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I want to thank everyone including Steve Chandler, Nikolas Sideris and Polyphonist, for encouraging me to both engrave music with computer software, and for the much helpful observation and criticism from everyone including Kreisler, Scott, Bosendorff, Axtremus, et al.! It is a bit time consuming to enter the music with the software, but I can see that it helps with presentation and also to clarify what is really exact notation for certain things.

There is one other concern which is with tuplets across barlines.

I assume that apart from obvious engraving errors this type of layout is fine?




M.

To me that shows the RH of m. 25 to have 3 1/3 beats (2 + 4/3), and m. 26 to have 2 2/3 beats. I would rather see an eighth note triplet with a tie for the notes crossing the barline.



I will be interested to see other people's opinions.

I like Pianostudent88's solution, and you might consider something similar to the 1st two beats as well (using 8th note triplets with ties the whole way through.)

Thanks for the solution PianoStudent88 and Kreisler - I hadn't thought of that (same as for the one with the other post involving 11/8)!

So then the consensus is that a tone always has to be tied across a barline in this type of instance?

To have each staff in a different time signature for those bars or similar groups of bars, such as 6/4 or 9/4 with the treble clef depending on the number of beats involved, and 3/4 with the bass clef, isn't advised as a possible solution?

M.

I suppose theoretically you could use different time signatures in top and bottom, but it would be highly unusual, and would hinder rather than help the musician in figuring out how the top and bottom parts interact. The given triplets solution seems like a clear solution, without the need for the extreme measure (no pun intended) of vertically mixed time signatures.

Do you have an example of vertically mixed time signatures in the literature? It would be interesting to see the circumstances in which composers have used such an innovation.

I speak as an avid lover of musical notation and the principles behind it. Unlike Nikolas and Kreisler, I don't have experience publishing music. So I speak from what I have seen, read, and studied.

Nikolas and Kreisler, I'm just guessing that someone, somewhere, has used vertically mixed time signatures. But maybe not. Have you ever seen such a thing? Might you ever consider using such a thing?

Yes, it can be used, but I'll repeat once more that Michael's works do not require such radical means! I mean it's just 2 bars, where he uses 3 against 2... Your solution is perfectly fine.

This is why I object in the other threads, to overdo the complexity of the score... :-/

I'm in total agreement with Nikolas. Yes, vertically mixed time signatures are found but no, they're not required in what we've seen of Michael's works.

I agree too. I wanted to at least give vertically mixed time signatures a consideration, just for the sake of theoretically thinking about them -- and then clearly see their complexity, and why the triplets are better. I've been thinking about vertically mixed time signatures ever since reading a sentence about renaissance music and as part of their explorations into ever more involved patterns, some composers composed music with different meters in the different voices. I don't know if we'd ever notate it that way now (and I'm not sure if back then they used things analagous to our current time signatures), but I would love to see some of those polyphonic pieces written out with vertically mixed time signatures.

Truly my pleasure if I could be of any help, even if it was infinitesimal. Finale is really a great software.

While unconventional, I think you can leave it as written. However, I do like the solution presented. Another option could be to convert the two measures into one 6/4 measure.

Michael,

I may have missed something obvious, but is 9/8 a possibility?

[img]https://app.box.com/s/raaws8m5pmxcqy2zhi8e[/img]

(sorry, I can't seem to get box to give me a proper "typed" link without upgrading to the paid version)

Thanks stumbler, that is an idea I hadn't thought of. I am leaning toward using the tied eighth notes across the bar lines with the 3/4.

M.