First off, hi, I'm Cody, and this part of the thread is my obligatory introduction. I'm currently in college studying VFX, but I've always had an interest in doing something musical, which I have just recently started to realize. I have no formal musical training, and I can just barely play the piano. About all I have going for me is an ear for sound and rhythm, which is enough to get me by in the world of non-live music. This last semester, I took an intro electroacoustic class, which introduced me to Logic and all the hardware in a typical studio. It also gave me the opportunity to create two original pieces of music, something I had never done before. Now I very much look forward to learning all that I can about creating music.
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With that aside, I want to start exploring some odd time signatures, so I've been doing some research on the subject. I just want to make sure that I'm understanding it correctly.
The top number of the signature is the X number of beats per bar. Easy enough. It's the bottom number I'm not sure about. Am I correct in saying that this number represents the length of the beats defined in the above number?
If so, then 4/8 would be twice as fast as 4/4 at the same tempo, correct? A bar would still have four beats, but they would be eighth notes instead of quarter notes. To further illustrate my understanding, a 5/4 signature would be a bar comprised of five quarter notes; 5/8 would be five eighth notes; and 4½/4 would be four fourth notes plus an eighth note, which could be a 9/8 signature.
Am I on the right track here, or am I way off base?
Hi and a question on time signature
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- KVRian
- 1084 posts since 12 Sep, 2008 from Your basement
Hey Cody, welcome.
The relationship between the top number and the bottom is not as strict as you're thinking.
So if you can read a little bit of music, you probably know that there is a whole note (the soccer ball looking thing) whose value can be divided in half by half-notes.
(I'm assuming you don't use "crochets" and "minims" and "quavers." I am not very familiar with those terms.)
Anyway, half-notes can be divided in half which are quarter-notes. Quarter-notes can be divided in half which are called eighth-notes. Eighth-notes can be divided in half into sixteenth-notes and so on.
The bottom number of the time signature simply tells you which of these gets ONE count.
So if it's 4/4, then the lower number represents a quarter-note. So there are four quarter notes in a bar.
If it's 4/8, then there are four EIGHTH-NOTES per bar, because it's telling you that an eighth-note gets one beat.
Which is faster 4/4 or 4/8? Neither. Time signature is independent from tempo. Tempo is how FAST those beats are going.
You can have 4/4 at 112 beats per minute and you can have 4/8 at 112 beats per minute. They would be the same tempo and have the same feel.
The listener would NEVER KNOW if a quarter-note was designated as a beat or if a 32nd-note was getting the beat.
Now having established all that, there are some more details which might confuse you, like 6/8 is often felt in 2 beats of 3 like the Monty Python themesong and the Stars and Stripes Forever. In those cases, an actual beat is a dotted quarter-note.
But for now, you can just focus on understanding the simplest case.
The relationship between the top number and the bottom is not as strict as you're thinking.
So if you can read a little bit of music, you probably know that there is a whole note (the soccer ball looking thing) whose value can be divided in half by half-notes.
(I'm assuming you don't use "crochets" and "minims" and "quavers." I am not very familiar with those terms.)
Anyway, half-notes can be divided in half which are quarter-notes. Quarter-notes can be divided in half which are called eighth-notes. Eighth-notes can be divided in half into sixteenth-notes and so on.
The bottom number of the time signature simply tells you which of these gets ONE count.
So if it's 4/4, then the lower number represents a quarter-note. So there are four quarter notes in a bar.
If it's 4/8, then there are four EIGHTH-NOTES per bar, because it's telling you that an eighth-note gets one beat.
Which is faster 4/4 or 4/8? Neither. Time signature is independent from tempo. Tempo is how FAST those beats are going.
You can have 4/4 at 112 beats per minute and you can have 4/8 at 112 beats per minute. They would be the same tempo and have the same feel.
The listener would NEVER KNOW if a quarter-note was designated as a beat or if a 32nd-note was getting the beat.
Now having established all that, there are some more details which might confuse you, like 6/8 is often felt in 2 beats of 3 like the Monty Python themesong and the Stars and Stripes Forever. In those cases, an actual beat is a dotted quarter-note.
But for now, you can just focus on understanding the simplest case.
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- KVRAF
- 4318 posts since 20 Feb, 2004
Hey Ogg, thanks for laying down the knowledge...
But I'm going to as the obvious question:
Why do we distinguish between 4/4 and 4/8, if they have the same number of beats per measure?
But I'm going to as the obvious question:
Why do we distinguish between 4/4 and 4/8, if they have the same number of beats per measure?
A well-behaved signature.
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- KVRian
- 1084 posts since 12 Sep, 2008 from Your basement
I think TankEyes has the right answer.JerGoertz wrote:Hey Ogg, thanks for laying down the knowledge...
