Time Signature for "Just this staff"

[commnthings]

I just changed the title of the original post.
This may have been discussed somewhere previously.

I've encountered a piece of music where one staff is set in 4-4 and another one is in 12-8 within the same system. It is possible to "fake" this by setting the system in 4-4 and doing the 12-8 staff using triplets. But, then, all the little tuple numbers clutter up the score. If the notes (eighths and smaller) are beamed you can hide the tuple number, but you cannot hide them if they are not beamed or are quarters and larger. Here is an example.

Multiple Time Signature.gif (10.79 KiB) Viewed 1150 times

Here is the Encore result with both beamed and unbeamed tuples.

Multiple Time Signature-2.gif (40.07 KiB) Viewed 1150 times

It would be useful, at least in a few cases, to be able to superimpose different time signatures in the same measure. Is this possible?

There is a different issue here, involving the ability to hid ALL tuple numbers. I'll address that in a separate post.

Thanks,

Bob

[Andre]

Your title line might be misleading. I read it first that you wanted a time signature change in the middle (timewise) of a measure. But what you want is to have time signature setting potentially limited to a staff (as one can do with a key signature).

As circumvention, I would never try to hide tuplet numbers, as I find it highly disturbing for a reader who is not expert is notation peculiarities. (I know I expressed my surprize on this matter in another thread - and got beaten by many - no need to get back to it here; I now just say that I myself would never do that).

I would certainly prefer to have both parts written in 12:8 - this just requires to dot all notes and rests in the piano parts. I'd see that also as a reminder to the pianist that the piece is really ternary (correct word?), though (s)he is only playing on the beats.

[commnthings]

But what you want is to have time signature setting potentially limited to a staff (as one can do with a key signature).

Andre,

I changed the title.

I agree with you about not hiding the tuplet and just writing the whole thing in a single time signature. What caused me to bring this up was the need to "reprint" a piece of music for my chorale. The original editor (Oxford University Press, of all things) did some very sloppy layout work, such as (randomly) mixing large and small staff sizes, using mostly small staves for the singers. It becomes unreadable in dim light. Vaughan Williams wrote the piece as shown below, using 12-8 for the voice and 4-4 for the piano/orchestra, probably to avoid using triplets. I was trying to duplicate that.

I can imagine that this would not be widely used and might be very tricky to implement in code.

P.S. I had forgotten that you could do key signatures for "Just this staff". Thanks for the reminder.

Regards,

Bob

[stavro]

Actually, I like this concept and I believe the correct term is "Polymeter". It may be easily implemented if one is only concerned with the score, however, correct MIDI playback could be another matter...