What is the strong-weak beat pattern in 11/16?

Notate what it's meant to be - by the summands: e.g. instead of 11/8 you write 5/8 + 6/8 right after the clef and key signature.

The subdivisions can also be printed in vertically dashed barlines.

In any meter, beats are grouped by twos and threes. Some meters leave no options, because, for example, the only way you can reach a sum of 4 with 2 and 3 is 2 + 2.

The order of this grouping is not fixed, so, for example, 5/8 can be 3 + 2 or 2 + 3.

(One could consider that 6/8 can be 3 + 3 or 2 + 2 + 2, but by convention the latter pattern is notated as 3/4 instead. Similarly, 8/8 can be 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 or 3 + 3 + 2, but both patterns are typically notated as 4/4.)

Once you get into higher numbers, the groups of three and two can appear in almost any permutation, so for 11/16, it could be, in any order, a total of four groups of two and a group of three or one group of two and three groups of three:

• 3 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2
• 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 2
• 2 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2
• 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 2
• 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3
• 3 + 3 + 3 + 2
• 3 + 3 + 2 + 3
• 3 + 2 + 3 + 3
• 2 + 3 + 3 + 3

Because of this ambiguity, composers will often use some way of indicating the desired grouping. They might write it into the time signature, or they might use accent marks.