[Dixielandjazz] Timing question

[David W. Littlefield]

At 08:30 PM 2/8/2004 -0800, Ken Gates wrote:
>This will not be of general interest.  Maybe someone with patience
>will explain--off list--the differences of 2/2,  2/4, and "cut" time.
>Was a listener--stayed out of---a disagreeable argument concerning
>how to play "After You've Gone" and this subject came up.
>Ken Gates

The matter may not be of "general" interest, but it is of some importance
to musicians with lesser technical training who use music or play with
musicians who use terms like that. 

I had experiences with "Tico tico" and "The Way you look tonight". I also
had to make decisions concerning time signatures in my fake books. Sight
read the stock of "Tico tico" on a gig with my 10-piece band; reed section
and several other pieces were from the US Marine Band; reed section leader
asked "do you want this in 2?" Quoth I, I dunno, so he counted it off
f-a-s-t. Oy!!

The music to "Way you look tonight (barf)" has a bunch of whole notes.
Everyone knows it's slow tune, so ya count it off and it d-r-a-gs, and
folks forget to count and come in early at the end of the first section. I
tried cutting the value of the notes in half, count it extra slow and no
one screws up. But my 32-bar sheet doesn't match the sheet music. 

To avoid confusion, since I assumed the majority of my book customers are
not professionally trained, I set the time sig. as 4/4, provide tempo(s),
and note whether the tune is 4/4 or 2-beat on every sheet. As far as I can
determine, there's rarely a *practical* reason to use 2/2, 2/4, or the
cut-time symbol. 

Re "After you've gone", the standard practice when playing it fast is to
double the value of the notes. Keep the original value when playing it
slow. Many bands play the tune slow first, perhaps including the verse,
then whoop it up. What's the proper time sig. for the fast version?

I've had a couple of running arguments with a couple of colleagues about
the technical incorrectness of my fake book time signatures, but what bugs
me is that no one has yet to show me how my practice *doesn't work*. 

--Sheik