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Author Topic: time signatures  (Read 10342 times)

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Tone Dumb Greg

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time signatures
« on: June 29, 2016, 03:25:48 PM »

Please can someone put me straight on the differences in feel between tunes scored in  half note, quarter notes and eighth note time signatures? e.g. 3/2 v 3/4 v 3/8 and 6/2 v 6/4 v 6/8.

I keep thinking I understand the whats and whys and then finding I don't. There seems to be a lot more to it than mathematics.

I can find threads that touch on this, but nothing giving links to good examples. This, I think,  is what would make the difference.
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Jack Campin

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2016, 03:54:52 PM »

There is no difference for most purposes.  At some periods, a larger denominator meant the music was faster, but that was never used systematically.
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Marje

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2016, 04:47:32 PM »

I can't answer all your query, but a few points:
I don't recall ever seeing 6/2, and 6/4 is also very rare. Just forget them.
6/8 (and 3/8, which hardly exists) and also 9/8, which you may well see, are compound time signatures. Each beat is made up of three quavers (eighth notes) so that 6/8 has effectively two beats to the bar (diddley diddley, or dumpty dumpty) while 9/8 has three (diddley diddley diddley, or dumpty dumpty dumpty).
3/4 has three beats to the bar, and it's what you hear in waltzes, mazurkas and some slow airs and song tunes. Waltzes often seem to have just one main stress in the bar.
Most tunes written in 3/2 sound nothing like 3/4 tunes and could not easily be confused with them. The three strong beats are each divided into two or four notes, giving a pounding rhythm that is quite distinct from a waltz. Try searching for Dusty Miller or the Old Lancashire Hornpipe as examples.
Does that help at all?
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Marje

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2016, 05:16:04 PM »

I agree with Jack. The usage varies with the group you are playing with.
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playandteach

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2016, 06:55:17 PM »

I don't recall ever seeing 6/2, and 6/4 is also very rare. Just forget them.
6/8 (and 3/8, which hardly exists) and also 9/8, which you may well see, are compound time signatures.
I hope you don't mind me chipping in to comment on a couple of points. I think the OP is aware of teh difference between simple and compound time signatures - but 3/8 (actually surprisingly common, as is 3/16) is not a compound time signature. 6/4 is also used more often than you might first suppose. As GCSE music students might be aware, All Blues is in 6/4 (sounds a little like a Jazz waltz but with chord changes over longer phrases than would happen in a Jazz waltz - as it is an altered blues chord sequence).
I agree with your main points on 3/2 and with what Jack has said. Sarabandes are sometimes in 3/2 as a more stately pace (though this doesn't contradict Jack's point about faster tempos in certain periods), but Sarabandes also have an emphasis on the 2nd beat - definitely not 1 in a bar feel.
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Chris Brimley

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #5 on: June 29, 2016, 07:13:39 PM »

I have similar confusions to Greg - as he says, it's more than just maths.  This helped me:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature

It seems to me that a lot of the confusion comes down to what we mean by a 'beat' - is that a musical term relating to how a piece is written, or does the beat correspond to a dance step?  This becomes complicated when playing for traditional dance, because sometimes tunes with a different 'beat' go well with steps at a different pace or pattern.  There is also the whole question of 'swinging' a tune, which to me implies playing a syncopated 2+1 or 3+1 rhythm (or more complicated timing) instead of a straight 2 beats.  dare I say it, but it seems to me that many dance music players have a better understanding of this than theoretically trained players, who sometimes can't explain what they are doing, they just 'feel' it.  Several times I've struggled with tunes given to me by others, and illumination has only struck when I realised their tune is actually better notated in 6/8 than 2/2, 12/8 than 4/4, or whatever, so that the score can communicate the rhythm.  For example, there's a wonderful tune called 'The Rap' by a band called Secret Garden: 

https://youtu.be/XkeNV4x4YEc

I tried writing this out in all sorts of time signatures, 5/4, 5+2/4, and so on, but I think it's probably best considered as a mixture of 10/8 and 6/8.  This seems to me to match the driving drum rhythm and tune structure best
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Jack Campin

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2016, 12:49:32 AM »

Quote
Several times I've struggled with tunes given to me by others, and illumination has only struck when I realised their tune is actually better notated in 6/8 than 2/2, 12/8 than 4/4, or whatever, so that the score can communicate the rhythm.

