Think of a measure of 7/8 as being 3.5 beats long. This isn't the
"canonical" way that a musician would think of it,
You're not kidding! Standard musical practice (I suspect amongst
drummers too) is to divide such patterns into "squares and
triangles" - 2+2+3, or 3+2+2; sometimes 4+3. Some modern scores
actually notate it that way, too.
Even 8/8 is not safe: think Bartok's pieces in "Bulgarian Rhythm" :
3 + 3+2. You will want everything to fit those accents, ~not~
quarter-notes.
but it makes perfect
sense to a drummer contemplating polyrhythms, and it does have the
advantage of a "beat" remaining constant in duration across meter
changes (unless there are also tempo changes).
I am intrigued to know how that is an advantage. Crotchets with
everything?
I have pieces where I improvised a steady stream of 16th notes, and
then superimposed a meter track on them, e.g.:
4/4 4/4 7/8 6/8 4/4 5/8 6/8 *
Now if I change my mind and decided I want to notate those 4/4's as
8/8's (so that the metronome clicks twice as often), I don't have to
go through the whole sequence and change the absolute beat location of
any of the MIDI note events. My little programs to assist in creating
a coordinate system (meter and tempo tracks) for a free performance
are certainly happier that way, plus, beyond my convenience as a
programmer, as a musician I'm losing precision in the locations of the
events every time I change a denominator in the meter track.
Maybe there are track representations where beats are expressed in the
denominator of the time signature and this problem doesn't exist, but
I'm skeptical and/or myopic; I worked with the inventor of MIDI files
and have just always thought of things that way.
Doug
* After I just made that up I noticed that it adds up to 24 quarter
notes. Could be interesting.
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