But I'm going to as the obvious question:
Why do we distinguish between 4/4 and 4/8, if they have the same number of beats per measure?
I have not read this formally in a book so I can't come off like it "THE ANSWER," but as a composer and a musician who plays enough music, you can see how certain meters are written certain ways.
The 6/8 example is pretty good. So yeah, you could write it in 6/4 or 6/2 or 6/16. But when you beam eighth-notes together into two groups of three, you can visually see that grouping which a lot of 6/8 music has.
Here it's obvious that you've got a grouping of 2 pulses per measure. (I was wrong about the Stars and Stripes Forever before, I meant the Washington Post March by Sousa.)
If you wrote this in 6/4, it would not be quite as apparent that you've got this duple grouping within each bar. I believe it's a little psychological game that composers and arrangers play with performers.
Beyond the grouping reason, if you write a PRESTO piece (210 Beats Per Minute) in 4/1, it would look a little weird to to a player see all those goose-eggs flying by. But if it were written in 4/16, then it would intuitively make more visual sense.
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- KVRian
- 610 posts since 6 Mar, 2005 from USA
cgCody, I'm going to say you are 99% right when you say 4/4 at a tempo of 120 beats per measure is the same freakin' thing as 4/8 at a tempo of 60 beats per measure. So right on with the theory. You won't hear anything different from a notation program like Sibelius or Finale anyway.
The 1% part? It's something subtle about the way certain notes are played that are unique. OK, maybe this is all just sillyness, and I've nothing to A/B compare it to, but certain note values just seem to imply different things to me. I think I'd tend to play the 4/8 piece using a slightly more staccato touch. Or maybe it's just my imagination. I think everyone will agree with my first paragraph though.
One thing you're missing though is a subtly about note grouping. When there's 5 or more whole beats in a measure, they are usually arranged into smaller groups. So your 4½/4 example probably would be played as you said: 4 quarter notes and an eighth, with a primary stress on the first note and a secondary stress on the third. But 9/8 at half the tempo would have a different pattern of stresses; it would have a the largest acces on the first beat of each measure (as usual) but secondary stresses on the 4th and 7th beats.
The 1% part? It's something subtle about the way certain notes are played that are unique. OK, maybe this is all just sillyness, and I've nothing to A/B compare it to, but certain note values just seem to imply different things to me. I think I'd tend to play the 4/8 piece using a slightly more staccato touch. Or maybe it's just my imagination. I think everyone will agree with my first paragraph though.
One thing you're missing though is a subtly about note grouping. When there's 5 or more whole beats in a measure, they are usually arranged into smaller groups. So your 4½/4 example probably would be played as you said: 4 quarter notes and an eighth, with a primary stress on the first note and a secondary stress on the third. But 9/8 at half the tempo would have a different pattern of stresses; it would have a the largest acces on the first beat of each measure (as usual) but secondary stresses on the 4th and 7th beats.
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- KVRAF
- 2118 posts since 1 Apr, 2004 from Athens, Greece
Not necessarily, as we can hear in lots of pieces from progressive rock/metal or even traditional music from where I come from. In Greece (and I assume other nearby countries too) it's very common to divide a 9/8 bar in 3-2-2-2 or 2-2-2-3.jcsquire1 wrote:... But 9/8 at half the tempo would have a different pattern of stresses; it would have a the largest acces on the first beat of each measure (as usual) but secondary stresses on the 4th and 7th beats.
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- KVRian
- 1084 posts since 12 Sep, 2008 from Your basement
Do you mean beats per minute? If so, I do not agree with what you've said.jcsquire1 wrote: 4/4 at a tempo of 120 beats per measure is the same freakin' thing as 4/8 at a tempo of 60 beats per measure.
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- KVRist
- 54 posts since 13 Aug, 2009
While a song in 6/8 sounds the same as if it were written in 6/4 (or 3/4, for that matter), convention is often the deciding factor in choosing which time signature to use. For example, one would usually expect a song written in 6/8 to have the accents on beats 1 and 4 (i.e. ONE two three FOUR five six), but one wouldn't necessarily have the same expectation for a piece written in 6/4.
The idea is to make the rhythm of your piece as visually obvious as possible at all times, to make sight-reading easier. If you were writing a waltz, you'd generally use 3/4 time, and you'd want your measures visually divided into thirds. If you were writing something with a beat that felt like a pair of triplets, you'd use 6/8, and you'd use a lot of beamed eighth notes in groups of three. If you were writing a piece that sounded as if it were in 4/4, but with a couple extra beats added, you'd use 6/4 time with even note distribution.
The other thing to remember is that the higher your "denominator," the more beams you need to use for fractions of a beat. That is, if you're writing in 4/8 time, instead of 4/4 time, your fast passages would need to be written with 32nd or 64th notes, which look a lot more daunting than the same passage written using 16th notes. Again, it's simply a matter of making your score as concise and rhythmically obvious as you can.