One tune that's an utter pig to notate is "The Sweetness of Mary".  I think it's a 12/8 march (like a 4/4 march but with the beats subdivided into triplets, which is no sort of established form), but some people try to make it a strathspey and use dotted notation, which anybody who knows how to play strathspeys will then exaggerate into something downright bizarre.
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Tone Dumb Greg

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #7 on: June 30, 2016, 01:26:44 AM »

Thanks for your comments. Some interesting points made. Marje, I only threw 6/2 for completeness :-( Your right, I've can't recall seeing a tune scored in that meter. Maybe I'll write one. However, I think you would be surprised by how many tunes I  come across  scored n 6/4 and 3/8. I think they are pretty common , especially in early dance music, which is a realm I seem to spend a lot of time visiting as more and more comes available.

Chris, thanks for the links. I particularly like the Secret Garden tune, but that rhythm is crazy. It keeps seeming to miss half a beat The wiki page page was interesting. I had never thought of Ride of the Valkyrie as a slip jig but it is. Just realised that Jesu Joy of man's desiring is too.

I had always thought of blues as being in 4/4, but P&T is right. It's a slow 6/4.

The question came to mind when I was looking at Chris Partington's scoring of Hoxton Square, from Playford’s Dancing Master, Vol 2, which is set in 3/2. I noticed his comment: "At first glance it seems the time signature would make more sense as 6/4, However, 3/2 is correct when you get your head round it".  I can't make the tune work as a jig, so I wondered what he meant. (edited to say, because I thought 3/2 hornpipes and 6/4 hornpipes were the same thing, really)

This put me in mind of Nick Barber's  comment on another 3/2 tune,  The Dusty Miller, where he comments it is scored as a 3/2 double hornpipe, but is sometimes scored as a 6/4  hornpipe. That is the only time I have come across the term double hornpipe and I am  not really sure what the difference is.

Sometimes 6/4 tunes appear to be jigs and, sometimes they appear to be hornpipes. The Jigs are structured into two beats, made up of three notes (paralleling 6/8). The hornpipes are made up of three beats of four pulses, as are 3/2 hornpipes. I thought, as Jack suggests, that they are different ways of writing out the same things. Chris and Nick's comments make made me wonder if I was wrong and a 3/2 hornpipe was different to one in 6/4 and if a 6/8 jig was different to one in 6/4. I also wondered if 3/8 might differ from 3/4.

The comment on sarabandes intrigues me. Are they any (well played) examples you could point me at. It sounds rather like the difference between a Waltz and a Mazurka, easier to hear than describe.

I am interested in good examples. Groups, such as Bellowhead are brilliant to listen to, but mix it up so much I struggle to follow what they are doing. A lot of the Playford stuff on line just sounds dreary, to me. I don't think it can be as intended.
« Last Edit: June 30, 2016, 01:52:21 AM by Tone Dumb Greg »
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Tone Dumb Greg

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #8 on: June 30, 2016, 01:45:20 AM »

Quote
Several times I've struggled with tunes given to me by others, and illumination has only struck when I realised their tune is actually better notated in 6/8 than 2/2, 12/8 than 4/4, or whatever, so that the score can communicate the rhythm.

One tune that's an utter pig to notate is "The Sweetness of Mary".  I think it's a 12/8 march (like a 4/4 march but with the beats subdivided into triplets, which is no sort of established form), but some people try to make it a strathspey and use dotted notation, which anybody who knows how to play strathspeys will then exaggerate into something downright bizarre.

Like this?
I don't know it. I hear an air when I look at this score. Tempo?

X: 1
T: The Sweetness Of Mary
R: ?
M: 12/8
L: 1/8
K: Ador
EAB|c3 cBA F3 FAB|c2e df2 e3 efg|a2g f2e e2d c2d|ea2 c2A B3 A2B|
c3 cBA F3 FAB|c2e df2 e3 efg|a2gf2e e2d c2d|ea2 c2B A3:|
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Anahata

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #9 on: June 30, 2016, 08:10:46 AM »

T: The Sweetness Of Mary
K: Ador

That rather destroys the credibilty of that as a transcription...


