Re: compound time signature with non duple denominator

[Hans Åberg]

> On 5 Nov 2016, at 00:03, David Wright <address@hidden> wrote:

>>> Mairi's Wedding is completely regular; it has five 8-bar
>>> sections, which happens to sum to 40:
>> 
>> But they have to play it A B A B B, where each letter is a 8-bar section.
> 
> For that original tune, that's the usual sequence. But why "But"?
> Lots of tunes are expanded by repeating an 8-bar phrase if they're
> shorter than the dance demands. The dancers couldn't care less so
> long as the music changes after the correct number of bars.
> The next tune (you need several if you're not going to bore people
> with eight times through) might be a tune that has a different
> length and structure. Then there are loads of 48-bar and 64-bar
> dances. None of this variation makes a dance irregular.
> 
> There's a useful introduction at
> http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Scotland/PlayingForSCD.html

It is an irregularity that has to be compensated for, as this your link. Tunes 
with sections not a power of two occurs in Swedish folk music, for example this 
polska after Höök Olle (in 3/4).
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGWpQVvjBrU