I have the same problem...

Try listening to the beat and then counting the notes!!!!!!!!!!

The more elaborate ones are fairly hard to get if you're not used to it - but practice does make perfect.

2/4 is very rarely used, and, as was pointed out above, 6/8 sounds like 2/4 but with triplets - that's because the 6 quavers pulse in 2 groups of three - the beat is actually a dotted crotchet (three quavers) - it's the same for any piece in compound time (anything /8 is in compound time).

Most pieces I've heard in more complex time signatures tend to cheat - in 7/4, for example, you'll hear musicians play a "bar" of 4 then a bar of 3, because it makes counting easier. Very few, like "Money" are truly in 7 time. 7/8 is very rare indeed, and should sound like 2 and a third, but typically sounds more like 3 and a half beats - which is 7/4, of course.

I'm really not sure about anything in /16 time - I rather think it's showing off. Some of the great composers used similar time signatures - like Stravinsky - but typically only for a few bars in a piece (e.g. the Rite of Spring). Usually clusters of bars in what appear to be freaky time signatures appear, when the composer could simply have stuck a few extra accents in there - for example, Stravinsky sticks a few bars of 3/4 in between some bars of 6/8, then in another passage [110] we see 2 bars of 5/8, then one each of 7/8, 5/8, 3/8, 3/4, 3/8, 4/4, 3/8.

Unless you were looking at the score, you'd never count that lot - but you'd be forgiven for thinking the whole thing was in 9/8.

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...

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!

kingofbizzare wrote: That isn't always accurate. For example, 6/8 can sound like 2/4 with triplets (or vice versa) Then you get interesting things like 17/16...

If it sounds like 2/4 then you can call it 2/4. It doesn't really matter what the player/listener considers it as, as long as it's played with the right feel. What was written on the page (assuming there is one) is only a guide to how to play it (especially if there's a 3 against 2 crossrhythm, that way there's no definite answer). But in general, if there are triplets all the way through it's unlikely to sound like 2/4 anyway.

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 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature

Good luck!

Ben2112 wrote: Regarding the 7/8 vs. 7/4 issue, I had always counted "Money" by Pink Floyd in the 7/4 time. However, if you watch the making of Dark Side... DVD, Dave says it's in 7/8. Wow, that would be a SLOOOOW 7/8. I guess it does just come down to where you consider the bars/measures to fall.

I have a music book with all the sheet music for DSOTM and the publisher wrote Money as being a measure of 3/4 followed by a measure of 4/4. This combination is repeated. I really don't think Pink Floyd would have been obtuse enough to write it this way. I think the transcriber probably was just an airhead who did it this way.

Well as a drummer, being able to count time sigs is a nessecary ability, and listeng to prog has definitly in that department.  But I find that you can ususaly figure out the time signature if you listen to where the drummer places a crash cymbal. also, many of the higher time sigs like 6/8 or 7/4 are ,much easier to count when broken up.

Ben2112 wrote: Regarding the 7/8 vs. 7/4 issue, I had always counted "Money" by Pink Floyd in the 7/4 time. However, if you watch the making of Dark Side... DVD, Dave says it's in 7/8. Wow, that would be a SLOOOOW 7/8. I guess it does just come down to where you consider the bars/measures to fall.

It's not 7/8, it's 7/4. Dave's wrong

That's because you can count 7 easily and regularly - there is no compound time, it is purely simple. If it was 7/8, then there would not be 7 beats, but 2 and 1/3 beats per bar, and the whole "feel" would be quicker, as you note.

JrKASperov wrote: alan_pfeifer wrote: Well as a drummer, being able to count time sigs is a nessecary ability, and listeng to prog has definitly in that department.  But I find that you can ususaly figure out the time signature if you listen to where the drummer places a crash cymbal. also, many of the higher time sigs like 6/8 or 7/4 are ,much easier to count when broken up. When counting, I usually find that with that 7/4 I count to 3.5. 1...2...3.1..2..3 When I come up with a half, I simply multiply it with two to come up with the desired number .

Hmm, seems a bit complicated, but whatever works for you.

