bars was able to achieve it. See attached file.
Fractional Meter.dorico (911.7 KB)
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Oh how interesting!
I kind of wonder anyway ā¦ is this type of metering common in contemporary music? And if so, why? The conductor of the piece ā whose red markings you see in the score ā actually changed things for his eyeās benefitā¦ notice what he wrote in the circled passage.
If performers actually need to substitute it for something they can work with, maybe just do it normally and explain the composerās method in the prefaceā¦?
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Itās never been common, but you find it at least as early as Ives.
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Good stuff about the possibilities in Dorico here:
OT but Iām far more disturbed about the rhythmic notation for the first lyric ātheā
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I hear you. The more full phrase shows that I think the composer wanted to soloist to think in triplet terms since there were specific notes written in that rhythm later in the bar. I still donāt know if itās a great idea to notate it that way.
Do conductors expect this kind of metering? Or is it better to write in more standard meters?
I think youāll get the full range of answers from a bunch of different conductors.
As for should you use fractional meters? If you can make a case that itās helpful then why not. I remember talking to some of those crazy Bulgarian wedding-band musicians and was amused that they thought of a very fast 7/16 as ā3 and a bit 8ā - one, two, threeee, one, two, threeeeee. They then lightly teased me as to how 7 could possibly be relevant when it was far too fast to count. Maybe 3 and a half 8 would be meaningful if I had to transcribe one of those 7/16 dances.
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I think the answer is shown in your example - the conductor clearly added the red meters!
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Here, with hidden time signatures and the composerās entered as System-attached text (using MusGlyphs, just as a trial) vertically positioned (Engraving Options) 4 spaces above with Use default position (instead of Avoid collisions) to align them.
Canāt say that I think much of it visually, though perhaps with greater finesse of the system text font choice, etc., it could be made to look more ātime signature-ly.ā
As for your musical question, is this a composer youāre in contact with to converse about the question? And if thereās a conductor lined up, could they have a conversation? Iām inclined towards Benās intuition; perhaps a good compromise would be to use regularly-notated āregularā meters in-line, with the composerās originals above as system text???
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Ah: thatās a nice solution! And easy to achieve.
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Maybe another idea is to make the composerās time signatures as graphic files in another app, then put they in as graphic frames. (Super time-intensive if there are as many of these throughout the piece as the opening bars suggest.)
Hey thanks! Great experiments. And I appreciate you trying to get this to work. This composition is by my former college composition teacher, who has unfortunately passed away. His colleague for decades has offered to help me edit his scores.
I feel like what the composer was trying to indicate with ā3 1/2 over quarter noteā could possibly be better expressed as a 2/4 bar then a dashed barline, then a 3/8 bar. Iām thinking about the conductor as well as the singers/instrumentalists.
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Iām with you (and others) on that! So perhaps Benās suggestion is the right one: a portion of the performance notes or other preparatory material that shows how it was originally done (maybe even as a scanned facsimile) to honor the composerās approach, but the score being more readily readable/performable.
