METRIC MODULATION

In a general sense of the word, metric modulation is a change of time signature. In special modern usage, proleptically applied by Charles Ives and systematically cultivated by Elliott Carter , metric modulation is a technique in which a rhythmic pattern is superposed on another, heterometrically, and then supersedes it and becomes the basic meter. Usually, such time signatures are mutually prime, e.g., 4/4 and 3/8, and so have no common divisors. Thus the change...