Maintaining pulse, changing measure length

Question

TLDR; So I've got a piece that's predominantly in a nice, slow, 4/4 common time at 76 bpm. Halfway through however, in order for the score to not look like a horrific mess, I needed to keep the same pulse (76 bpm), but instead count it in two, effectively halving the bar length and giving it a cut-common feel - the tempo/pulse stays the same, but the "conductor" is conducting in 2, not 4.

I knew I didn't want to just write a tempo change 2x the previous one. I've never had to deal with up until now, but the solution I came up with was:

• Change from 4/4 (C) to cut-common.
• Specify "double time" in the new section However, I wasn't 100% sure if "double time" actually "doubled" the tempo or it just cancelled out the cut-common effect.

Tell me if my solution works and if not, any help on how to do this in a sleek way would be much appreciated.

tyty

Answer 1

I'd favour 2/4 and keeping crotchet/quarter=76 for two reasons. One is that changing the duration notation forces performers to re-adjust to the new notation; if you keep the same notated tempo, no re-adjustment is needed. Another reason: you say that you want to keep the same 76 BPM pulse (rather than a 152 BPM pulse). So if the music feels as if the pulse is the same, it seems more natural to notate it that way, too.

I don't know if this example is relevant to your piece but, just in case: the duet (no. 9) from Act 1 of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer. The outer sections are a gavotte, 4 moderately slow beats to the bar. Later sections are more impassioned with semiquavers/16ths. For those, the time sig changes to 2/4 but the pulse is the same.