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This is a list of musical compositions or pieces of music that have unusual time signatures. "Unusual" is here defined to be any time signature other than simple time signatures with top numerals of 2, 3, or 4 and bottom numerals of 2, 4, or 8, and compound time signatures with top numerals of 6, 9, or 12 and bottom numerals 4, 8, or 16.
Most time signatures consist of two numerals, one stacked above the other: The lower numeral indicates the note value that the signature is counting. This number is always a power of 2 (unless the time signature is irrational), usually 2, 4 or 8, but less often 16 is also used, usually in Baroque music. 2 corresponds to the half note (minim), 4 to the quarter note (crotchet), 8 to the eighth ...
This example indicates a tempo of 120 quarter notes (crotchets) per minute. Many publishers precede the marking with letters "M.M.", referring to Maelzel's Metronome. This is a tempo marking, not a time signature—it is independent of how the beats are grouped (the top number in a time signature), although it defines the tempo in terms of the ...
With regards to which time signatures are unusual, the Time signature article already mentions a number of time signatures (3/4, 4/4, 6/8 et al.) as 'most common', leading to the implication that other time sigs are unusual. Moreover, a number of time signatures is explicitly mentioned as being unusual afterwards, again without sourcing.
By way of example, Federico Mompou wrote various pieces with no time signature, such as: the first of the Impresiones Intimas (the measures contain successively 1, 10, 12, 10, 8, 12, 4 and 2 crotchets); and the 6th Prelude (which has no time signature or bar lines at all).
It seems to me that there are three categories: (A) all time signatures involved are common (e.g. 2/4 vs 3/4), and the inclusion of such works here is debatable; (B) only one is uncommon (e.g. 4/4 vs 24/16), and it is clear that these should go under their uncommon time signature; (C) more than one is uncommon (e.g. 11/8 vs 13/8), and it's not ...
The song is known for its distinct time signatures and corresponding lyrical patterns. The time signatures of the chorus of the song change from 9/8 to 8/8 to 7/8; as drummer Danny Carey says, "It was originally titled 9-8-7. For the time signatures. Then it turned out that 987 was the 16th number of the Fibonacci sequence. So that was cool." [2]
4) and the direction 'Free time' written above. The word FREE is written downwards across the stave. This is mostly used when the piece changes to free time after having had a time signature. Instead of a time signature, a large X is written on the stave. Note heads alone are used, without time values (typically black note heads without stems)