Tim, If this is what you meant when you said, "What about melissma?" You said an awful lot in a few words! These problems are not impossible to manage, and you have been thinking of creative ways to approach it, which is what it is all about. For my purposes, the alternation isn't really an option, because I tend to like to have an unbroken melody. In balkan folk music, which is I like to think of as really being pre-classical, or early music, with the odd meters and irregular phrase lengths, there are options. I think of the music as really being analogous to the meters of verse, since the music is actually keyed to songs, or ballads of one sort or another--musically phrases often correspond to the measure lengths. Unaccented syllables occur as a "quick" pulse, which is actually two counts, and accented syllables occur as a "slow" pulse, which is actually three counts. The odd measures, like the fifth one you'd get in a pentameter, function sort of like the extra 2/4 measure you often find in American blues and folk songs from the early part of this century, sort of as a prefix-to or a tag-after the four measure phrase. As I said, the thing is that there tend not to be a lot of melodies that correspond to the odd meters. One of my favorite rhythms is the Bulgarian 5/8, for a dance called Pajdusko--it corresponds to the iamb and is quite fast. All the ballads are sung to the same basic melody, and the musicians, through use of melismata, casurae, and a couple of other tricks, are able to make it interesting--but no matter what you try to write, it all sounds like the same song. Ted Tim Romano wrote: > Ted, > Understood. What I had in mind was alternation between, on the one > hand, passages of 'limited' melody (limited because you are > staying close to meter at the expense of melodic variation, for > the reasons you give below) and, on the other, melismatic > passages. The latter freer passages could be introduced on > mid-line syllables when they are followed by a caesura and/or at > the end-of-line pause, wherever appropriate, so as not to violate > the meter. This would yield a macaronic effect: plainsong against > melodic variation. > Tim > > Ted Boucher wrote: > > > I've actually been thinking for the last day about how to > > explain this briefly and in a way that makes sense--I am not > > sure if I can, but here goes: > > > > Western Classical music tends to use musical ideas or > > motives that can be expressed in one or two measures, and > > developed in phrases of four or eight measures. This brevity > > allows lots of possiblilities for building elaborate > > structures based on many types variation, recurrance, and > > repetition. > > > > The rhythm of a complex meter often requires many more > > measures, often in what would work out to be an odd compound > > rhythm(like 11/16, or even 25/16) and even more problematic, > > in odd numbers of measures--like 5. > > > > This really is what limits your possibilities--you are sort > > of following twisted road that is very quaint and interesting > > for the first couple of trips, but after repeated trips, but > > you have to follow all the same twists and turns or you end > > up somewhere else. > > > > A melissma actually could make the meter more ambiguous. > > > > Hope this explains my position to all concerned. > > > > Ted > > > > Tim Romano wrote: > > > Melisma might open up the melodic possibilities. > > > > > > Ted Boucher wrote: > > > > > > > ... when you work with verse, you find that the more > > complex a > > > > meter is the less room you have for melodic variation > > ... > > > > > > > > > > > ______________________________________________________ > > Get your free web-based email at http://www.xoom.com > > Special clipart offer: http://orders.xoom.com/email > ______________________________________________________ Get your free web-based email at http://www.xoom.com Special clipart offer: http://orders.xoom.com/email