Theory Top-Up: irregular metres in the piping repertoire

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John Slavin
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By TIM CUMMINGS.
Piping Today #100, 2020

In this fifth consecutive article about rhythm and metre, I’d like you to join me in exploring some rhythmic realms that may be outside your comfort zone – metres that are also rarely encountered in the common repertoire of Scottish-style piping, but that nonetheless have value and interest.  We’ve already explored a few lesser-known metres in the previous four issues, as in addition to examining common domesticated metres such as 2/2, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and 6/8, we’ve also held the magnifying glass up to slightly more feral creatures such as 3/2, 6/4, 9/8, 12/8 and even 9/4.

Depending on how you feel about metres on the outer fringes of our piping canon, you might be intrigued to know there are such wild, ‘irregular’ beasts as 5/4, 5/8, 7/8 and 8/8.  And there are characters like the aforementioned 12/8, which, depending on how you accent certain notes, can either be conventional or irregular in their effect.  And if that weren’t enough, there are also suspicious tunes that just have to be nonconformist, cheekily refusing to settle with just a single metre throughout – a topic we’ll discuss in the next issue of Piping Today.  So if you’ll allow, I’d like to guide you through the veritable zoo of irregular metres (sometimes called ‘complex’ metres).

First, let’s wander over to the 5/4 enclosure.  Tunes of this species are generally pretty friendly, and it’s generally OK to approach their cage.  But please do not feed the 5/4s.  They sometimes inhabit orchestras, and one of their most well-known eco-orchestral realms is the remarkably powerful Mars: Bringer of War from Gustav Holst’s The Planets suite, composed during World War I:

I’ve obviously not included every sounding orchestral part in the above example, but rather hand-picked one melody part and a more rhythmic one accompanying it.  The simplified score may help you see that each bar of 5/4 is broken into two unequal parts1: a three-beat division followed by a two-beat division.  To get a sense of this particular groove, try saying the following, adding due emphasis for the numbers in capital and bold, and with a completely even rhythm for each word: “ONE two three Four five | ONE two three Four five” (tapping your foot on ONE and Four).  If you’re producing this 5/4 rhythm successfully, it will feel like it has a limp.  In the case of Mars, it’s a particularly intense, angry, driving, dogged limp, seemingly conveying both the extreme mental distortions that so often lead to war, and the extreme injuries that result from it.

Other famous examples of 5/4 outside of the piping realm that may help you grasp the five-beat pulse include the theme from Mission Impossible and the cool, aptly-named Take Five by Dave Brubek, the latter being considerably mellower than the Mars and Mission Impossible themes.

Now let’s take a look at an actual pipe tune in 5/4, something I penned after accidentally pairing a few glasses of leftover pinot noir with the The Old Woman’s Lullaby pìobaireachd:

If you find it difficult to feel its groove simply by looking at the dots on the page, try uttering a much softer, gentler – but no slower – version of the “ONE two three Four five” pattern.  Better yet, try to find some way to hear it, either by playing it, or having an experienced musician play it to you, or finding the recording Jeremiah McLane and I did of it online (search for “Port William 5/4 waltz”).  Hopefully you’ll again sense that each measure is split into two unequal triplet and duplet parts, like the Holst example on the facing page, only with a lot less aggression.

In this particular case, for better or worse, you are now witnessing a French-style 5/4 waltz derived from the urlar of The Old Woman’s Lullaby, a melody tweaked to the extent that it seemed to want its own title, hence Port William (the fictional town in author/poet Wendell Berry’s writings2).  At this point I will beg the pardon of those who regard pìobaireachd as a near-sacred art not to be messed with.  And for those of you wondering, “5/4 waltz?”  Indeed, it’s not only an existing tune genre, but it’s also possible to dance a 5/4 waltz, as often witnessed at “Balfolk” dances.  In contrast to Mars, the dance, and thus the accompanying tunes, have an endearing, graceful limp.

