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shugs · Post by **shugs** » Mon May 24, 2021 10:08 pm

I am new to music theory and intellectually understand what the differences between these two meters are if I am looking at a musical score and time signature BUT, if I am simply presented with a piece of music, I am not sure I would be able to hear the difference. Can someone provide some advice or links to be able to listen and compare the two different types or meters ? Am I correct that they are very similar sounding ?. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

shawshawraw · Post by **shawshawraw** » Mon May 24, 2021 10:45 pm

Good question. I'm sometimes getting confused between 2/4 and 4/4 as well.

I guess 3/4 it is when I want to waltz and 6/8 when it feels weird to do so. Or a one-circle vs two-circle tendency when the tempo is fast.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Tue May 25, 2021 6:46 am

You should look at the structure of the eighths notes.
If they are in groups of two, you have three strong beats per bar, so it's 3/4.
If they are in groups of three, you have two strong beats per bar, so it's 6/8.

> links
Just google "3/4 vs 6/8", there's lots of articles and videos explaining this.

> I'm sometimes getting confused between 2/4 and 4/4 as well.
+1. Lately I was contemplating that some styles like EDM should be notated as 8/4, because feels natural to me to count 8 beats instead of four.

shugs · Post by **shugs** » Tue May 25, 2021 12:26 pm

thanks....my difficulty is in the 'listening'. If I see the score then I know what I am dealing with but when all I have is a piece of music to listen to is where I am struggling.

Let me ask it in a different way. Suppose I hear two pieces of music and one goes : 'one and two and three and four and five and six.....' and the other sounds like ' one and a two and a three and a four and a five and a six......' From this information, am I correct that we now would know we are dealing with a simple meter song vs a compound meter song , but it's not yet clear if we are dealing with duple or triples ?

and then re-listening to song one, we hear " one and two and three and one and two and three'''' so now we know song one is simple triple ..e.g 3/4........however could it also be 3/2 or 3/8 or 3/16 and we just don't have enough information without seeing the score ?

and then re-listening to the second song, we hear 'one and a two and a one and a two", so now we know it compound duple...eg. 6/8.....or 12/16 ?

AM I close to getting it ?

shawshawraw · Post by **shawshawraw** » Tue May 25, 2021 2:13 pm

Haha, maybe sometimes the line really is blurred??

Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers sprung to my mind today:

Let me know how you find it! 3/4? 6/8? Or 4/4? :p

shugs · Post by **shugs** » Tue May 25, 2021 2:48 pm

I suck at this.......3/ 4 is my guess

lobanov · Post by **lobanov** » Tue May 25, 2021 2:59 pm

I think about it this way:

3/4 = 3/4
6/8 = 2/4 (with triplets)

BertKoor has said this, but it's a bit simpler.

Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers is 3/4 definitely. The waltz is a very fast dance. And in the score it's 3/4.

shawshawraw · Post by **shawshawraw** » Tue May 25, 2021 3:10 pm

Honestly, it's 4/4 in my ears!

The conductor seems to operate in 4/4 as well.

I know it's 3/4 on the score!

lobanov · Post by **lobanov** » Tue May 25, 2021 5:06 pm

shugs wrote: Mon May 24, 2021 10:08 pm I am new to music theory and intellectually understand what the differences between these two meters are if I am looking at a musical score and time signature BUT, if I am simply presented with a piece of music, I am not sure I would be able to hear the difference. Can someone provide some advice or links to be able to listen and compare the two different types or meters ? Am I correct that they are very similar sounding ?. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

The meter is an instruction for performers. No less, no more. Do you really need to 'detect' it when listening to the music? You just have to know how to play it.

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Tue May 25, 2021 5:54 pm

lobanov wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 5:06 pm
shugs wrote: Mon May 24, 2021 10:08 pm I am new to music theory and intellectually understand what the differences between these two meters are if I am looking at a musical score and time signature BUT, if I am simply presented with a piece of music, I am not sure I would be able to hear the difference. Can someone provide some advice or links to be able to listen and compare the two different types or meters ? Am I correct that they are very similar sounding ?. Any help or advice would be appreciated.
The meter is an instruction for performers. No less, no more. Do you really need to 'detect' it when listening to the music? You just have to know how to play it.

well, you don't want to dance out of step, in the discotheque.

lobanov · Post by **lobanov** » Tue May 25, 2021 6:07 pm

vurt wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 5:54 pm
lobanov wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 5:06 pm
shugs wrote: Mon May 24, 2021 10:08 pm I am new to music theory and intellectually understand what the differences between these two meters are if I am looking at a musical score and time signature BUT, if I am simply presented with a piece of music, I am not sure I would be able to hear the difference. Can someone provide some advice or links to be able to listen and compare the two different types or meters ? Am I correct that they are very similar sounding ?. Any help or advice would be appreciated.
The meter is an instruction for performers. No less, no more. Do you really need to 'detect' it when listening to the music? You just have to know how to play it.
well, you don't want to dance out of step, in the discotheque.

wurt...

but...

People who don't know anything about musical meters successfully becomes stars on local dancefloors.

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Tue May 25, 2021 6:16 pm

i guess maybe, so if the op is presented with a piece in compound time, they know they are playing it right.
listening for differences, is part of training for musicians. no point waiting till you get a piece and are told you're playing it wrong, because you're not sure

there's different things, some of us can just hear, where others need to delve a little deeper till it sinks in. but we all have those, mine was/is playing keyboard lines ive written on my guitar (guitar is my main instrument believe it or not) still find it weird only having one position for each note, so that trips me up a lot. after 30 years!!!

so, that's why im guessing the op wants to listen, even the explanations above, while being great, if you can't "hear it" they mean nothing.
it will come though, with listening

lobanov · Post by **lobanov** » Wed May 26, 2021 4:00 am

OK, the ability to 'detect a meter by ear' isn't essential. I don't mean that we have not to do it or not to try to do it at all. But it is really important for understanding scores.

It's worth to remember about the ambiguity of metric structures due to the complexity of them. And (even more) it's worth to remember about the ambiguity of their notation. In a certain sense Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers is 4/4 (that is 12/8). It's really easy and trivial to rewrite this score in 4/4. What will change? But triplets are really important. When we say 'It's 3/4' we accent the most salient trait.

We cannot find room for a whole metric structure in simple notation similar to '3/4', '4/4' or '6/8'.

P. S. Can we hear difference between F# and Gb? No, it depends on context. This difference in the equal tempered scale cannot be heard in any way. I'm sure the difference between for example 12/8 and 3/4 in some contexts holds the same (or very similar) nature.

TribeOfHǫfuð · Post by **TribeOfHǫfuð** » Wed May 26, 2021 11:42 am

My Afro-American percussion teacher believed that 4/4 just was a Western perversion of the African twelve and that all original rhythms were somehow related to divisions of the twelve and polyrhythmics. He spent a lot of time rewriting Jazz and latin tunes that used 4/4 signatures and triplets to straight six or twelve (6/8 or 12/8). He thought that it meant something to the feeling that many tunes are written in 4/4 + triplets instead of the direct signature: If you write 12 beats in four beats with triplets, he thought students had a tendency to play it like a waltz, with accent on 1,2,3,4 when playing triplets, when accent was supposed to be on e.g. 1 and 6. Turning our bodies into 12-ridden Africans was a hopeless quest working with Danes, of course. Too much 4/4 in our blood already.

shugs · Post by **shugs** » Wed May 26, 2021 11:59 am

I appreciate all the comments so far, and yeah, I am starting to wonder about the importance in being able to 'hear' the time signature, other than it might be a question on a quiz or test. The importance seems (to me) to be able to understand the difference when reading and playing music....

But here is a related question to my original. If two pieces of music were played for you with one being in 2 4 whilst the other is in 2 2, is it true that you would be unable to say which one is which ? Both have 2 beats per measure, one has a quarter note per beat and the other has a half note per beat. But since the actual length of time in piece one of a quarter note is X and the actual length of time of a half note in piece 2 is Y, I posit that there may be no difference between the two time signatures as far as the ear goes. Yes, no ?

compound duple meter vs simple triple meter