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Chris Brimley

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #10 on: June 30, 2016, 09:10:59 AM »

Musing a bit more about this thread, a time signature is a rather incomplete description of the rhythm of a tune, isn't it?  What we perhaps also really need is something that tells us which of the beats are to be emphasised.  Marje has pointed out that tunes written in 3/4 and 3/2 can be played in many different ways.  Presumably also a tune written in 6/8 could actually be interpreted as having 3 main beats in a bar, rather than the conventional 2, but I must admit I can't think of any examples.  These multiple possibilities will apply to most time signatures.  Does anyone know of any notation that actually describes the emphasis required?
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Anahata

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #11 on: June 30, 2016, 09:15:10 AM »

Sometimes 6/4 tunes appear to be jigs and, sometimes they appear to be hornpipes. The Jigs are structured into two beats, made up of three notes (paralleling 6/8). The hornpipes are made up of three beats of four pulses, as are 3/2 hornpipes. I thought, as Jack suggests, that they are different ways of writing out the same things. Chris and Nick's comments make made me wonder if I was wrong and a 3/2 hornpipe was different to one in 6/4 and if a 6/8 jig was different to one in 6/4. I also wondered if 3/8 might differ from 3/4.

It's quite likely that musicians in the 17th and 18th centuries were just as confused as us! The tunes could have been used for all sorts of purposes; on top of that we can't assume that everybody who wrote tunes down had a perfect musical education and anyway conventions change with time. And tunes were recycled and changed, hence how the 9/8 Jack of the Green because the 3/2 John of the Greeney Cheshire Way (meaning John of the Green played in "The Cheshire Way" i.e. as a 3/2 hornpipe). There's an Irish slip jig called The Dusty Miller which is a 9/8 version of the 3/2 tune of the same name, and I'm sure there are many other examples. So Jack and Nick are describing different aspects of the same truth: if we try to put things into rigid categories with fixed labels we keep running into trouble over borderline cases. The 3/2 vs 6/4 confusion is particularly common because the syncopation encourages emphasis of the central beat that tries to turn 3/2 into 6/4. It's a musical effect called hemiola, much exploited by Dvorak in his Slavonic Dances.

By the way "double hornpipe" seems to be simply a misleading name for a 3/2 hornpipe as opposed to a 4/4 hornpipe - it's not something special or different, and the term has about as much mathematical rigour as it has in the term  "double Dutch".

Also I personally don't think "6/4 hornpipe" is really a thing. It's a 3/2 hornpipe that somebody's chosen to write in 6/4, or that has actually been recycled into something more like a jig.

Talking of which, "jig" surely comes from "gigue" and the latter can be found written in 6/8, 6/4 or 3/8...
And many of us play Woodland Flowers as a jig, but it was written as a schottische by Felix Burns...
etc. etc.
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Anahata

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #12 on: June 30, 2016, 09:34:06 AM »

Presumably also a tune written in 6/8 could actually be interpreted as having 3 main beats in a bar, rather than the conventional 2, but I must admit I can't think of any examples.

There's a strong music notation convention that 6 on top of a time signature means two groups of three, leaving 3/4 and 3/2 more obviously to indicate three groups of two. In cases where a tune has a bit of both (see my reference to hemiola above) you just have to decide which is the main rhythm and put that in the time signature.

Quote
These multiple possibilities will apply to most time signatures.  Does anyone know of any notation that actually describes the emphasis required?
For irregular time signatures, there are conventions to indicate further subdivisions.
5/4 and 5/8 are often consistently 2+3 or 3+2, but that's usually obvious by looking at the music and no further hints are needed.

But take a tune like Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo A la Turk. That's in 9/8 but the subdivision is written in the printed time signature as
2+2+2+3
-----------
     8

Similarly, you can write Balkan irregular rhythms (which are always consistent bar to bar) as e.g.
7/8 (2+2+3)/8

The most complex example I know is the Macedonian tune Dvajspetorka:
25/8 = (7+7+4+7)/8  where each group of 7 is 3+2+2
It is common in cases like that to print dotted bar lines between the 7 and 4 groups. It helps a lot with keeping track!
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Re: time signatures
« Reply #13 on: June 30, 2016, 09:52:23 AM »

That's a useful idea, Anahata, thanks.  I would suggest my earlier example, The Rap, could be described like that as a few bars of (3+3+2+2)/8, followed by a couple of (3+3)/8, then back.  There's even the odd bar of (2+2+2)/8 (or would that have to be described as 3/4?) - I'd be very interested to know if I've got this right, if anyone's got the time to check it out.