The idea is to make the rhythm of your piece as visually obvious as possible at all times, to make sight-reading easier. If you were writing a waltz, you'd generally use 3/4 time, and you'd want your measures visually divided into thirds. If you were writing something with a beat that felt like a pair of triplets, you'd use 6/8, and you'd use a lot of beamed eighth notes in groups of three. If you were writing a piece that sounded as if it were in 4/4, but with a couple extra beats added, you'd use 6/4 time with even note distribution.
The other thing to remember is that the higher your "denominator," the more beams you need to use for fractions of a beat. That is, if you're writing in 4/8 time, instead of 4/4 time, your fast passages would need to be written with 32nd or 64th notes, which look a lot more daunting than the same passage written using 16th notes. Again, it's simply a matter of making your score as concise and rhythmically obvious as you can.
You're bad... with my help, you could be the worst.
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- KVRian
- 610 posts since 6 Mar, 2005 from USA
Double doh!Ogg Vorbis wrote:Do you mean beats per minute? If so, I do not agree with what you've said.jcsquire1 wrote: 4/4 at a tempo of 120 beats per measure is the same freakin' thing as 4/8 at a tempo of 60 beats per measure.
I agree, Ogg Vorbis, on both accounts. I SHOULD have said a time signature of 4/4 (4 beats to the measure, quarter note gets the beat) at 120 beats per minute is pretty much the same thing as a time signature of 4/8 (4 beats to the measure, eighth note gets the beat) at 120 beats per minute if you rewrite everything that was in quarter notes as eighth notes. It's hard enough to learn something without being told something that is wrong; sorry cgCody. Been a long night!
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- KVRian
- 1084 posts since 12 Sep, 2008 from Your basement
Yeah my brain is fried too after not sleeping enough.... Here's another brain frier...jcsquire1 wrote:Double doh!Ogg Vorbis wrote:Do you mean beats per minute? If so, I do not agree with what you've said.jcsquire1 wrote: 4/4 at a tempo of 120 beats per measure is the same freakin' thing as 4/8 at a tempo of 60 beats per measure.
It's hard enough to learn something without being told something that is wrong; sorry cgCody. Been a long night!
What if you are in 4/4 and you see a switch to 12/8 and above it you see quarter-note equals dotted quarter note?
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- KVRist
- 350 posts since 11 May, 2008
The rule of thumb is simple:
Simple Measures have beats divided in 2 halfs.
Simples measures are 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4.
Composed measures have beats divided in 3 parts. To transform a simple measure in a composed measure you just multiply the top part per 3 and divide the bottom for 2. So, the composed measure of 2/4 is 6/8.
The composed measure of 3/4 is 9/8, and the composed measure of 4/4 is 12/8.
What is a composed measure?
Is a measure where the beat unit is a dotted figure, so it can be divided by 3.
So a 12/8 is a quaternary measure (four beats per measure) and each beat is a dotted quarter note. And it goes (ONE-pam-pam, two-pam-pam, THREE-pam-pam, four-pam-pam).
what's the difference between a 4/4 witten with triplets and a 12/8? Basically none. It's just a way to make the score clear.
Convention tells us that slow rock is written in 4/4 with triplets all over. But if you write a slow rock in 12/8 that would be more clear.
Complex measures on the other hand are the combinations of simple and composed measures with each other. For instance 5/4 may be a 2/4+3/4. or 15/8 may be 6/8+9/8.
That leaves us with some kind of mixed measures sometimes. Say,
What is a 3/8? It's a composed 1/4 (ONE-pam-pam) or a ternary eight note beated measure (ONE-two-three)?
That you'll have to see looking at it: if you find a lot of dotted quarters and the eight noted BEAMED, then it's obviously a 1/4 composed. One beat per measure. If the eight notes are not beamed, are appart, then the composer wanted to state that each one is unique, is a different beat. So it's a ternary measure.
Beaming is not alleatory! It's a very fine way to show us how the groupings are made.
And that's why we use so much x/4 and x/8 measures, because with eight notes and their beams we can easily spot the groupings.
It's far more easy to understand the groupings in a 9/8 composed (ternary), or a 9/8 complex (3+2+2+2); (2+2+2+3); (4+4+1); etc; having beams than having 9/4 or 9/2 where notes appear by themselves.
Still we will always have very strange measures to make option for.
Imagine I have a melody that goes like
quarter note, quarter note, eight note triplet BUT only 2 eight notes. the third one is already part of the following measure.
How would I write this measure?
I'll leave that for now for you to think about it. I have my theory about it, but I prefer to discuss that after hearing you.
Simple Measures have beats divided in 2 halfs.
Simples measures are 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4.
