Most Complex Time Signature ever!?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

^ what did Meshuggah ever do to you?

What monster? 

My long answer has been erased with the attack, I'm not writing everything again. A few points :

- The questions here : "how do I write these musical phenomenons?" and "what is useful to write?", not "what does exist?". And there are no rules, it depends of the cases. With complex rhythm structures, sometimes time signatures are useless, sometimes they're a way to emphasize structure, sometimes they can be point of reference... which leads to :

- Rock music isn't classical music. Rock is about repeated riffs, drum patterns, cycles... You can write stuff in rock music that you wouldn't write in classical music, or write in a different way. If the main riff in a song is repeated 32x and is in 3+4+4+3+4/8, I don't see any problems to write it that way, or 19/8, or 9/4, instead of 3/8+4/8+4/8+3/8+4/8, or whatever. Time signature could only indicate duration here.

- That DT song has no 11/4, 17/16 and stuff (the only "unusual" time signature is 15/8), so the Stravinsky comparaison does hold up (they share some rhythmic means). Fanciful time signatures come from bad transcriptions. Instead of lecturing people, you could have simply corrected the transcriptions (I don't think 9/16+12/16+8/16 (Mars volta's Cygnus) would seem less "complex" than 27/16 to anyone).

- "Time signature" does not equal "meter".

- What Bartok example do you think of?

- If you're just trying to say that 27/16 is a stupid way to note a musical phenomenon, there is no need to tell everyone they live in some "magical world", because most of time signatures in this thread are simple and coherent. I think the answer you gave me here isn't quite the same you gave to other people before, it sounds to me like you just wanted to show off and lecture people.


Edited by Madklikor - May 14 2008 at 14:27