Is there any way to make irrational time signatures (i.e. 4/3 and 4/5) in Sibelius 7.1.3? Or any other version? Or will I have to improvise and then edit the text? Thanks in advance!
You can fake any weird Time Signature using Text Style "Time Signature" to input the numbers: but it will not be a real Time Signature.
Sibelius cannot construct bars (measures) where the denominator for the real time signature is anything other than a power of 2. If you want bars of lengths such as 4/3 or 4/5 then you will have to fake the barlines too.
You might find that you can engrave weird Time Signatures and fake barlines that look OK to a human performer, but the playback by Sibelius will not be correct, because Sibelius is limited in what it can support.
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Sibelius 2018.1/7.5.1/7.1.3/6.2/5.2.5, PhotoScore Ult 8.8.2, Dolet 6.6 for Sibelius, Windows 10 64-bit 16GB. Desktop, and Microsoft Surface Book.
Thanx, Robin. I don't see the point in using obscure time sigs if it's just a matter of writing tuplets.
PS. I think I can see its usefulness now, if one or more players are in 5 against the rest of the band in 4 or whatever for a substantial number of measures. Saves having to mark the contents of every measure as tuplets, tho' they would have to be written as such in Sib w'out number or bracket.
Let's begin in normal land: say, you're in 4/4. You fill a bar with three triplet half notes, which you might call "third notes" since each one lasts one third of a whole note.
Now let's move to irrational land. You want a bar that lasts for four of these "third notes." You're lengthening the duration of your previous bar by an extra "third note." One way to do it would be to write a time signature of 4/3 and fill the bar with four half notes and place a bracket and a three under them indicating they are triplet half notes, but now a group of four of them fill the lengthened bar.
Musicians may scratch their heads and question your rationality, but this is how boundaries are pushed.
You've lost me, James. Mathematically, you're correct, but I fail to see how the music score benefits from all this. You've ended up with four half notes of equal length filling the measure, so why can't they be in 4/2 time with a metronome mark to indicate their actual duration in real time? Are we in some kind of parallel universe?
Like I said, "one way to do it" is to use an irrational time signature. The underlying pulse remains at a constant tempo.
Another way to do it is with metric modulation, which is the way you describe, and which is more familiar and traditional, but it may also involve some head scratching for the musicians who have to execute it.
> Is there any way to make irrational time signatures (i.e. 4/3 and 4/5) ...
Way off topic but anything that can be written as a fraction of two integers is, by definition, "rational" - a ratio of two numbers. Perhaps "unusual" or "non-standard" (or even "unplayable" :-) ) would be more appropriate.
4/pi would be "irrational". And Boulez probably did *that*, too.
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Patrick O'Keefe
Sib 7.5, GPO4, NotePerformer, lots of EWQL stuff
Win10 x64 Pro Intel i7-4771, 3.50Ghz, 16GB RAM
See the Wikipedia article on "time signature." They are called "irrational time signatures," as irrational as that is since, as you say, a rational number is one that can be represented by a quotient of two integers as long as zero is not in the denominator. But that's what they're called. And it's simpler than "a time signature with a non-power-of-two positive integer denominator."
These things re a matter of Marmite. You either love them or your hate them. Personally, I'm in the hate camp as I think they are generally utterly pointless. They can almost always be done another, more accessible way.
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Win 10 Pro x64, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.7.0 NotePerformer, GPO4 & 5, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC,
Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse.
But cursive (if your handwriting is good) is just as legible as block letters. Equally, if you handwriting is as awful as mine, neither looks good on paper. Irrational time signatures are called irrational for a reason. Nobody in their right mind would use them. They were one of many 20th century notational backwaters best left unexplored!
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Win 10 Pro x64, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.7.0 NotePerformer, GPO4 & 5, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC,
Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse.
