March in 7/4 time

by John on March 15, 2009

After writing my post on music in 5/4 time, I remembered a march in 7/4 time that I played in band many years ago. Here’s an excerpt, about all I can remember.

sheet music example

In case the music above is too hard to read, here’s a full-sized PDF file version.

Marches are always in even meters: your left foot has to come down on the first beat of every measure when you’re marching. And yet this odd meter tune comes across as a convincing march. (It was a concert march. Actually marching to it would have been odd, pun intended.)

This march had a 4/4 + 3/4 feel, emphasis on the first and fifth beats of each 7/4 measure.

I’ve just started blogging about music recently, and I’ve got a lot to learn. I’m not set up to record audio clips. My next post will describe the software I used to post the sheet music above.

Update: Many thanks to Nikhil Chelliah for identifying the march. It’s the first movement from Third Suite by Robert Jager. The sheet music and a sound clip are available here.

Related post: Blue Rondo à la Turk

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1

John S. 03.16.09 at 05:12

You might like Odd Time Obsessed Internet Radio:

http://www.oddtimeobsessed.com/

2

Jon Aston 03.16.09 at 09:10

3

Nikhil Chelliah 04.26.09 at 13:46

Sounds like the first movement from Robert Jager’s Third Suite – see here. I found a full recording online, but it was pretty lousy.

4

John 04.26.09 at 13:56

That’s it! Amazing. Thank you very much.

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>