How Odd Time Signatures Sound (and make you feel)

time signatures make you feel a certain way whether you realize it or not and when we're talking about time signatures here's what we are not talking about we're not talking about tempo we're not talking about feel [Music] we're talking purely about time report now to the video how different time signatures make you feel will depend a lot on the genre of music in order to keep things neat and tidy i'm going to approach everything in this video from a rock context so genre-like orchestral music which contains many complex time signatures as well as avant-garde or ambient music other obscure genres of that nature those will not be factored in here except in this very first time signature that's the time signature of 3-4 now the layperson considers the 3-4 time signature a classical waltz in fact according to wikipedia the waltz is a ballroom and folk dance normally in triple time i don't i don't think triple time is a musical term but i guess it gets the point across to non-musical folks one two three one two three but to confine three four to that one sound would be a sin because it's actually a very effective time device that grooves only away 3 4 can it almost feels common but there's something fresh about it the pockets deeper the groove is thicker [Music] now as we move on to six eight we have the traditional six eight that can kind of feel old-timey a lot like that three four waltz but it can also sound completely modern now the difference between three four and six eight is perhaps a question for a different video but you can usually hear a time keeping device in the form of maybe a percussive synth or obviously drums where maybe the snare is hitting on a certain beat that indicates three four or six eight and maybe a symbol is playing eighth notes versus quarter notes there are a lot of different ways to identify six eight versus three four but really it's that swaying motion of six eight that i can kind of feel it almost feels like half time which we'll get to later but three four and six eight are two completely different vibes and as a result they put you in different moods i've always associated 6 8 with epic uplifting music [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] now we start getting into odd time signatures five four and seven four five eight and seven eight kind of make you feel like you're being hypnotized kind of makes you feel like the musician playing is the best musician you've ever heard in a slow context you might have more of a quarter note feel so we'll try something slowly in five [Music] four [Applause] [Music] now i'll demonstrate something in seven eight where you'll be able to feel that eighth note pulse a lot more apparently than the five four that quarter note pulse that we just enjoyed uh [Music] now we move on to an even more odd time signature nine eight and this time signature feels like six eight got on an amusement park ride and was having a great time but stayed on a little bit too long and kind of got nauseous i'm not so nauseous that you're gonna throw up just uncomfortable just a little odd now this time signature is fairly common in international dances and classical music as well but i identify the 98 time signature as the beat flipping time signature my friend adam neely's band sungazer has a song that i've always really liked called bird on the wing and it's in 9 8 here's my interpretation of that tune [Music] so now from here we can get into all sorts of time signatures that kind of make you feel the same like you're listening to prague you either like it or you don't it's honestly a lot harder to feel the differences between time signatures like 11 8 13 8 15 8 going off into the echelons of time signatures that are complex and almost redundant just go listen to dream theater or something but we're not done i saved what i consider to be the most basic time signature for last because in fact 4-4 is potentially the most complex time signature that exists and yet it's called common time i mean this is in 4-4 of course we know common time that makes us feel safe and secure almost every song you hear on the radio is in 4-4 it's not confusing and thus it's very accessible to a broad audience of people who don't know the first thing about music now that's not to say that amazing music isn't written in 4 4 but it is to say that almost all terrible music is written in 4 4. so at the beginning of this video i mentioned that we wouldn't be talking about tempo or feel we're just going to talk about time and up to now that has been true but i want to throw in a bit of a monkey wrench here and that's the concept of groove groove this dictates the rhythmic context in the music and of course you can consider groove and feel the same thing like swung versus straight but when i say groove i'm thinking of standard time half time and double time in the context of four four so here is common time four four typically the snare will be on two and four and i'm going to have it there just to indicate exactly what this time signature is supposed to feel like common four four [Music] conversely if we were to split that groove in half we would have what i consider to be the most satisfying time signature groove possible which is half time in four four so what i'm gonna do now is i'm gonna play you an entire section of a piece that i wrote in half time and then at the end of the guitar solo that is all in half time and you'll see the half time indicated on our little counter we will go into double time which feels like exactly what it means double time doing doing getting to get [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] so there you have it every major time signature and how it makes you feel i hope you enjoyed this lesson i really put a lot of time and effort into it in order to convey exactly how i think each of these time signatures should sound and make you feel at least from a rock context and i want to know how do these time signatures make you feel please leave a comment let me know what your favorite time signature is and [Music] why you

Channel: Music is Win

Views: 127,220

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Keywords: how to play odd time signatures, how to play guitar odd time signatures, odd time signature lesson, odd time signatures music theory

Id: V43vQYyKquI

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020