Certif1ed wrote: The more elaborate ones are fairly hard to get if you're not used to it - but practice does make perfect. 2/4 is very rarely used, and, as was pointed out above, 6/8 sounds like 2/4 but with triplets - that's because the 6 quavers pulse in 2 groups of three - the beat is actually a dotted crotchet (three quavers) - it's the same for any piece in compound time (anything /8 is in compound time). Most pieces I've heard in more complex time signatures tend to cheat - in 7/4, for example, you'll hear musicians play a "bar" of 4 then a bar of 3, because it makes counting easier. Very few, like "Money" are truly in 7 time. 7/8 is very rare indeed, and should sound like 2 and a third, but typically sounds more like 3 and a half beats - which is 7/4, of course. I'm really not sure about anything in /16 time - I rather think it's showing off. Some of the great composers used similar time signatures - like Stravinsky - but typically only for a few bars in a piece (e.g. the Rite of Spring). Usually clusters of bars in what appear to be freaky time signatures appear, when the composer could simply have stuck a few extra accents in there - for example, Stravinsky sticks a few bars of 3/4 in between some bars of 6/8, then in another passage [110] we see 2 bars of 5/8, then one each of 7/8, 5/8, 3/8, 3/4, 3/8, 4/4, 3/8. Unless you were looking at the score, you'd never count that lot - but you'd be forgiven for thinking the whole thing was in 9/8.

I think that Money is also what you describe as a "fake" 7/4. When you listen to the bass/snare you'll get:

1 2 3 4 1 2 3
b s b s b s b

it's really just 4/4 3/4 ... and nothing's wrong with that. Steve Vai - Die To Live is a good example for a "true" 7/4 song:

1 a 2 a 3 a 4 a 5 a 6 a 7 a
b . . s . . . . b . b . s b

Edit: the editor replaces many consecutive blank characters with garbled code, so I used dots ... just ignore them.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: I think that Money is also what you describe as a "fake" 7/4. When you listen to the bass/snare you'll get: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 b s b s b s b it's really just 4/4 3/4 ... and nothing's wrong with that. Steve Vai - Die To Live is a good example for a "true" 7/4 song: 1 a 2 a 3 a 4 a 5 a 6 a 7 a b . . s . . . . b . b . s b Edit: the editor replaces many consecutive blank characters with garbled code, so I used dots ... just ignore them.

I'm not so sure - I can hear a definite 7 beats in the guitar lines. Maybe that was just Nick's way of coping with it - he's hardly the ultimate drummer of all time - although he's definitely the very best drummer in Pink Floyd...

I don't own a copy of "Alien Love Secrets" - but I know that Vai pulls off complex time signatures with ease - as he does with practically everything else he does. The man is so insanely gifted

Certif1ed wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: I think that Money is also what you describe as a "fake" 7/4. When you listen to the bass/snare you'll get: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 b s b s b s b it's really just 4/4 3/4 ... and nothing's wrong with that. Steve Vai - Die To Live is a good example for a "true" 7/4 song: 1 a 2 a 3 a 4 a 5 a 6 a 7 a b . . s . . . . b . b . s b Edit: the editor replaces many consecutive blank characters with garbled code, so I used dots ... just ignore them. I'm not so sure - I can hear a definite 7 beats in the guitar lines. Maybe that was just Nick's way of coping with it - he's hardly the ultimate drummer of all time - although he's definitely the very best drummer in Pink Floyd... I don't own a copy of "Alien Love Secrets" - but I know that Vai pulls off complex time signatures with ease - as he does with practically everything else he does. The man is so insanely gifted

The guitar riff in Money is a 7 beat riff, that's true.

If you don't have Alien Love Secrets ... I highly recommend the DVD. Kill The Guy With The Ball is just insane ... Polyrhythms in perfection.

goose wrote: The guitar riff in Money accents the first and fourth beat, which is what makes it sound like a slow 7/8.

Do you know if there's a definite rule to determine if something is 7/4 or 7/8?

goose wrote: The guitar riff in Money accents the first and fourth beat, which is what makes it sound like a slow 7/8.

I hear the hard accent on beat 1, but the accent on beat 4 is much softer, which stops the riff from "swinging" on that beat - it seems to swing around all the beats fairly evenly. Also, some of the rhythms are dotted across two main beats (e.g. notes 2 and 3 in bar 1), which is an unusual practice in 7/8.

