Re: irrational meters

[David Poon]

My $0.02 on terminology: if you think of the maths definition of "irrational" as

"cannot be represented as a ratio of two integers",

we can translate this definition into music as

"cannot be represented as a ratio of an integer and a non-dotted, non-tuplet note value".

I.e., treat the categorisation of integer->rational->irrational from maths as "whole measure"->"basic" notes->"any duration" in music

-David

On Tue, 17 Jan 2023 at 09:41, Silvain Dupertuis <silvain-dupertuis@bluewin.ch> wrote:

Thanks for the reference.

This wikipedia article in English does not have it's counterpart in my language (French), but a corresponding but different French article which does not mention this notion.

So this term “irrational” is indeed used that way in music (at least in English) ­­— but I still think it would be better to use the terme «non dyadic», also mentioned in the article, so as to harmonize teminology between music and maths....

Silvain

Le 17.01.23 à 15:52, Hans Åberg a écrit :

On 17 Jan 2023, at 15:20, Silvain Dupertuis <silvain-dupertuis@bluewin.ch> wrote:

I wonder about the term “irrational” meter. Should not we say “irregular” ??
as in mathematics, an irrational number is a number which cannot be represented as a fraction...

The denominator is not a power of two. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature#Irrational_meters

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