Talk:Irrational rhythm

Polyrhythm

Can someone please explain how this is different from a polyrhythm? -- The Anome 09:08, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

They're different. Polyrhythms are two seperate rhythms occuring simultaneously. An irrational rhythm is for example, uncommon number of notes/pulses/whatever occuring in 1 beat, like the article says, quintuplets being a group of 5 in the space of 4 normally. Dysprosia 09:12, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I have edited your comment into the article, and reworded the first sentence, which was what misled me into thinking it was about polyrhythms. Can you check that my understanding is now correct, and correct it if I'm wrong? -- The Anome 09:19, 10 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Nice clarification, which got me thinking a bit harder about the definition of this term. I added a slightly more technical version of your definition, since the odd/even distinction isn't quite sufficient; for example, 5 over 7 is irrational, but 3 over 6 isn't. Irrational cases are cases where there are no common factors.

Ornette 12:50, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I changed the definition from "if and only if n and m are coprime" because this is silly: whatever ratio you have you can always reduce n/m to lowest terms as a fraction and then they will be coprime (e.g. if you have 6 in the time of 4, which is not coprime, then this is also 3 in the time of 2, which is coprime; if you have 3 in the time of 6, which is not coprime, then this is also 1 in the time of 2, which is coprime). So I've changed it to what you meant to say, which is that a rhythm is rational if n or m is 1 when you take this lowest-terms (coprime) form. —Blotwell 02:03, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

If n or m is 1 when you take this lowest-terms (coprime) form, then this simply means that one is a factor of the other! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.57.131.248 (talk) 18:26, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge

This (rather incomprehensible) article should be merged with tuplet. 93.96.236.8 (talk) 13:11, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree that this article is largely incomprehensible (unless you already know the subject well), and the intended content seems to be identical to the "Tuplet" article, the existence of which I did not even suspect until you called my attention to it. (Indeed, why is it not cross-referenced here?) I also see on Talk:Tuplet a long discussion including bewilderment at the use of the expression "irrational rhythm" as a synonym but, in my experience, all musicians know the expression, even if it does not occur to them that there is a seeming contradiction in the fact that rhythmic relations expressed by ratios should be called "irrational" (there is an explanation, but here is not the place to go into it). I would argue, however, for merging the "Tuplet" article into this one, rather than the other way around, for two reasons. (1) The expression "irrational rhythm" is at least as familiar to musicians as "tuplet rhythm", and (2) the "-tuplet" terminology used in maths and computer science is largely incompatible with musical terminology, where the full Latin forms ("triplet", "quadruplet", … , "nonuplet", "decuplet") are used more often than the maths practice of prefacing a numeral (spoken in English, when read aloud): 3-tuplet ("three-tuplet"), 4-tuplet ("four-tuplet"), … , 9-tuplet ("nine-tuplet"), 10-tuplet ("ten-tuplet"), etc. In fact, in the Latin forms, the suffix is not "-tuplet" but "-(u)plet" (as the examples I just mention show—we don't say "triplotuplet", "quadrotuplet", or "nontuplet", any more than we say "tritet", "quadrotet" or "nontet" for groups of three, four, or nine musicians, respectively). It is in fact a misusage, based on the subset "quint(us)", "sext(us)", "sept(us)", "oct(us)", mistaking the T as part of the suffix instead of part of the stem. This terminology has, however, become enshrined through usage, even in music, though it is not the dominant practice.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:37, 14 March 2009 (UTC)