Re: irrational meters

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Silvain,

> I wonder about the term “irrational” meter. Should not we say “irregular” ??
> as in mathematics, an irrational number is a number which cannot be 
> represented as a fraction...

As both a published composer *and* a published number theorist, I 
wholeheartedly concur with your intuition — I’ve been pushing for decades 
against “irrational” as a descriptor for time signatures [except where it 
actually applies, of course, as in π/4].

“Irregular” is better… but ultimately I prefer “non-dyadic” to describe any 
time signature where the bottom number (a.k.a. “denominator”, a label I also 
avoid) is not an integer power of 2.

Cheers,
Kieren.