Most tabs I've seen are in 7/4, and Roger himself describes it this way

"Paranoid Android" could well be in 7/8 though - I haven't made up my mind yet as I always stop analysing and start enjoying this one  

I'm currently listening to The Andromeda Strain (Shadow Gallery: Room V), and after the solo there's a cool section: 5/4 on top of 4/4. There are 5 bars of 4/4, and part of the band plays 4 bars of 5/4 on top of it ... amazing. It creates the illusion of the drummer swapping bass and snare every bar.

Polyrhythms RULE.

LDGuy:

I agree with all you're saying. Polyrhythms are just taking all of that one step further. And if someone thinks he knows all about rhythm as soon as he can count along and find the "one", he'll be amazed that this is just the beginning ...

bityear wrote: And that 65/64 thing is WILD.

It annoys the hell out of me whenever I listen to it! It's just that tiny bit later than I expect. Good stuff though

Certif1ed: the "official" (I think) OKC book transcribes Paranoid Android in 7/8 in those sections, that's the way I've always thought of it too.

+ another Jarzombek oddity - I can't remember the title, I think it's a Spastic Ink track though - all the themes are quintuplets played in 5/4 to 5 bar phrases using 5 notes with a key signature of 5 sharps and 5bs

edit: "gimme 5", maybe?

At this point, I'd like to throw this into the discussion:

http://www.vai.com/LittleBlackDots/tempomental.html - http://www.vai.com/LittleBlackDots/tempomental.html

Just for people who think they've seen all there is to rhythm ...

"Perpetual Change" on The Yes album always confused me. There's a bit in the middle where the guitars start playing a fast riff and the keyboard comes in with a different riff from the verse. It was years before I realised that the two actually fit together as the guitar riff is in 7/4 and the keyboard is in 6/4 then 8/4 (or whatever) so they're both actually playing 14 beats.

Wow!

Progbear wrote: bityear wrote: Worth mentioning is that 9/8 isn't always a 3/4 with triplet feeling. I think the most famous example of syncopated 9/8 is Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo A La Turk”, which follows a 2+2+2+3 pattern. Shifting two groups of three into three groups of two like that is called “hemiola”. You hear it a lot more often in 12/8, and is basically the same idea as the alternating bars of 6/8 and 3/4 I gave earlier.

let us not forget part VI of Supper's Ready: Apocalypse in 9/8, which of course is in 9/8 time with not a triplet, but a 4+5 feel.

Also, the main riff tool's 'Scism' is, as far as I can tell, alternating measures of 5/8 and 7/8, but those aren't really 12/8 because 12/8 usually sounds like 4/4 with triplets.  the main riff of 'Lateralus' is 3 separate measures of different time signatures: 9/8, 8/8, 7/8.

GoldenSpiral wrote: let us not forget part VI of Supper's Ready: Apocalypse in 9/8, which of course is in 9/8 time with not a triplet, but a 4+5 feel.

Wouldn't that more accurately make it "Apocalypse in 9/4"?

I've never heard of anything /8 being anything but compound time, so 9/8 is 3x3 quavers, or three dotted crotchets to the bar however they're presented.

Since "Apocalypse..." has 9 quite regular and identifiable beats, I think it's in simple time - and the carving into 4+5 just underlines that for me.

Even Genesis could have got it wrong - or were just being deliberately obtuse

I have seen a lot of solutions explained by many famous drummers in order to find the groove. Portnoy uses a mathematical approach and breaks down the beats into smaller parts to make the signature manageable (as mentioned by Cert an others above), Bozzio says that he hums a familiar bassline from his Zappa days that is in the required time signature. I guess it comes down to finding a way that good for you and lots and lots of lovely practice.

For me, I do the dull thing and count my way through the beats and hang on for grim death to the 'one'.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: I'm currently listening to The Andromeda Strain (Shadow Gallery: Room V), and after the solo there's a cool section: 5/4 on top of 4/4. There are 5 bars of 4/4, and part of the band plays 4 bars of 5/4 on top of it ... amazing. It creates the illusion of the drummer swapping bass and snare every bar. Polyrhythms RULE.

You wouldn't happen to like Tool now, Would you?  Poly's GALORE in their music.