B3Burner
Dominant 7th #9
Registered: 10-2003
Posts: 2200
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Time Signatures
While I consider myself a fairly good "ear player" when it comes to picking out riffs, chords, and bass lines, I've never been all that good at reading sheet music, and I have little understanding of the concept of TIME SIGNATURES.
Rhythm is something I feel and can get into if someone else starts the song off for me or I'm copping riffs off a CD, but to look at a piece of sheet and be able to immediately decypher tempo and beat from it, has always been a bewildering act to me.
They've always looked like fractions to me, but I don't really understand the distinction between the top number vs. the bottom number.
What is the meaning of each number in a time signature?
I know 4/4 timing basically means 4-beats per measure and each quarter note gets a beat, but outside of that easy one, I get lost quickly.
In the Concerto For Group and Orchestra (1969) DVD, Jon Lord makes reference to his final organ solo in the "Third Movement" as being in 6/8 time. I have no idea what that means. I tried counting "one-two-three-four-five-six" to myself as I heard the solo, and I guess I wasn't doing it right, as I lost the downbeat very quickly, and my counting fell out of tempo with the music quite horribly.
How do compound time signatures work, and what makes them different that simple time signatures?
Also during the frantic organ solo in the middle of "Space Truckin'" off of Made In Japan...what time signature is that in?
Maybe if someone gives me an example of some DP songs, and their corresponding time signatures, that would help put the concept of time signatures in a context that I would understand.
Thank you to anyone who can help.
---
John O'Flaherty
"Don't take the pictures lightly, listen to their sound; for from their colored feeling, experience is found." -Mk I Deep Purple (circa 1968)
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13/1/2004, 7:14
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JFM
Purple fan
Registered: 10-2003
Posts: 430
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Re: Time Signatures
quote:
b3burner wrote:
What is the meaning of each number in a time signature?
I know 4/4 timing basically means 4-beats per measure and each quarter note gets a beat, but outside of that easy one, I get lost quickly.
The simple way to understand time signatures is to read the bottom figure as indicating the length of each beat. Thus 6/8 means that each bar consists of 6 beats measuring 1/8 of a full note.
Even though 3/4 is in some sense equal to 6/8, 3/4 is a slower tempo because each bar ahs 3 quarter-notes per bar. (Half as many, twice as long.)
Another way to explain it is to say that in 6/8 every 6th beat is accented.
(I think the finale in Lord's Concerto changes rythm and tempo everal times, so if you start counting 6/8 at one point, you'll likely to loose it.)
Songs/musical pieces do not have to have a consistent time signatures (tempo, rythm, etc.). They can change as many times as a composer feels there's a need to . (Listen to some of Stravinskij's stuff, for instance.)
Also, I've written music which start i 3/8, then changes to 7/8, 6/8, 5/8 and 4/4 over the course of five bars, before going back to 3/8 after a while. (It sounds awful, I'm sure, but then I'm no Tchaikovsky.)
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jfm
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13/1/2004, 22:56
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B3Burner
Dominant 7th #9
Registered: 10-2003
Posts: 2200
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Re: Time Signatures
So in other words, like chords, there is no one "right" way to write rhythm...you feel it and alter it on paper as you deem appropriate.
---
John O'Flaherty
"Don't take the pictures lightly, listen to their sound; for from their colored feeling, experience is found." -Mk I Deep Purple (circa 1968)
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15/1/2004, 6:37
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JFM
Purple fan
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Re: Time Signatures
You can't always know for sure when hearing a piece whether it's written in 2/4 or 4/4, for example. There's a certain degree of arbitrariness in how music is noted on paper.
However, some rythms are so well-established that they are always written in a fixed time signature. A waltz, for instance, is always (more or less) written in 3/4.
A gigue, on the other hand, is traditionally said to be a 6/8 rythm, but on paper it can be noted as almost anything, eg. 6/4, 6/12, 3/8, or something similar.
For many (most?) people, the top figure is the important one. For instance, in 3/4, 3/8, 3/2, etc, every third beat is accented (assuming you have a consistent rythm). The length of each beat (the lower figure) can be modified according to whatever a composer/performer feels is necessary.
And to complicate matters even further, sometimes 3/4 in one piece doesn't equal 3/4 in another. As a composer you're free to decide on the length of a quarter-note. That's often marked with a figure at the beginning of most scores. For instance, (picture of a quarter-note) = 120, means that the length of a quarter-note is to be adjusted so that there are 120 such quarter-notes per minute. That figure can *theoretically* be anything, say, 1 or 1000. usually, however, it tends to be kept between 75 and 120, I think.
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jfm
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15/1/2004, 6:50
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CatchTheRainbow
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Registered: 02-2004
Posts: 88
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Re: Time Signatures
When I learnt the piano, many many years ago (!), my piano teacher explained time signatures to me like this:
For example he wrote 4/4 time as 1+2+3+4+ and said it as "one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and.."
2/4, or March time, would be 1+2+ 1+2+ (ONE and two and ONE and two and..)
3/4, Waltz time, is 1+2+3+ 1+2+3+ (ONE and two and three and ONE and two and three and...)
6/8 time is 123 456 123 456 without the "ands", which makes it quicker.
The "ands" are for any half beats in the tune.
Listen to some music and see which fits. There are of course some very weird time signatures around, but most basic music fits into one of these patterns.
Hope this helps.
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3/2/2004, 16:33
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Difficulttocure
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Registered: 09-2003
Posts: 364
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Re: Time Signatures
to b3burner:
the vocal part in the 3rd movement of the Concerto is in 5/4 i believe.
and then the solo's are in 6/8. if you tap your foot relaxed you tap it twice every measure. so every tap you can count 3. so that's:
TAP(two three)
TAP(five six)
an exiting thing is the song bananas. everything exept the chorus is in 7/4. so that 7 counts per measure. the chorus is in 5/4.
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19/2/2004, 12:00
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