Most Complex Time Signature ever!?

Empathy wrote: Hierophant wrote: Empathy wrote: I agree with Dick. Zappa's "Black Page".  the black page is in 4/4 common time Hmm... not sure I buy that.

I have the sheet music in front of me.  4/4 common time.  The proliferation of odd note groupings (septuplets, 11-uplets, 13-uplets, etc.) make it sound otherwise.


Edited by nightlamp - May 20 2008 at 14:42

anything koenjihyakkei did on angher shisspa is insane, I could swear at some points its like 11/8 over 5/8 over 4/4.

Haven't read the previous 6 pages, but surely the honour goes to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" - it's so rhythmically complex that it changes time signature in most bars - and much of the music isn't actually in the time signature indicated by the bars, as there's an overarching rhythmic pulse that "breathes" as the piece progresses. Following the score is almost impossible, unless you're highly musically trained - and even then it's hard.

It doesn't matter what Meshuggah's I signature is, because the song is unlistenable...

Conlon Nancarrow's player piano studies are pretty awesome in terms of rhythm; study #41b is a canon with tempos of the two voices irrationally related to each-other, by the ratio (1/cubic root of pi) : (cubic root of 13/16).

Also, in terms of whether a time signature of a non-power-of-two could exist or not, it's only necessary to stretch beyond the bounds of conventional notation to see how 6th notes, 12th notes, et cetera are played all the time (only we happen to use triplet notation because conventional notation is inadequate for describing non-pow-2 ratios). All ratios are possible, though I'll readily admit that the vast majority are probably unnecessary, and certainly impossibly unwieldy in conventional notation.

Also, someone mentioned Mars by Holst. The beginning is 5/4, but (triplet of 8ths) quarter quarter (duplet of 8ths) quarter... or 1/12 1/12 1/12 1/4 1/4 1/8 1/8 1/4.

What do you folks think of the ways that Bartok and Strauss have notated complex meters? I don't know if it was the composers themselves or just the editions I've seen, but Bartok has a lot of (2+3+2+2)/8 and so on, and I've seen Strauss use the notation 3/4 4/4 (two signatures side-by-side) to indicate alternating bars of 3 and 4, which can be a lot nicer than 7/4 when it comes to defining the pulse.

I can't specifically point out which piece of music I've hear has the most complex time signature, but luckily a friend called wikipedia can show me a lot of songs I've listened to that have weird time signatures. Here's the page

How about some King Crimson? They use a lot of 5/4, which isn't that tricky, but Lark's Tongues In Aspic: Part 1 has some pretty crazy sh*ts between 5/4 and 7/4. Also, check out Sound Chaser by Yes (it's on their late 1974 masterpiece Relayer), which is also mostly in 5/4, though i don't have any idea what time signature the intro is in. Sound Chaser also has so many tempo changes that it can be hard to tell what they're actually playing in. then, in the ending, they play the 4/4 melody from the verses on top of a rythym section playing 5/4 at double speed.