Time signature usage

As a musician who can read music, I've sometimes found it a bit unusual when there are certain time signatures used instead of others on sheet music. I thought this would be a great place to discuss it.

As some of the guys with degrees in music theory will also tell you (when they see this thread): Most music is organized in groups of 2 or 3 beats. Of course you can break every complex signature down into such groups, and usually a 3/4 piece will have a grouping of 2-2-2, while one in 6/8 will have 3-3. Personally, in Rock music I usually listen to what bass and snare drum are playing. For example, to tell 7/8 from 7/4 you can count the bass/snare drum notes and compare the pattern to a typical rock beat where the bass drum would be on 1 and 3, and the snare on 2 and 4. As a specific and well known example, if you listen to Pink Floyd - Money, you'll notice that within one sequence of 7, the bass drum plays on 1, 3, 5 and 7, and the snare drum on 2, 4 and 6. That's much more consistent with two bars of 4/4 with the last beat ommitted, than with one bar of 4/4 with one 8th note missing.

I don't read music, but I can tell you that when I use programs on my computer to write music, I will often find myself being blocked from going further until I assign the correct time signature to the particular bar I'm working on at the time, and sometimes I will end up with something that sounds to me like it could fit a smaller time signature perfectly, but the program itself won't allow it.

topofsm wrote: I think what I'm particularly confused in is when there are sections of 6/8 which sound very triplet-y. I seem to recall "Angel of Music" from Phantom of the Opera. Now I don't know about you guys, but it doesn't sound to me like a bunch of measures of 2/4 with a triplet feel. Our conductor didn't count it as measures of 2/4 either, rather, she counted out all 6 beats. Why not just use 3/4 for songs like that?

6/8 can either be 2-2-2 or 3-3. I'm not well versed on classical music notation, but why is it such a big problem whether "3/4" or "6/8" is noted in the staff? I mean, in the end you will simply look at the notes and derive the rhythmic feel from them. And about 3/4: I think that it's mainly used for Waltzes, which usually don't have a lot of syncopations on the level of 8ths going on ... essentially they can be seen as a single group of 3 beats on the level of 4th notes.

topofsm wrote:   And there was another time just yesterday when I was reading music and there was 4/4 through an entire section, but there were rarely any 'straight' quarter or eighth notes playing, and instead there were quarter notes and eighth notes in brackets of three, along with rests and such, making it very difficult to read. It was particularly confusing at one point when there was a measure of 2/4 thrown in, when the person could easily have notated it as 12/8 with a measure of 6/8 thrown in.

What you're describing is shuffle feel - actually there are three choices of how to write it down. The one you described is what I would call the "classical" approach. It's IMO the most suitable one if the piece is not in shuffle feel throughout. The second choice is - as you said - to make it 12/8 instead of 4/4. That way you'll still have many rests in the notation, but no more triplets. The third choice is to stick with 4/4 and to define that two 8th notes actually mean a triplet of 8ths with an implicit rest in between. This is most commonly seen in notations (or tabulatures) of Rock/Blues pieces.


Edited by Mr ProgFreak - January 30 2009 at 05:42

^ I'm pretty sure that I could note a 2-2-2 pattern in 6/8 ... 

Of course I "catch your drift" ... it's a well established convention to note it as 3/4, and especially in classical music you simply would not even think of using 6/8.

It usually makes sense to write this grouping pattern of 1 measure 6/8 and one measure 2/4 repeat, to keep the main and secondary accents of the piece more abvious when written as manuscript. Also remember that main and secondary stresses in meter are not the same as placing an accent on the music, which is a straighforward play this note louder indication. Metric stress just means that it is set off in some way within the music. Perhaps where your ambiguity is coming from, is the fact that you see one section of the whole, as you are only playing one part of the orchestration. As a classical guitar player, there are loads of examples of compound time, but I see them written for one instrument and most have the same bass note structure- say in 6/8 these will normally fall on count 1 and count 4 (or beat 1 and beat 2) and it is these bass notes which are giving the metric stress. So as in your example above of your 6/8 2/4 repeat, even if you count it  and play it as 5/4, the bass structure will probably set the metric accents as 6/8 2/4, because more than likely the bass will fall on beat 1 and 2 for both the compound time measure and the simple time measure. In 5/4 the bass would normally fall on beat 1 and 4 (this is totally simplified).

Edited by cobb2 - January 30 2009 at 20:12

Hmm, maybe I'm just not getting the concept of stress in meters. I think mainly my confusion is the result of a lack of music theory.

topofsm wrote: Hmm, maybe I'm just not getting the concept of stress in meters. I think mainly my confusion is the result of a lack of music theory.   Is most time signature choice just to make the person sightreading comprehend what the feel of the piece is, rather than how the piece is going to sound? After all, a good musician should have played either the 6/8 2/4 or the 5/4 exactly the same if the dynamics, note durations, and rests were all the same, just being in a different meter.

I think that signature/notation choices should be made to optimize readability/simplicity.

Well Bach used the bottom number as an indication to how fast a piece should be (6/8 is faster than 6/4), and composers still use that method today. But it all depends on the tuplet divisions and the length of phrases. If you have a phrase that lasts for two measures of 6/16, then you may as well put the entire thing as 12/16. If a song is in 4/4 but is almost completely dominated by triplets, then you may as well put it as 12/8 and speed up the quaver.