Some of you may be triumphantly declaring, “I know a tune in 5/4  –  Cullen Bay!”  And you may be right.  But keep in mind that some consider this tune to be more of a domesticated 4/4, with a fermata (or ‘bird’s eye’) on the fourth beat of each bar, played in such a way as to consistently double the length of that beat.  From this perspective, the tune could be written like this:

It certainly works to write this in a 5/4 metre as well, since the fourth beat has the precise, consistent duration of two beats:

But the melody otherwise lacks any of the grooves more commonly associated with the 5/4 metre: either the 3+2 or the 2+3 ‘irregular’ patterns. I suppose one could try to argue in favour of a 4+1 pattern for Cullen Bay, though that pattern is not something I’ve ever encountered anywhere else.  Notably, if you were to shorten the last minim of each bar to a regular ol’ crotchet, the tune still succeeds – possibly even more so than the 5/4 version – which may be another argument for the tune ultimately being more 4/4 in nature.  (If you don’t believe me, try playing the above version in 4/4, removing the pauses.)  Either way, an important question remains: where do you feel the second strongest pulse in the bar – beat 3 or beat 4?  Answering this may help you determine your preferred metre for the tune.

Now, in the adjacent exhibit (below), we have similar fauna also sporting five pulses – the more nimble 5/8.  These guys can also be either of the 3+2 or 2+3 variety, so the only discernible difference is that the eighth-note (or quaver) designation implies – but does not legally require – a faster pace.  Many of you have already had some exposure to 5/8, possibly without knowing it, courtesy of Gordon Duncan:

Let’s move over to the 7/8 habitat.  Tunes in 7/8 can be harder to catch, but not impossibly so.  Like the 5/4, the time signature of 7/8 is considered irregular (or complex) because its beat groupings are unequal.  Any of the following are common examples of 7/8 subdivisions: 3+2+2 or 2+2+3 or 2+3+2.

There surely aren’t many 7/8 tunes in the Scottish piping canon at present, but they do exist.  Take, for example, Michael Grey’s A Legend Is Born, the opening tune in his larger Megantic Outlaw suite, recorded by the 78th Frasers in 1992 and published in his Old and New Tunes collection (1995):

(7/8 is also a metre frequently encountered in the traditional music of Bulgaria, a genre that also includes bagpipes and dancing, and bagpipes being played for dancing.  Outside of Bulgaria there even exists such a thing as the 7/8 waltz, which, like the 5/4 waltz, can be found at some Balfolk dances.)

Continuing along on our zoological tour, we have below the elusive 8/8, which may try to blend in with its surroundings.  It particularly likes to trick you into thinking it’s no different than a 4/4 or 2/2, since the fractions all work out the same in the end.  It’s metrical mimicry, perhaps, but don’t be fooled!  8/8 is considered irregular, too, and it will help to see it this way if you subdivide it as such: 3+3+2 or 2+3+3 or 3+2+3.

You may think this is all getting too esoteric and impractical, but before you leap to that too-convenient conclusion, let me turn your attention to some fairly well-known pieces of music outside the piping canon.  First, for those of you under the age of 45, please bring to mind the memorable song Clocks from Coldplay’s Grammy Award-winning album A Rush of Blood to the Head (2003), also featured on the Red Hot Chilli Pipers’ Bagrock to the Masses (2010):

To be fair, the song melody is squarely in 4/4.  The piano part, however, is irregular in its pulsing – consistently so – and is much more easily read if written in 8/8.  (And yes, it’s perfectly legal in music theory circles to have different time signatures happening at the same time.  Even J. S. Bach did it.) 

And second, for those of you over the age of 45, try on the memorable Buffalo Hunt theme from John Barry’s Academy Award-winning score to the film Dances with Wolves (1990): 

Both the melody and especially its accompaniment strongly evoke the same 8/8 pattern as in Clocks. Note that some musical theorists downplay the existence of 8/8, preferring to call it 4/4 with particular syncopated accents. But 8/8 is for real, and there is widespread use of it in traditional Bulgarian dances, dances which almost certainly inspired such notable composers as Béla Bartók to also employ 8/8 in their own music.

Earlier I mentioned that 12/8 has another side to it.  Not unlike the felis catus, your average cat – an animal most of us encounter in domestic arenas, but that also exists in the wild – the 12/8 metre can function as a relatively tame compound metre in the form of an Irish slide (as discussed in Piping Today issue #99), and can also be irregular.  If you haven’t already encountered an irregular 12/8 in the wild, please uncap your binoculars and aim them towards Richard Kean’s infectious wildcat, Pixel:

As you can see, the beat subdivisions are unequal: 3+3+2+2+2.  Richard was influenced and inspired by traditional Bulgarian dance music – a genre which, as previously referenced, also makes excellent use of the 7/8 metre, among many other irregular possibilities.  (NB: If you haven’t yet heard it, Richard and EJ Jones made a very fine recording of Pixel on their 2008 album Teribus.)

