Eccentric Flower:200906/Marking Time

This is sort of an addendum inspired by the prog rock article that didn't belong there, because it's a digression and that piece is digressive enough as is.

I started thinking some more about my trouble with time signatures, especially after I found this fascinating page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_works_in_unusual_time_signatures.

OK, so, I admit that upon humming them both to myself it now becomes obvious that "Take Five" and "Everything's Alright" (from "Jesus Christ Superstar") are in the same time signature. But I could not in a million years have told you what that time signature was. I recognize it as being distinctive and unusual, but once again it's gotta be an "I know it when I hear it" thing.

I have had the time signatures discussion before, so let me forestall the baffled comments by saying that where the trouble starts for me is that a time signature is no indication of tempo - and often, for me, tempo changes everything.

The top number of a time signature (beats per measure) makes sense to me; the bottom number (what type of note constitutes a beat) is useless to me. Especially since I habitually play piano music fast. Just as my wife automatically doubles the amount of garlic in any printed recipe, I double the speed of any piece of music - that's if I even know I'm doubling it.

(I had this argument through years of misguided piano lessons.

ME: But how ''long'' is a quarter note?
HAPLESS TEACHER OF THE MONTH: One-fourth as long as a whole note.
ME: Swell. How long is a whole note?
HTOTM: Well, it's four quarter notes.

If you think I'm being facetious here, I note that Wikipedia's pages on whole notes and quarter notes have exactly that same circularity. I wanted to know what was the important thing for me, which was how fast to play the damned piece - and eventually what I did was listen to the teacher play it and play it at the same speed, which started me down a long and slippery road of being able to play the piano fairly well by ear/memory, but being lousy at reading sheet music.

It's just easier for me to store a sound recording in my head of what the piece is supposed to sound like and keep trying until I get it like that. Lest you think I am talking about trivial works, I might add, I learned how to play Frank Mills' "Music Box Dancer" that way. The sheet music made very little sense but I knew how it was supposed to sound. I couldn't play it nearly as fast as he could, obviously, but I could play it exactly the way he did, by god.

And I digress.)

Unless the piece has an Italian tempo word (and I remember what that word means - usually all I can retain is that the ones which start with A are all "reasonably fast" and the ones that start with L are all "too damned slow") or a metronome reading at its beginning, how the heck should I know how fast to play the thing?

So, basically, my confusion began because, lacking speed cues, I often confuse 3/4 time with 6/8 time. Now I'm told that most commonly, three-quarters time plays out as three even beats, whereas six-eights is subtly dactylic (BOMP-bomp-bomp-BOMP-bomp-bomp) - but see the footnote in the prog rock article about me not hearing emphasis quite the same way as sane humans do. I have a tendency to always hear that dactyl emphasis, even if the composer didn't intend it.

So that's a bad start.

(On the other hand, sometimes it's as clear as a bell. I quote this from Wikipedia's time signatures page:

I would know the passages they are speaking of even if they hadn't provided a sample of the written music, because there it's utterly clear:

DAdada  DAdada DA DA DA
Iliketo BEina  ME RI CA
OKby    MEina  ME RI CA

Perhaps it is exactly because there's such a contrast there that the distinction is easy to hear. But in a piece that's entirely 3/4 or entirely 6/8, it is difficult for me to tell.)

I also don't hear rests well. It took me longer consideration than I care to admit to realize that the underlying stomp of "Al Bowlly's In Heaven" is not actually 3/4 time. It's actually 4/4, of course, as everyone but me realizes (well, those of you who know the song!) -

STOMP STOMP STOMP (rest), STOMP STOMP STOMP (rest)

Not helped by the fact that the lyric starts in the silent parts, off pace with the beats, so that most of the lyric is "in between" the stomps -

We were young then
           BEAT BEAT BEAT 
           BEAT BEAT BEAT
and the 
girls were so pretty
           BEAT BEAT BEAT
           BEAT BEAT BEAT

Remember, I mostly hear the lyrics if they're there, which often blinds me to what's going on under them.

And with complex or unusual time signatures, the matter may be hopeless. I hear the underlying rhythm of either of the 5/4 songs mentioned above as

beat-beat-beBEAT-beat-beat

with that 'be' barely a beat, a sort of half-beat crowded onto the next one -

Ev-ry-thingsALL-right-yes

And I just don't see how that maps into five of anything. I need to see the sheet music!

And then once I master that, I'm going to go try to figure out the allegedly 7/4 basic loop, whose tempo is so weird I can't even figure out a way to write it syllabically, from Pink Floyd's "Money."

[EDIT: Actually, I listened to it a few times in my head and I found the seven beats. The problem is that some of them are played in the melody as paired eighth notes. The problem is that, again, I hear melody before rhythm. When I tried to drum on the table while playing the loop in my head, suddenly the seven beats became clear. Maybe I'm just not very sensitive to rhythm? It would sure explain why I am the worst dancer in the known universe.]

1 Ev
  ry
2 
  thing's
3 all

4 right

5 yes

1 ev
  ry
2
  thing's
3 fine

4

5 and 
  we
1 want
  you
2 to
 
3 sleep
 
4 well
 
5 to
  night