So why might one want to change meters? There are a variety of reasons one might want to change meters in a piece. We’ve looked in the Compositional Phrasing section in Chapter 2 at one reason why you might change meter - to extend a measure by a beat or two to keep phrases from being too square.

It’s also quite easy to conceive of rhythms that don’t really fit in their totality into any particular meter, and when you want to use them, you have to either find a way to make them fit, or you have to change meter. Sometimes, you can start a passage at someplace other than the downbeat of a measure, and work it out so that it ends at the end of a measure sometime later. This only works in relatively short tunes where there aren’t several places you want to do that, but I’ve seen some versions of the French Christmas carol Pat-a-Pan, for example, that try to keep it all in one meter by starting at an odd place and not caring so much whether beats line up with their obvious beat placements. I hear it as a tune that changes meter a couple of times. There is no way to write this cleanly in a way that makes sense, but when you hear it, it doesn’t sound forced or unnatural. These rhythms just don’t line up cleanly in a single meter. Here is a track from Tania Opland (and friends) playing the tune, and my transcription of a lead sheet of the tune with meter changes. There are other ways you could break this up (especially the part I have in 5/4), but this is what I came up with:

Another reason you might change meter is to avoid having some longer structure that might be harder to read, The opening of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the first promenade, is a good example of this. It features one bar of 5/4, followed by a bar of 6/4, which then repeats. That pattern shows up several times in the initial promenade. He could have just written the whole passage in 11/4, but then that would slightly change the feel, and it wouldn’t really be easier to read than doing it this way. Once the strings enter, the music takes on a steadier 6/4 feel anyway until the opening returns near the end of that movement.

The end of that first movement is a good example of the technique referred to above. You’ll notice in the score video below that the last time when everyone plays the theme at the end of the movement, the melody starts in the middle of a bar, so they don’t have to change the meter one more time there at the end, even though that misaligns the beats in the measure relative to how they were written before. I’m primarily an orchestral musician, so I’m going to pull the Ravel orchestration of this piece rather than the piano original, but it should be the same in either version.

As far as how to count changing meters more easily, my best tips are to keep track of subdivisions and know what stays constant between meter changes. Usually, either the beat will stay constant, or the subdivision will, and sometimes both, in which case you just have to know how many numbers to count in any given measure. In cases where the subdivision type changes (simple to compound or vice versa), they should tell you whether the subdivision or beat is constant. See the Metric Modulation chapter for more about that. The other thing that you need to be aware of is what value a subdivision has at any point in time. If you move from anything /4 to anything /2, then the 8th notes will feel different (two per beat in /4, and four per beat in /2), and that could throw you off.

The other key tip I have is something I mentioned back in the Counting Long Rests section in the Reading / Notation Tips chapter. I said you could watch for meter changes and then ensure that your conductor changes beats where you think they should. This also works while you are playing, and if all goes well then you will see them change their beat to match what you are counting in your head as well. Remember also from Chapter 2 that you should be counting subdivisions, and not just the beats you see the conductor give. Even if they are subdividing their beat, you should probably be mentally subdividing at least one more layer down from what they are showing, and possibly more.

If you don’t have a conductor, for instance if you are playing multi-meter chamber music, then the first tips still apply, and you just need to count as carefully as you can. Sometimes you and your fellow players can use other kinds of body language to help cue certain kinds of passages as well, but even that doesn’t always work. I suppose the other tip is just to know the piece as thoroughly as you can. If you are performing a piece, you don’t want to be guessing where things go or what you should do during the performance.

Sight-reading multi-meter pieces can be difficult. It is generally possible, and learning to hear and think in terms of patterns or groups of notes is one of the most effective tips I can give for just about anything in music (that’s why it’s Life Tips General Musicianship Tip No. 1 at the top of that guide!). The less you are reading note to note, the easier it will be to read everything correctly. That being said, there comes a point at which it’s really better not to have to sight-read, and some music is on the verge (or over the edge for many people) of not being sightreadable. Which brings us to our final challenge in this guide…

And here it is: our final challenge in this guide. If you are an orchestral musician yourself, you might have guessed where I was going with this, but this is one of the acid tests of an orchestral musician or conductor’s ability to count and keep track of where they are in a piece: the Sacrificial Dance, the last movement of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring. In my Conducting 1 class at Berklee, I had to learn to count just the first few measures of this movement (from 30:07 where I start this video until 30:22 in this video). I’ll just leave a score video below of this whole movement - feel free to go back to the rest of the piece too, it’s a great piece all around. I remember the first time I heard it when I was about 14 or 15 I didn’t know what just happened to me, but it has grown on me over the years and is now one of my favorite orchestral pieces. Have fun with this one!

I hope you have learned a thing or two about rhythm from this guide, and are on your way to developing stronger rhythm abilities as a musician. As I mentioned at the beginning, I believe secure rhythm is the most important aspect of musicianship, and having strong skills in this regard will go a long way towards setting you up as a proficient musician, no matter where your musical journey takes you. See you down the road!

Richard Bruner

Los Angeles, CA, Summer 2024