Time Signatures Explained for Beginners - my formula to figure out any time signature!

why do we use time signatures in music well think about your favorite song or any piece of music how long does it take you to listen all the way through if it's a beethoven symphony it will take you up to and sometimes above a whole hour and if it's a regular pop song it'll usually take about three and a half minutes that's because music exists in time and time signatures tell us how that time is broken up the time signature of a piece of music will also impact how we feel the music and how we break the music up into bars which can also be called measures in this video i'm going to show you a simple formula you can use to unpick any time signature you might be presented with in a piece of music time signatures are represented as two numbers stacked on top of each other the top number shows us how many beats for example if the top number is four then we have four beats in a bar if it's six we have six beats in a bar if it's 27 we have 27 beats in a bar super uncommon though i should probably just edit that but you get the idea top number tells us how many beats doesn't matter what number it is that shows us how many beats when i say bar by the way i mean the number we can't do before going back to one and repeating so for example if we've got four on the top we'll count to four one two three four one two three four six one two three four five six one two three four five six so when i say bar i mean the number we count to before going back to one and repeating now on to that pesky bottom number the bottom number gives us the value where the quality of each of those beats the bottom number is often the one that is most confusing for my students and i'm going to simplify it for you 99 of the time the bottom number is either a 2 a 4 an 8 or 16. i'll come to the exceptions a little bit later in fact you can jump to this time code if you'd like to see those straight away but let's first look at these four most common examples if we have a two on the bottom we are counting each beat as a minim or as a half note as you'd say in the states if we have a four in the bottom we're counting each beat as a crotchet or as a quarter note and i'd say that this is the most common bottom number you're likely to see in a piece of music if we have an eight in the bottom we're counting the beats as quavers or eighth notes and we see this a lot in compound times like 6 8 12 8 9 8 and so on if we have a 16 on the bottom we're counting each of the beats as semi-quavers or 16th notes this is not really so common though i'm including it here as it pops up from time to time you definitely need to be comfortable with this for those instances where it does crop up in this time signature which is four four time probably the most common time signature that you'll encounter the four on the top tells us that we have four beats and the bottom number tells us that each beat is a crotchet or a quarter note so four four is four crotchet beats per bar if we change the bottom number to an eight we still have four beats in a bar but each beat has a quaver value so it will be four quavers per bar four quavers or four eighth notes per bar if we swap it out for 16 we would have four semiquavers or four sixteenth notes in a bar now if we replace that 16 with a two on the bottom that would mean that we have four half notes or four minims in every bar so my formula is look at the bottom number first identify what the value of each beat is going to be and then apply it to the top number when we can't divide the top number of our time signature evenly by two or three things start to get really interesting we call these irregular time signatures what if we take the time signature 7 eight let's look at the bottom number first eight this tells us that we are counting in quavers or eighth notes and that is the value of each beat the top number seven tells us there are seven beats so seven eight means that we have seven quaver beats in every bar what about five four the same formula four tells us that we're counting in crotchets or quarter notes and the five tells us that we have five of them so five crotchets in every bar now in any of these cases where we're saying there are four crotchet beats in a bar or seven quaver beats in a bar or whatever we don't have to fill each bar with just crotchets or just quavers it just means that the total number of beats in every bar needs to match the total number of beats in your time signature like in 4 4 you can use any combination of quavers crotchets semiquavers and so on as long as you don't go over the total number of four crotchet beats now to the exceptions so remember we discussed four four being the most common time signature well sometimes in music you might see a sign that looks like this this is called common time and this implies 4 4 time in fact it's exactly the same as 4 4 time sometimes you can also see the c has a vertical line through it just like this and this makes it cut common time which represents two two times so cut common is exactly the same as two two times you might be asking wait a minute four four and two two they're the same number of beats in a bar just a different way of expressing the fraction well yes that's correct from a mathematical perspective though from a musical perspective they are slightly different and certainly have a different purpose cut common or two two time tells us that the piece is fast that the pulse of the music is on the minimum beat so the pulse i have a whole video on pulse and rhythm which i'll link in the cards up there in case you want to check that out but the pulse is on the min and beat or on the half beat common time tells us that there are four pulses per bar and they're on the crotchet or on the quarter note so the music is a steadier tempo not slow but just steadier than the cut common time the concepts of common time and cook common time evolved from the early practices of notating music nowadays publishers tend to use either four four two two along with a metronome mark which tells us how fast we need to play there is also one more number which you can technically see on the bottom which is 32. it shows us that we're counting each beat as a demi semi quavers so in this bar we have 6 32 the 32 on the bottom tells us that we're counting in demi semi quavers the top number tells us that there are six beats so six demi-semi quaver beats in every bar as i said this is super rare and the most common numbers that you'll see in the bottom are four and eight so i hope that this video was helpful and as always don't hesitate to ask me any questions in the comment section down below and if you enjoyed this video or if you found it helpful make sure to give it a thumbs up and you can subscribe to my youtube channel for more music related content i have some documentaries and other music tutorials you might find interesting thanks so much for watching everybody and i'll catch you in the next video bye you

Channel: Ruairi Glasheen

Views: 183,687

Keywords: time signatures explained for beginners, music theory, time signatures, time signature, time signatures explained, tutorial, 4/4 time signature, 3/4 time signature, music, what is a time signature, piano lessons, time signatures lesson, time signatures explained guitar, time signatures explained with examples, music theory time signatures, basic music theory, abrsm, associated board, time signature bottom number, 7/8 time signature, rhythm and time signatures lesson

Id: BHmVr8ZPmp0

Length: 7min 21sec (441 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021