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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 ...
Whereas the term prolation is used to describe the rhythmic structure on a small scale, tempus (or 'time') describes the division of the breve, which is on a larger scale. [4] As with prolation, tempus also corresponds roughly to the modern concept of time signature, and describes the relationship between the breve and semibreve. [citation needed]
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 ...
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).
I suggest you read some of the discussions in the page archives because the "time signature vs. meter" debate has already been had. 5 and 7 would make this article too long (indeed, it is already currently near the post-expand include size limit and has gone above such limit twice before, in June and October 2022), and time signatures of 5/x ...
This page was last edited on 2 February 2016, at 08:19 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply.
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.