Irrational time signatures in Sibelius?

Are these possible?

If, for example, I wanted a bar of 3/5, which would be 3 quintuplet crotchets, how could I do it? Mainly it is to avoid lots of ugly tempo changes.

Also, is it possible to split a bar into a rational and irrational part (divided by dotted barline), and write a time sig to describe this? For example, 4/4 + 2/6 would equate to a bar of four crotchets with two crotchet triplets at the end. All of these things have been done in notation before (Cowell, Ferneyhough, Thomas Ades), I just wonder if you can do them in Sibelius.

L.

Edit: Sorry, wrong forum.

Hit "T" on your keyboard to bring up the time signatuires menu. Then click "Other" and input whatever signature you want in the spaces provided.

Let me know if you haven't solved this. i've used these in my music for years, & it's simplicity itself to do.

What's the difference between 3/5 and 15/4, if all you need it for is quintuplet crochets? I mean, you should really think before doing something like introducing "fifths" in your score - the purpose of the composer is to communicate what he wants as efficiently as possible to the performers, and to make it as easy as possible for the performers to understand him. What's the point of using a 3/5 time signature (which I wouldn't, as a performer, interpret as a measure consisting of "three quintuplet crochets" -if by "quintuplet crochets" you mean "five crochets which add up to a semi-breve"- but rather as "three notes which have duration of 1/5 of a semi-breve", since we interpret 3/4 as "three notes which have the duration of 1/4 of the semi-breve).

So what exactly do you want to do in your score?

(but in any case, both Cowell and Ferneyhough wrote/write on manuscript paper so they don't really have any of that kind of problems.. so if you find it difficult/impossible to write music like that on finale/sibelius, then just write it on paper! :P )

I'm with juji on this one. There is no reason why anything one wants to do in the rhythmic universe cannot be notated using standard metric notation. If Frank Zappa could write stuff like "Watermelon In Easter Hay" and "The Black Page" without resorting to some bizarre, ambiguous system of metres, then anyone can. Irrational metres are silly, and juji has very succinctly explained why. As a performer, I too would find them more trouble than they're worth.

Juji and J. Lee have said most of what I would contribute.

I've always felt that these kind of metric modulations are just a form of "look what I can do, aren't I clever? Yeah, no one will ever play this correctly, and most people will stop even trying to play my music once they see this irrational mess... but aren't I clever?"

Juji and J. Lee have said most of what I would contribute.

I've always felt that these kind of metric modulations are just a form of "look what I can do, aren't I clever? Yeah, no one will ever play this correctly, and most people will stop even trying to play my music once they see this irrational mess... but aren't I clever?"

So I guess you have no love for Milton Babbitt.

That kind of thing is killer to play though, mad fun, mad off center. Eff lazy musicians.

x-lets are the key to rhythmic interest. Everythin else is binary in nature, even if it's in three: breaking into a section of say, 3 quintuplets, isn't really about the quintuplets per se (unless it is, but I hope you get me) but about making the rhythm kink.

And isn't music notation a rather inexact method of notating a piece? I wouldn't be so concerned about people, but I couldn't care less about the whining of musicians with wounded pride.

I wouldn't be so concerned about people, but I couldn't care less about the whining of musicians with wounded pride.

If you want your piece read, performed, or recorded, it needs to be clear. Jimmying around with non-standard notation is a sure-fire way to have your work tossed in a bin and forgotten.

"Eh, looks like too much work... neh, not going to bother with it."

I've seen it happen time after time after time. All it takes is for the ensemble to fall apart once or twice, or the conductor to lose the pattern, and your piece is toast.

*shrug* It's the advice I always give, based on many years of observation as a performer and as a composer. Take it as you will.

It's not that you shouldn't use non-conventional notation on its own or in combination with traditional notation, but you should avoid to do so as much as possible when you can notate exactly the same thing in a much simpler way.

Nancarrow. The orchestral arrangements of his piano etudes for piano-player are notated in such a way so that the conductor only beats the bars, and the players count the quintuplets, triplets or whatever, within their part. If the conductor had to conduct three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine quavers/semi-quavers (respectively) in a single bar at the same time for 30 different performers, he'd go mad, and so would the performers. So, although the score is not easy to read and a bit complicated when it comes to syncopations etc, it's written in an as easy to perform as possible way.

And I don't really see how metric modulations fit in the topic - metric modulation is something related to the change of tempo or changing the apparent time signature/rhythm in a piece, it has nothing to do with 6ths, 9ths, 13ths or similar divisions of the whole and related time signatures.

EDIT: repeating myself.

As an aside, I think it's humorous that people here won't blink an eye at shtuff like this, but if you move your harmonic language past the year 1650, 3/4 of the posters here positively have kittens.

LOL

I don't think 3/4 of the posters in this thread would have any issues with that...

EDIT: I'd also like to mention that while I agree that most of the time I'd definitely try to avoid irrational time signatures and that indeed many examples where they appear sound like crafted just in order to use irrational time signatures, I wouldn't go so far to say they are completely useless and should be avoided at all costs. They aren't necessarily terribly hard to read, sometimes they can be the most easiest notation for a certain rhythm, that can be understood by a performer rather quickly.

Take an example like the following, for instance:

You see two measures with basically the same rhythmical content, just that the second measure is lacking the last triplet eighth before it goes on. The performer simply has to play the same rhythm twice, just interrupting it after the first two triplet eighth in the second measure and going right onwards. This is easily learned, and a different notation would be a lot more cumbersome. And while this particular example is certainly crafted simply to point out how irrational time signatures can be useful, that doesn't mean that this is necessarily the case. Actually this passage is quite similar to something I once wrote without the slightest intent of using irrational time signatures. It was just a rhythmic necessity to write down what I had in mind. Mind you, I didn't notate it with irrational time signatures, because the piece didn't have any time signatures at all, but if it had needed some (for example if it had been an ensemble piece requiring coordination between players and/or a conductor) irrational time signatures would have been the most logical and straight-forward notation.

This is probably also where "metric modulation" comes in. I can't see many uses for irrational time signatures when it always stays the same and is used for all voices (although I'm not denying there may be some), because in that case you mostly could avoid it just by using other note values or tempo markings. But where it can be useful is where the metrum changes and in the middle of a steady 4/4 piece you suddenly have, say, a 4/5 measure, before it goes on in 4/4. This would be much harder to learn if you just wrote a different tempo marking for that measure, than just imagining "I'm playing a quintuple, but I'm interrupting it before the last quintuple fourth and go immediately to the next bar". It really isn't too hard for a performer in such a case:

The quasi-identical equivalent without irrational time signatures would be:

This certainly is unproblematic. But imagine what it would be like if the whole rest of the piece was like the first and last measure of this example (I.e. 5/4 with a quartuple), and possibly contained more complex rhythms within that. You'd have quartuples in every single measure and maybe even nested tuplets inside of them. I bet you'd prefer the irrational notation like in the first example then, where you only have to bother with a tuplet in one single measure.