Composed measures have beats divided in 3 parts. To transform a simple measure in a composed measure you just multiply the top part per 3 and divide the bottom for 2. So, the composed measure of 2/4 is 6/8.
The composed measure of 3/4 is 9/8, and the composed measure of 4/4 is 12/8.
What is a composed measure?
Is a measure where the beat unit is a dotted figure, so it can be divided by 3.
So a 12/8 is a quaternary measure (four beats per measure) and each beat is a dotted quarter note. And it goes (ONE-pam-pam, two-pam-pam, THREE-pam-pam, four-pam-pam).
what's the difference between a 4/4 witten with triplets and a 12/8? Basically none. It's just a way to make the score clear.
Convention tells us that slow rock is written in 4/4 with triplets all over. But if you write a slow rock in 12/8 that would be more clear.
Complex measures on the other hand are the combinations of simple and composed measures with each other. For instance 5/4 may be a 2/4+3/4. or 15/8 may be 6/8+9/8.
That leaves us with some kind of mixed measures sometimes. Say,
What is a 3/8? It's a composed 1/4 (ONE-pam-pam) or a ternary eight note beated measure (ONE-two-three)?
That you'll have to see looking at it: if you find a lot of dotted quarters and the eight noted BEAMED, then it's obviously a 1/4 composed. One beat per measure. If the eight notes are not beamed, are appart, then the composer wanted to state that each one is unique, is a different beat. So it's a ternary measure.
Beaming is not alleatory! It's a very fine way to show us how the groupings are made.
And that's why we use so much x/4 and x/8 measures, because with eight notes and their beams we can easily spot the groupings.
It's far more easy to understand the groupings in a 9/8 composed (ternary), or a 9/8 complex (3+2+2+2); (2+2+2+3); (4+4+1); etc; having beams than having 9/4 or 9/2 where notes appear by themselves.
Still we will always have very strange measures to make option for.
Imagine I have a melody that goes like
quarter note, quarter note, eight note triplet BUT only 2 eight notes. the third one is already part of the following measure.
How would I write this measure?
I'll leave that for now for you to think about it. I have my theory about it, but I prefer to discuss that after hearing you.
Play fair and square!
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- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 4 posts since 20 Sep, 2009
Thanks everyone for your insight. I've learned quite a bit, and I think with time and practice it will make even more sense. From what I've read here and elsewhere, I'm starting to see that it's not a very straight forward concept. There's some room for interpretation.
As for your little quiz, Musicologo:
quarter note, quarter note, eight note triplet BUT only 2 eight notes. the third one is already part of the following measure.
If I'm understanding you correctly, the triplet is truncated to only 2 notes. Knowing that an eighth triplet is the length of a quarter note, cutting one third of this makes the measure short by one third of a quarter.
With that said, and I'm probably way off here, but that would be a time signature of (2 2/3) / 4, and would sound like the link below. It would be like a waltz, but short by one third of a quarter. I'm wrong aren't I?
http://web.gccaz.edu/~cepeter5/music_pr ... me_sig.mp3
Without the space the forum is putting right -------^
As for your little quiz, Musicologo:
quarter note, quarter note, eight note triplet BUT only 2 eight notes. the third one is already part of the following measure.
If I'm understanding you correctly, the triplet is truncated to only 2 notes. Knowing that an eighth triplet is the length of a quarter note, cutting one third of this makes the measure short by one third of a quarter.
With that said, and I'm probably way off here, but that would be a time signature of (2 2/3) / 4, and would sound like the link below. It would be like a waltz, but short by one third of a quarter. I'm wrong aren't I?
http://web.gccaz.edu/~cepeter5/music_pr ... me_sig.mp3
Without the space the forum is putting right -------^
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- KVRist
- 350 posts since 11 May, 2008
Yes, that would be kind of a Waltz a little bit short.
The question is: how on earth would you write this rhythm in a decent way without having to deal with fractionary numbers? (2+2/3)/4 of course is not an option to write on a score. So how should you deal with this?
ONE-and-a TWO-and-a PAM-pam/ONE-and-a Two-and-a PAM-pam/... this helps?
The question is: how on earth would you write this rhythm in a decent way without having to deal with fractionary numbers? (2+2/3)/4 of course is not an option to write on a score. So how should you deal with this?
ONE-and-a TWO-and-a PAM-pam/ONE-and-a Two-and-a PAM-pam/... this helps?
Play fair and square!
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Aroused by JarJar Aroused by JarJar https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=191505
- KVRian
- 1048 posts since 16 Oct, 2008
It's called "compound", not "composed", by the way.
How you notate odd/irregular/"limping" measures depends on the kind of music, and whether you are dealing with addititive rhythm or shifting accents.
How you notate odd/irregular/"limping" measures depends on the kind of music, and whether you are dealing with addititive rhythm or shifting accents.