Irrational Meter

Yes, a triplet divides the note into thirds - just like any complex meter, such as 3/8, 6/8, 9/8, etc. There is really no need for irrational meters and in actual music notation they don't exist, period. The place where they are used is more electronica based because the programs used to develop that music generally aren't notes written on staff paper (GENERALLY), but are more free form in how the music is represented visually, thus someone could "invent" a meter like 4/3 to suit their purposes.

I hate to seem like some classical-obsessed nut over here who hates all things modern, but the point here isn't the genre or the "contemporariness" of it; rather, it is the simple fact that it is not actual music notation. That's like me scribbling a shape on a piece of paper and saying, "this is the letter pluh and it replaces the ph sound like in phone" and then writing novels with that letter. People will tell me I'm wrong because that's not how that sound is notated in the English language.

But notation shouldn't be something unchangeable. If you need to invent a new symbol to express a musical thought best, go for it. There was no way to notate a quartertone before the 20th century in western music. It had to be invented. Of course you could also just have written "play this a quartertone higher" over the note, but it would be less practical if you wrote a whole piece with quartertones.

Inventing a new shape to express exactly the ph sound might not make sense, as "ph" is fairly uncomplicated to write. But many new symbols have been invented in literature, to express things more accurately. The example I know best would be the german writer Arno Schmidt who used his own, very unique, punctuation. It takes a while to get used to, but then it makes a lot of sense and you realize that it's the most direct and appropriate way to express a certain idea. He could have described these ideas in a more standard way, but it would have made his multilayered texts harder and less fluid to read.

Notation evolves. We went from simple neumes to mensural notation, to "modern notation", which developed a lot. And next to it there were always alternative systems like tabulature, basso continuo, and more graphically oriented systems (space notation isn't an invention of the 20th century!). Notation should never dictate what music is or can be, it is merely a form of communicating a musical idea.

I like to write my music in the most easy to read form that works, but sometimes it's inevitable to expand classical notation to express something. This is by -no- means a practice that was started in the 20th century.

Gardener is right. A good book on notation is Gardner Read's "Music Notation" or something like that (Crescendo books, I think). A really good book, with a summary of history of notation as we know it today, it touches all aspects of notation, and in the end of each chapter he gives some modern innovations and why are they good or bad. And he states that in the bottom line, it's up to the composer to devise a new notation, if he wishes so, as long as it makes reading the music more easy than normal notation. And that makes sense, doesn't it? Survival of the strongest, or the most effective in the particular case :P