Not necessarily on the subject of this thread, but perhaps closely related.

Arturo Toscanini was a virtuoso among conductors, but even he had a weak spot or two. He was more at home with classical and earlier music than he was with the more modern "serious" composers, and he was happier with the more-or-less standard time signatures. Odd-ball time-signatures he could get, but sometimes they gave him a bit of trouble at first.

I can't recall who is was who told the story, but he said he was sitting in on an orchestra rehearsal of an fairly modern piece of music. Much of it was in 5/4—five notes to the measure with a quarter-note taking a full beat. Toscanini just didn't seem to be getting it and with his very tentative conducting, the orchestra wasn't either. They took a lunch break.

When they came back from lunch, suddenly everything went swimmingly. No problems, at least from the rhythm. The person who told the story noticed that the Maestro was mumbling something to himself as he waved the baton. So he sneaked up behind Toscanini to see if he could hear what he was muttering.

It was "Rim-sky-Kor-sa-kov. Rim-sky-Kor-sa-kov. Rim-sky-Kor-sa-kov. . . ."

Yup. 5/4.

If you should happen to have any trouble with 6/8, classic guitarist "Chris-to-pher Par-ken-ing" works quite well. And there are lots of other mnemonics like those, but contrarily enough, right now, I can't remember them!

Don Firth