90194 LESSON 4

TIME SIGNATURES

For NCEA level one, you will need to be able to read, write, identify and understand the following key signatures:

2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/4 and 6/8. On this page we will focus on these five time signatures, but we will also have a look at several other time signatures as well. First of all, let's start by LISTENING to examples of these different time signatures. To really understand time signatures, it is important that your can hear and understand the difference between them.

Introduction to Time Signatures

If you're new to time signatures, watch this video to get an over-view of why we use time signatures, and the difference between the time signatures we use most often.

HEARING DIFFERENT TIME SIGNATURES

SONGS in 2/4

2/4 time is often referred to as 'March Time', as it usually has a strong 'Left - Right - Left - Right' feel to it. There are only 2 beats in a bar, and the down-beat (beat 1) normally has a strong, strident feel to it (while beat 2 usually tends to be noticeably weaker). It can be sometimes difficult to hear the difference between 2/4 and 4/4 as 4/4 often has a 'strong' pulse on beat three. Listen to these examples until you can clearly hear (and count) a two-pulse.

As mentioned in the video above, a march feel is often written in 2/2 (cut-time) instead of 2/4. 2/2 and 2/4 sound the same, but they're written differently. We'll go into this in greater depth a little later on.

Radetzky March (Strauss)

Gone Wondering (Jackie Green)

Willam Tell Overture (Rossini)

How to tell the difference between 2/4 and 4/4

SONGS IN 3/4 TIME

3/4 Time is often referred to as a 'Waltz' or a 'Minuet', which were both popular dance forms in the 18th and 19th Centuries. See if you can hear (and clap along with) the strong '3-pulse' in these examples.

WALTZ No. 2 (Shostakovich)

SKYFALL (Cover)

(Adele)

BREAKAWAY

Kelly Clarkson

PERFECT *

Ed Sheeran

Songs In 4/4 Time

4/4 is also known as 'common time', because they vast majority of European music is written in 4/4. You will have heard a million songs in 4/4 already, but have a listen to this selection, and count the 4-pulse.

What is Hip?

Tower of Power

Clarinet Concerto in A (K622) 1st Movement

Mozart

Chameleon

Herbie Hancock

Opposite People

Newen Afrobeat

SONGS IN 6/8 TIME

6/8 time is an example of a 'compound time signature'. While there are arguably 6 beats in the bar, it's more accurate to think of 6/8 as a slow 2-pulse sub-divided into three beats (1-and-a 2-and-a, 1-and-a 2-and-a). Have a go at counting along to these examples:

LOVE ON THE BRAIN (Rihanna)

WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN

(Percy Sledge)

GRAVITY

John Mayer

MEDLEY OF IRISH JIGS

SONGS IN 6/4 TIME

Unlike 6/8, 6/4 time is incredibly rare . In 6/4 time we divide each bar into 6 beats without the strong 2-feel present. Generally, if you can hear a slow 3-pulse (a slight stress on every second pulse rater than every 3 pulses) there's a good chance that it is in 6/4 rather than 6/8. Have a listen to these examples. Try to count along.

HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE

Traditional

GUARDAME LAS VACAS

Luis De Narvaez

ELECTRIC FEEL

MGMT

UNUSUAL 6/4 DRUM PATTERN

Anon.

LISTENING EXERCISE: NAME THESE TIME SIGNATURES

READING AND WRITING: THE FUNDAMENTALS

Most written music is divided into bars or measures by using bar-lines. There are several different types of barline that you'll need to know. this picture above shows the 5 most common ones.

Each bar (or measure) contains a certain number of beats, which is determined by the time-signature.

Time signatures consist of two numbers stacked on top of each other. The top number tells you how many beats there are in a bar...

...and the bottom number tells you what sort of note equals one beat

Confused?? Here's a questionable analogy to help....

Imagine you're working in a fruit shop, labelling bags of fruit. Each 'beat' is a piece of fruit, and each bag is one bar. If someone asked you what was in the bag you'd just labelled, it wouldn't be enough information if you just said "6"; you'd need to tell them what sort of fruit it was too, eg "6 apples" or "4 pears". This works the in (sort of) the same way with time signatures. The bottom number tells us what sort of fruit we're counting....

The symbol we most often use to signify one beat is called a quarter-note (also called a crotchet).

This is why '4' is the bottom number in most time signatures eg 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 or 6/4.

When a musician is required to be silent for a whole beat, a quarter-note (crotchet) rest is used.

You've probably come across this sort of diagram before; this shows the relationship between all the commonly used note values.

Each note is always worth half the length of the note in the chart above it, and twice the length of the note below it In descending order we have whole-note, half-note, quarter-note, eighth-note, and sixteenth-note.

However, we don't know how many beats each note is worth until the bottom number is added to the time signature.

If '4" is the bottom number of the time signature, than the number of beats (or 'counts' each note is worth are as follows:

WRITING IN 2/4

Let's start with 2/4. The time signature tells us that each bar contains 2 crotchet beats; ie:

MAKE SURE ALL BARS CONTAIN THE CORRECT NUMBER OF BEATS!

Often in exams, you will be asked to write 'missing notes' in a bar, or to draw missing bar-lines into a piece of music.

This is really a simple maths problem - if you're in 2/4 you just need to make sure the contents of each bar add up to exactly '2' beats: here are some examples: