A time signature is simply the composer's way of telling you how s/he is subdividing the measure. So in 4/4 time, the composer imagines the measure divided into four beats, while in 8/8 time, the composer imagines the measure divided into eight beats. The difference is less in the strict timing and more in the feel or pulse of the music.Try counting these out loud:4/4 time: '1-2-3-4-/1-2-3-4-'8/8 time: '1235678'2/2 time: '1-2-/1-2-'All three of these take up exactly the same amount of time, but to me, the 4/4 time feels steady, while the 8/8 time feels brisk and the 2/2 time feels stately. In all three time signatures, a quarter note will have the same value—one quarter of the measure—but in 4/4 time, it represents the pulse of the music, while in 8/8, it's two pulses and in 2/2 time, it's half a pulse.A difference in feel between 3/4 and 6/8 time can be even more obvious.
Time Signatures are a very important ingredient in understanding how to count and play a piano piece or exercise. Once we have learned how many counts.
In 3/4 time, the measure is broken up into three distinct beats, as in a waltz. In 6/8 time, by contrast, the measure is often broken up into two beats, each with a triplet feel. Like this:3/4 time: 'ONE and TWO and TRE and/ONE and TWO and TRE and '6/8 time: 'ONE two tre FOR fiv six/ONE two tre FOR fiv six 'If the composer writes three quarter notes in 3/4 time, it will feel like three notes on the beat. But if the composer writes three quarter notes in 6/8 time, the second note may feel syncopated relative to the overall pulse of the music.Update: Listen to the first twenty seconds or so of by Los Lobos. Is it in 3/4 or 6/8 time?
Depending on how you hear it, the music has a much different feel, with the lead guitars putting emphasis on different parts of the melody. Listen a few times and try to hear it both ways! Adding to Alex's answer, There seem to be at least 2 factors in choosing a time signatureFirst way is disregarding duplet/triplet feelone is how many beats there are in the bar, so often in the case of 7/16 it's all about just the number of 16ths in that bar. In many prog rock passages and places where the time signature is constantly changing it's because the player wants to extend a repeated phrase by an odd amount so they'll just stick the notes in the phrase and change the time signature bar to bar.As a practical example, suppose you have a phrase of nine quavers, grouped 3 3 3. One way often used by prog rockers is to alter one group to be different lengths in a passage(let's use the last group here), so perhaps it would go 333,336,333,332. In time signature terms what you would have there is 9/8,12/8,9/8,8/8, It doesn't make sense to define the 8/8 bar as 4/4 because it breaks the pattern.The second way is considering the feelThis is where 3/4 and 6/8 commonly differ. As you may know 3/4 is counted in duplets or 1+2+3+(3 groups of 2), whereas 6/8 is counted in triplets or 1+a2+a(2 groups of 3)The same can be applied to 4/4 and 8/8, where the difference is that 4/4 is counted 1+2+3+4+(or 4 groups of 2)but 8/8 can be grouped as (3 3 2),(3 2 3) or (2 3 3)in the example of 332 this would be counted 1+a 2+a 3+You could arguably use 4/4, but in this case 8/8 suggests the feel better.Also for extra fun, here is my favourite example on 8/8 time signatures.
What may be perceived as (3+3+2)/8 almost always is 4/4 properly. 3+3+2 would imply a basic rhythm of three groups of 3, with the last group shortened by one beat. So the rhythmic stress would be on the first beat as that comes too early without compensation (a 'limp'). But in the typical 3+3+2 subdivision, it is actually the second group which comes in early, implying a syncopation of 4+2+2 rather than 3+3+2. The same kind of 'catching up at the end' syncopation can be done even with 3+3+3+3+2+2 for a total of 16, usually carried across more than one measure.–Apr 27 '14 at 8:26. The question of whether a beat comes 'early' or 'late' is an interesting one. I find it interesting that 'America' Bernstein: West Side Story is marked as '6/8 3/4', but some other pieces which with similar stress patterns are simply written as 3/4.
Something like 'Lion Tamer' Schwartz: The Magic Show is written as 7/4 (with a notation to subdivide it as 3/4+4/4), but the text would sound very awkward if an accent were placed on the second quarter-note beat, rather than an eighth-note later. Still, it might be reasonable to view the stressed note as being an 'early' third beat.–Nov 14 '14 at 20:55.
NON-DYADIC TIME SIGNATURES.BASICSIn a 4/4 measure, the quarter-note (the denominator) gets the pulse, and there are four of them in the measure.In a 3/4 measure, the quarter-note still gets the pulse, but there are three in the measure.Western music conventionally uses time signatures in multiples of two in relation to a whole note (2/4, 8/8, 3/16).If the denominator of the time signature is a 6 (i.e. 4/6), it means that the whole note is divided into six parts.The value of the whole note remains constant (4/4 = 6/6). EXAMPLES4/4 = four quarter-notes4/6 = four quarter-note triplets5/6 = five quarter-note triplets3/5 = three quarter-note quintuplets3/10 = three eighth-note quintuplets4/12 = four eighth-note triplets5/12 = five eighth-note triplets3/7 = three quarter-note septuplets4/14 = four eighth-note septupletsBASIC NON-DYADIC DIVISIONSx/5 = quintuplet quartersx/10 = quintuplet eighthsx/20 = quintuplet sixteenthsx/6 = triplet quartersx/12 = triplet eighthsx/24 = triplet sixteenthsx/7 = septuplet quartersx/14 = septuplet eighths.
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