However, powerful though I can see this is, I'm not sure it addresses the beat emphasis point.  How could you use it to differentiate a waltz from a mazurka, for example?
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Chris Brimley

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #14 on: June 30, 2016, 09:58:50 AM »

I'd also note that Blue Rondo à la Turk seems to have passages of (3+3+3)/8, or slip jig rhythm.

I like the dotted bar lines idea too.
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Re: time signatures
« Reply #15 on: June 30, 2016, 10:09:50 AM »

1, Presumably also a tune written in 6/8 could actually be interpreted as having 3 main beats in a bar, rather than the conventional 2, but I must admit I can't think of any examples. 

2, Does anyone know of any notation that actually describes the emphasis required?
1, Actually (I know this is a loaded word -no criticism intended) 6/8 is required to be in 2 main beats in the bar. Anything else isn't 6/8 (of course you can have odd bars where the intention is to move outside of that rhythm deliberately to create tension - a hemiola - and the rhythm of that is normally supported by the harmonic change. That's why we have 3/4 and 6/8 both having 6 quavers in the bar, but with different beat structures.

2, There are plenty of examples of composers (Tippett's Double Concerto for example) where the composer wants a different interpretation of the subdivision of the bar - he uses 8/8 instead of 4/4 to highlight that he intends additive rhythms in multiples of quavers (although in this case it is mainly simply to provide a 3.3.2 feel - which we now take as a common enough groove, but it wasn't in his day).
Irregular time signatures (5/4 etc often carry a note showing whether it is 3+2 or 2+3) - again the harmonic change usually makes that obvious anyway.
I think that the notation system is remarkably robust and any changes to it - in the ambition of allowing further nuances - usually weaken it. The danger is of course for people using notation to conceive music, rather than notate it - which can make it a strait-jacket.
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Chris Brimley

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #16 on: June 30, 2016, 10:14:57 AM »

Quote
6/8 is required to be in 2 main beats in the bar.

Interesting - can you quote a source?  Are there any other rules/conventions like this, because this seems to be the OP's original point?
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Re: time signatures
« Reply #17 on: June 30, 2016, 10:44:22 AM »

Wikipedia not only gives comprehensive detail but quotes plenty of sources.

Nobody sets any rules, though; the rules exist to codify common practice.
The Wikipedia article mentions some new practices introduced by composers, which may or may not be adopted by others in time.

Where we have widely used conventions, though, like that of 3/4 being three beats and 6/8 being two, we should use them where they can be unambiguously applied, or everybody will simply be confused.
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Re: time signatures
« Reply #18 on: June 30, 2016, 10:48:27 AM »

T: The Sweetness Of Mary
K: Ador

That rather destroys the credibilty of that as a transcription...
Erm,  I messed up. As I said, I am not familiar with the tune. The transcription wasn't intended as a presentation of an original piece of work, but was my mangling of a 4/4 setting pulled of Trillian. Apologies for not crediting it properly, but the setting I started with was uncredited.  I picked Ador because the tune has one sharp and  seems to resolve (or, at least, finish) on the A note in the dots I saw. I've had a chance to listen since and you're right to pull me up. I was just wrong. In my defence, I was asking rhythmically, not harmonically and it  was past midnight  (:)
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Anahata

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Re: time signatures
« Reply #19 on: June 30, 2016, 11:20:03 AM »

If it ended on A, it should have had three sharps! (I believe it was written in that key, by the composer)

I had a look at some of the versions listed on JC's tune finder - a right old assortment!
I've heard it described as a strathspey, and prefer a 4/4 notation with triplets and the dotted notes played triplet style.
I prefer that notation because I'd never play it against a jig-style pattern in the basses.
A Cape Breton strathspey isn't done quite the same as a Scottish one, so maybe that's why it wouldn't sound right played Scottish style.
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