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Topic: Fifths (Read 5903 times) previous topic - next topic

Fifths

I want to key in Saint Saens' Aquarium from the Carnival of the Animals, but NWC doesn't allow FIFTHS. How can I do this?

Re: Fifths

Reply #1 –
Clarify your question. I'm not familiar with the score, myself, but maybe another user is familiar with it.

Are you trying to transpose the music by a fifth? If so, it's easy with NWC. Or, do you need to create 5-tuplets (five notes played in the time normally occupied by four), in which case that's not easy -- but I believe there are work-arounds available.

Re: Fifths

Reply #2 –
I'm not aware of any problem that NWC has with 5ths. I think Ian is looking for quintuplets.

Re: Fifths

Reply #3 –
Ian, assuming that you're after quintuplets, let me make a few suggestions.

NWC doesn't officially support these, but there are partial solutions available to the determined user. How successful they are depends on what you're after.

It's relatively easy to get the aural effect of 5 notes in the space of 4. If the quintuplet happens all by itself, all you need to do is to enter the 5 notes and temporarily speed up the tempo to 5/4 of its normal value so that the 5 notes pass in the time normally allotted to 4. Other staves sounding simultaneously will have to be padded appropriately with rests or tied notes.

If other staves have a different rhythm while the quintuplet is happening, you'll have to find the least common multiple of the simultaneous subdivisions and notate the rhythms accordingly. For example, if you're dealing with 5 against 4, the least common multiple is 20. Divide this number by the number of equal divisions in each rhythm to get the length of each note - so, in this example, each note in the quintuplet will be 20/5, or 4, units long, and each note in the quadruplet will be 20/4, or 5, units. If both of these subdivisions are happening in the normal space of, say, 4 16th notes, the most straightforward thing to do is to increase the tempo by 25% (old tempo * 5/4) and use 64th notes as the basic unit. Each note in the quintuplet can then be written as a straight 16th (4 64th units) and each note in the quadruplet as a 16th tied to a 64th (5 64th units).

If you're also in the market for a score that will look correct when printed, the problem is harder. There are things you can do with hidden items (notes, rests, time signatures) and perhaps a bottle of Wite-Out to get close to the intended visual result, but there are certain things that just can't be done. For example, if you're dealing with notes beamed together, you'll find that hiding a note also hides its stem and the tie to a subsequent note (good), but doesn't hide partial beams, such as those on the stem of a 64th beamed with 32nds (bad).

If you decide to try what I've suggested and run into specific problems, post back here and I'll try to help.

Re: Fifths

Reply #4 –
>>partial beams, such as those on the stem of a 64th beamed with 32nds

As we all should know, there's only 1 partial beam on a 64th beamed with 32nds. I meant a 64th beamed with 16ths (as in the 5-against-4 example above).

Re: Fifths

Reply #5 –
Thank you, Grant. I will certaily try your suggestions. The piece of music for those who don't know it, is Saint Saens' Aquarium from the Carnival of the Animals which is available for download in PDF format from some sites.

Re: Fifths

Reply #6 –
I just saw this on TV about a week ago, it was performed in Germany by 2 sisters on 2 pianos plus some other musicians.
I really liked it, and I was wondering if are there any of the pieces out there on midi?

Bluey

Re: Fifths

Reply #7 –
I'd like to add my own comments on this for the support of indefinitely variable groupings (i.e. not just 3, not just 5, but 11's and 17's, as used in (for example) bar 86 of "The Gnome" from Mussorgsky's "Pictures", where you get 11 semiquavers grouped in a 3-crotchet bar, and also some of the rather more complicated things going on in Holst's "Neptune".

Yes okay, there's a work-round - I can change the time signature to 11/16 or 17/16 or whatever, but this doesn't help much when I want to play notes in the standard pattern in another stave (there's examples of 5 against 4 all through Rachmaninov's G-major prelude, and he even runs triplets against 5-groupings in some places. Not only that, there are places where you get 5-groupings *and* six-groupings all in the same bar, which makes artificially modifying the time signature somewhat tricky.

I gather that this is on the wish list - but do we have any idea about whether this functionality is to be addressed? If so, then the program will be even more ultra-wonderful than it already is.

Keep up the good work ...