Time Signatures

I have the same problem...

Assuming it stays in the same time signature for a few bars, it isn't difficult once one gets used to it. As long as you can hear where each bar begins, then you just need to count the main beats between. It's when every bar's in a different time signature it starts to get tricky...

Personally, I think this is one of the most definitive elements of Progressive Rock Music...
the shifting time signatures, in addition to stuff like change-ups in instrumentation, etc.

BTW, I thought 6/8 resembles 3/4 (not arguing the point, just curious OK )

Soulman wrote: Hello again, Something has been plaguing my mind about prog. How in the heck do you tell what time signature some prog songs are in? I'm just confused how you can figure out these abstract time signatures by just hearing it.

If you own one, try a metronome.
Me, I'm counting out time.
Che

Soulman wrote: Although I hear about time signature like 17/16. Whoa-ho! That would be hard to figure out. Though I figure if you listen to the drums and the riffs, then you kind of start to get the idea.

My friend wrote some stuff that had random bars of 17/16 thrown in with 4/4. It was pretty messed up, it sounded like 4/4 with an extra 16th note stuck in at the end. It really threw off your counting if you didn't know it was coming.
 

^^

Yea I'm about as confused as you

I can't really tell you how you can notice. Sometimes you just have to count the beats (mostly listening to the drums and a little bit of the melody playing), and it won't always make sense to go "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" in some parts of prog songs, it just won't work with the melody all the time, as the measure probably wouldn't end on a bad note.

You've got to think how it would look on paper. Yes you could write any song in 4/4 on paper; though it wouldn't make sense to the melody and the drummer who's keeping the rhythm. Time signatures are just restrictions to measures.

Just listen a bit more, you might get it. Though I think practice will help you understand it more.

However, I kind of doubt that a lot of prog songs are going to be 7/8 or 9/16; it's just too bloody difficult for the drummer to follow that kind of rhythm (though I applaud artists that can do so .)

As I said, it'd probably make more sense when you think of how score of the piece would look on paper.

penguindf12 wrote: Okay...I'm confused... Alright. So I get the top digit: it's the number of beats per measure. But the bottom number confuses me. I know it's the "note which gets the beat". But how do you distinguish when counting? Like in "Money." How can you tell it's 7/4 and not 7/8 or 7/16 or 7/32 or 7/128 for that matter? How do you know?! And what's the difference between "one bar of 3/4 and one bar of 4/4" and one bar of 7/4 (or 7/8 or 7/16 or 7/32 etc.)?!!!! Please clue me in here...

Generally, anything over 4 is "simple" time, and you just count the numbers. E.g; "Money" is in 7/4, so you just count 7 crotchet beats per bar - until the bit where it changes to 4/4.

Equally generally, anything over 8 is compound time, meaning that you count dotted crotchet beats while hearing effective triplets between the beats. Hence with 6/8, you count 2 dotted crotchets per bar.

/16 time is more difficult to gauge, as there are more permutations - generally the music will be broken into little chunks of 2s and 3s. Typically, music in this sort of time originates from the Balkans, where the frenetic dance music could only be recorded using Western notation using finer granularity than /8. The beats tend to be incredibly quick, as they are counted in semiquavers.

Then we get into the more complex time signatures demanded by Indian music and the polyrhythms of Salsa... but it can all be broken down into 2s and 3s.

Hope that gives at least one clue!

Edited by Certif1ed

penguindf12 wrote: Okay...I'm confused... Alright. So I get the top digit: it's the number of beats per measure. But the bottom number confuses me. I know it's the "note which gets the beat". But how do you distinguish when counting? Like in "Money." How can you tell it's 7/4 and not 7/8 or 7/16 or 7/32 or 7/128 for that matter? How do you know?! And what's the difference between "one bar of 3/4 and one bar of 4/4" and one bar of 7/4 (or 7/8 or 7/16 or 7/32 etc.)?!!!! Please clue me in here...

In general, the difference between 7/4 and 7/8 is one of feel (it can also depend on what the pulse has been in the bars before or after, ie. going from 4/4 to 7/4 the bars are nearly twice as long, wheras going from 4/4 to 7/8 they're slightly shorter.

Traditionally, 7/4 should be divided into 7 crotchets, perhaps with quavers between or anything like that. 7/8, on the other hand, is a compound time and should be divided into 3s (3,3,1 or 3,2,2) but again, these are only guidlines. Venturing into 7/16 and so on has a different feel again but since prog doesn't really follow the traditional timings there's not much point in cluttering the page with 64s and 128s all over the place.

The difference between 3/4 + 4/4 and 7/4 can be nothing, but the former expresses the accents (ie. on the first beat of each bar) much more explicitly, wheras 7/4 can be divided up in any number of ways.

A mention has to go to "A headache and a 64th", by Ron Jarzombek (of Spastic Ink/Watchtower), which has a 4/4 bar followed by a 1/64 bar (in effect, 65/64). It's really really irritating listening to because it just falls slightly later than you'd expect.

The problem is with all modern music (this doesn't just apply to time signatures) is that notation hasn't changed nearly so much as styles have. In the classical period, a time signature (along with some sort of idea of the feel and tempo) could tell you exactly how to accent the music, (apart from when there were deviations from the pattern, and they could be marked individually). Now, however, there is so much different that can be done in any time signature, that they're nowhere near as rigid as they were.

Since a time signature is only a way of notating the music that's heard, while sometimes there may be one definitive time signature that is obvious (often in more simple music, for example "Creep", by Radiohead is clearly in 4/4, with one chord per bar. There's not really any other way of writing it that makes sense, because it does stick to the same sort of metre that's been in existence for a very long time), a lot of the time you could fit a number of time signatures to the same music (often 6/8 and 2/4 (both have 2 main beats), or 9/8 and 3/4 (both have 3 main beats), but sometimes multiples like 6/8 and 12/8). In this case, it doesn't matter how you look at it, as long as if you're playing in a group you all play with the right sort of "feel". Basically, any sort of notation (apart from the actual pitches given) are simply a means to the end of playing in the right way. I'm finding this very difficult to explain, because it's a very abstract concept, but I hope I'm being some help.

Probability-wise, 4/4 is nearly always your best bet. I always start by counting in 4/4 time at a moderate tempo: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and... If it works out great, the song is probably in 4/4, 2/4, 2/2, or 12/8. I always test 4/4 first because most music (even much of prog, at least partly) is in 4/4.

  I should also recommend using our beloved Internet as a "cheat sheet" for a few of the tunes causing you difficulty. For example, if I wanted to know the meters for Yes's Sound Chaser, I would do a Google search: Sound Chaser time signature. I play guitar, and this is how I crack a lot of these songs. For example, for the guitar solo in Tom Sawyer by Rush, I could NOT crack that time sig until I broke down and did a search for it. Right away, I found it was in 7/8. This is a time signature used a lot by the band. ie. intro to Anthem, intro to Subdivisions, Freewill, Natural Science, Distant Early Warning. I mention this, because a lot of bands have favorite meters that they like to write in. Yes uses 5/4 a bit (Sound Chaser, 5 percent for nothing).

 A few more ideas for you.

 When a new, for lack of a better term, "movement" or "impression" begins or when a new feel begins, I usually start counting again, just to be sure they have "tricked" me by slipping into a new meter. These movements may be signposted by a new chord progression.

Finally, here is a site that could fill in the crack for ya: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature

Good luck!

Edited by Crimson Prince