You may now bewondering, what about 9/8?  Can its beats be arranged such that they are irregular?  Of course.  You would just need to designate what the specific divisions are, such as 3+2+2+2, as per the last bar of both the 2nd and 4th parts of Duncan’s The Bellydancer3.  And what about other possibilities like 7/4, 10/4, 11/8, 15/16, or 21/32?  Why not?  In fact, music written in these metres already exists, courtesy of Pink Floyd, Radiohead, the Grateful Dead, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Elliot Carter, respectively.

This is probably something I oughtn’t admit publicly, but I was once the principal bass clarinetist – which is to say the [cough] only bass clarinetist – in a university orchestra, and on one occasion found myself leaning forward and squinting mightily at a particularly curious metre crawling around on my music stand.  The wee beastie emerged from Sensemayá, a piece by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, and was a specimen of the 51/2/8 species.  Yup, that’s five-and-a-half quaver beats per bar, something most orchestral musicians may encounter only once in a lifetime, if they’re lucky.  Or perhaps unlucky.  (The piece is actually a wonderfully evocative ‘tone poem’ inspired by an Afro-Cuban ritual involving the sacrificial killing of a snake.)

The insanity doesn’t stop there – I’ll let you decide if it’s worth going down the rabbit hole with such ‘irrational’ metres as 2/3 or 1/12…

Composers among you, I’d like to offer you a challenge: how ’bout chipping in a few more irregular-metre tunes into our piping repertoire?  Whether or not any of your offerings become timeless favourites or competition zingers – which is never the point – I think you’ll enjoy, be enlivened by, and ultimately benefit from the experiment.  So, too, will those who have the privilege of playing or receiving your new tunes.  If you’re not sure where to begin, try picking one of the above music examples and see if you can filter out any melodies and retain just the distilled irregular rhythmic pulse(s); and then inhabit that rhythm for a few moments.  Once you feel more acquainted with the new groove, feed in some fresh notes from your chanter to create what will likely be a tune that’s more original and stimulating than most.

Theory Top-Up articles published on Bagpipe.News so far:

  1. Tunes in the key of D-Major
  2. Tunes in the key of A-Mixolydian
  3. Tunes in the key of A-Major
  4. Tunes based on a ‘gapped’ A scale
  5. Tunes based in A-pentatonic major
  6. Tunes in B-minor
  7. Double Tonic Tunes
  8. Tunes in the Dorian mode
  9. Tunes in G-Major
  10. Exotic tunes and tunes that change key
  11. Compressing tunes with low F-sharp notes
  12. Compressing tunes with high-B notes
  13. Theory Top-Up Harmonics: an introduction to the mysterious overtones in our music
  14. Theory Top-Up Harmonics Part 2: continuing the discussion on overtones
  15. Theory Top-Up Harmonics Part 3: using harmonics to fine-tune our pipes
  16. Theory Top-Up: An introduction to writing harmony for ensembles
  17. Theory Top-Up: writing harmonies of thirds
  18. Theory Top-Up: discovering chords 1 (as a basis for crafting harmonies)
  19. Theory Top-Up: discovering chords 2 (as a basis for crafting harmonies)
  20. Theory Top-Up: Elaborating on chord based harmonies
  21. Theory Top-Up: writing chord-based harmonies for slow airs
  22. Theory Top Up: harmonies that imitate uilleann pipe regulators
  23. Theory Top-Up: harmonies derived from hymns
  24. Theory Top-Up: learning tunes by ear
  25. Theory Top-Up: the signature of time
  26. Theory Top-Up: simple matters
  27. Theory Top-Up: triple time trouble
  28. Theory Top-Up: Common and Cut Time
  29. Theory Top-Up: Compound Interest
  30. Theory Top-Up: irregular metres in the piping repertoire
  1. Unequal or asymmetric subdivisions are sometimes referred to by music theorists as being ‘additive’ or ‘imperfect’, in contrast to equal subdivisions of metres like 4/4 and 6/8, which may also be called ‘divisive’ or ‘perfect’. ↩︎
  2. Not to be confused with the actual village of Port William, which is a fishing village in the parish of Mochrum in Dumfries and Galloway in south west Scotland. ↩︎
  3. Ideally, you would clarify the irregular pulsing both in the way the quavers are grouped and beamed together, as well as with the desired beat pattern marked above the time signature: (3+2+2+2). ↩︎