Notating Odd Meters

I recently showed a draft of a piece I was working on to one of my friends. With the piece being in 13/8, which has multiple ways of grouping, I decided to write the time signature out as (3+2+3+3+2)/8 instead of simply putting 13/8. My intention here was to make it easier to interpret and learn, but I was told my choice made it more confusing. Would it be better to notate it as an alternating pattern of 8/8 (or 4/4) and 5/8? Or simply 13/8? Or is there some other solution that I haven't considered?

Hi @GMoneywroteasong !

I think you should just keep the meter displayed as 13/8 but change how the 8th notes are beamed/grouped in your piece accordingly in each bar. I think this also allows you to have different instruments group the 8ths notes differently specific to what they are doing. I once wrote a piece that was in 5/4 but with many instruments playing in two groups of 5/8, each half of the bar being grouped again differently depending on the specific situation as 2+3/8 or as 3+2/8. The only problem I see is that of such a piece being conducted. In my case, the conductor would still conduct the piece in 5/4 as that was the displayed time signature. But the individual instruments would be encouraged to count the piece in 5/8 if their part was displayed that particular way. In your case you could display your rhythms like so:

The notes are clearly grouped, and even if not using 8th notes can still be grouped according to the beat lengths you described, regardless of what kind of particular rhythm they might be playing.

Hope this helps!

I haven't even begun to think about conducting lol. I haven't written anything bigger than a quintet in a long time, so the need for a conductor just hasn't been there. In the case of the piece I'm working on, I think the best thing to do would be to conduct it as 5/4 with uneven note lengths, similar to how I've seen 7/8 conducted, although I'm sure that would be a pain for whoever actually has to do the job. That's certainly something for me to think about if I decide to expand this beyond what it is.

I will be making the suggested edits later today. My main issue with it when I was sketching the idea in the first place was handling long tones (which, it starts out that way), but you addressed that. Thank you!

6 hours ago, GMoneywroteasong said:

In the case of the piece I'm working on, I think the best thing to do would be to conduct it as 5/4 with uneven note lengths, similar to how I've seen 7/8 conducted, although I'm sure that would be a pain for whoever actually has to do the job.

Uneven beat lengths are just fine to be conducted the way 7/8 is conducted - it's not a pain at all but the norm for irregular meters!