Thomas Stevens

Changing Meter Studies

The Changing Meter Studies are intended to provide the student with practical exercises dealing with changing meters as they occur in much contemporary music. The format for these studies is as follows: Studies I-XIV deal with regular shifting meter patterns. Studies XV-XXI present irregular shifting meter patterns. It should be noted that the meters used are 6 or less, since larger meters are generally nothing more than combinations of smaller on es. Since the emphasis is on' the problems presented by the meters themselves, the author has attempted to use basic metric units, whenever possible, rather than complicated subdivisions within said meters. Furthermore, the units remain constant in ail the studies. The page of examples provides not only an illustration of these constant units, but also gives the student an idea of how to correctly connect the juxtaposed meters. 1 n addition, examples 1, III, and X have, placed above them, the conducting symbols, originally employed by Pierre Boulez in 'Le Marteau sans Maître', to delineate duple and triple meters, (1-111) and/or duple and triple subdivisions of intermediate meters (X). The studies are not difficult from a technical point of view; the emphasis here being on the meter changes, which, hopefully have been employed in such a way as to seem both 'natural' and inevitable.