Musicianship
Rhythm - Bonus: Unmetered Music
This is a bonus section for my musicianship guide to rhythm. I mentioned in the first main section in Chapter 2 that all music other than ambient soundscapes and pure drones has pulse, and most music has meter. So what are some examples of unmetered music?
One common type of unmetered music is from the Baroque: “Unmeasured Fantasia” or “Unmeasured Prelude”. In this kind of music, you will be given some chord progressions and then you will play through them with improvised figures ranging from simple arpeggiations (up, down, or both) to more complex rippling arpeggio patterns or whatever you can come up with. You play each chord until you want to move on to the next one - sometimes they have note values but that’s usually just to give some idea of how long they want each one to be in relative terms. The whole piece can be unmeasured, as in our example, or only a section of it might be unmeasured.
Here is an example of unmeasured fantasia from Louis Couperin (called an unmeasured prelude here):
The next one I’m going to feature is a traditional Sean Nos (the “Old Style”) slow air from Ireland. In this kind of music, the words give some structure to the tune but there is no real meter, and it is traditionally sung in Irish and unaccompanied. Instrumentalists have adopted some of these tunes and tunebooks have tried to write them down, but they are supposed to feel free and somewhat improvised. These days you may also see them accompanied, but I’ve chosen one that sticks closer to the tradition for this example.
This final one is an example of Gregorian Chant, which has measured note values but not really meter. If you tried to write this with meter, you’d need to change the meter frequently, perhaps something like Pat-a-Pan in the previous section.