Duple Meter

DUPLE METER In creating duple meter, I was able to make complex rhythms that I really enjoyed listening to. My intuitive counting system, like most people, is base ten. So, I tried to make a piece that had 10 as the tactus, 20 as the grouper, and 5 as the divider beats....In making each of the voices I had to take into account the figures that each of the rhythms created. In making the second voice (9-1-10) I had to pay careful attention to this. Rearranging where the 1 is placed makes a completely different rhythm. Starting the rhythm with a figure was not pleasing to me, so I had to place the 1 in the middle of the 9 and 10, so that a 1-10 figure could be formed. Just by adding, looking at metric elements, it would seem that the 9 and 1 should add together to make a figure of size 10, but temporally this is not what happens. This effect can clearly be seen by looking at the spatial/graphic notation of this rhythm. Just as we visually tend to group units which are surrounded by white space, we tend to aurally group units which are surrounded by silence. This is a psychological phenomenon which was studied extensively with the Gestalt school psychology. DUPLE METER © Oxford University Press. Used with permission. DUPLE 1 This rhythm (Duple 1) was more fun to construct. I decided to use two voices instead of just one and to try to do something a little more original and creative with the rhythm. In order to make the two different instruments heard individually, I wanted them to be played separately for the most part. A good way of doing this would be to have some sort of "conversation" between the two. To make it even simpler, however, I decided on a simple echo. As I started doing this, it sounded very boring and didn't seem to have much direction. So I changed my strategy and started experimenting with the effects of changing the duration that would b echoed. Until this point I'd been echoing four beats at a time. Now I first echoed four beats, then, two, the one, then a half. Finally the two instruments came together for eight notes over a time period of four beats. An effect that I hadn't planned while I was writing the rhythm was the sense of speeding up that it gave without increasing the tempo. I attribute this to the decrease in number of beats that are echoed at a time. (Yes, rate of change increases.) This rhythm is very easy to identify as duple meter simply by listening to it. The duration of four beats is immediately separated by the first measure being echoed. Then half of it's echoed. Then half of that. This dividing by two is exactly what duple meter is. (Yes, indeed!) DUPLE ! © Oxford University Press. Used with permission. Simple Duple © Oxford University Press. Used with permission.