Implications of time signatures

[ApK]

I know there are certain implications of using certain time signatures...the composer is telling you something beyond the literal "how may beats per measure and which note is a beat".

I remember when I first learned about time signatures one of my first thoughts was "so if you just remove every other bar line, 2/4 is exactly the same as 4/4...so what's the point of having them both?"
And the answers I've been given to that question. while satisfying the time, never stay in my memory.

So any one want to offer a primer?

What's the reasoning for writing your melody out in quarter notes, suggesting a tempo of 60 bpm and calling it 2/4 versus writing the same melody out in half notes, suggesting 120bpm and calling it 2/2?

ApK

[ApK]

<in another thread>
The difference is how they feel.

Yes, but, 1, especially for the more exotic signatures, do you just have to know ahead of time what the feel is supposed to be and just memorize it, or does the arraignment of notes tell you something inherently? I mean, waltz time is pretty self evident, but what is 19/16 telling you?

And 2, you can change the feel of a song in performance or in a new arraignment while keeping it in the same time signature...make it rock or swing or more pop, less pop, whatever, right?...so are you ignoring the time signature, or taking queues from it?

ApK

[TomTyrrell]

One reason to choose 2/2 over 2/4 is to make the score easier to read. A page full of eighth notes doesn't look nearly as busy as a page full of sixteenth notes. If you're writing the score by hand 2/2 saves a lot of flags and bars.

[Mike Bunting]

http://www.musicarrangers.com/star-theory/t19.htm

Perhaps the info on this page might elucidte.

[John McGann]

http://www.musicarrangers.com/star-theory/t19.htm

Perhaps the info on this page might elucidte.

Nope. Joe has three things wrong:

Reels are always written in 4/4 (See O'Neills or Ceol Rince).

6/8 written for jigs is around quarter=120, not 210.

2/2 is not always slow- I know of a few Hindemith compositions that use 2/2 in some mighty speedy passages.

Tom, "Cut time" is the same as 4/4, felt in 2/2 but written the same as 4/4 - with same number of eighth notes per bar.

I'm sure Joe's arrangements are good, though

[Mike Bunting]

I'm glad you got back in here to clue me in, thanks John.

[TomTyrrell]

<<Tom, "Cut time" is the same as 4/4, felt in 2/2 but written the same as 4/4 - with same number of eighth notes per bar.>>

John, why address this observation directly to me? I was talking about the difference between using 2/2 and 2/4, I said nothing at all about 4/4.

[John McGann]

One reason to choose 2/2 over 2/4 is to make the score easier to read. A page full of eighth notes doesn't look nearly as busy as a page full of sixteenth notes. If you're writing the score by hand 2/2 saves a lot of flags and bars.

Some books do use 2/4 with 16th notes, and for some folks it could look more difficult to decipher- at fast tempos, it could be 'easier' to read as the notes are crammed together a little closer...most common practice is as you say, a page full of 8ths rather than 16ths...sorry if I misinterpreted what you were saying!

[Curtis]

There used to be differences in feel between different time signatures. A big band chart written in 2/2 implied a half time feel in the bass. In 4/4 would imply a walking bass.

As far as I know, those subtleties have been lost on almost everyone. As a writer, I have never seen nor heard nor read nor written anything where the time signature implied any sort of feel. It is much more likely to see that written above the staff as an instruction instead.

[bobby bill]

I don't think you can ever infer a tempo from the time signature. Maybe it's different for jazz or popular music, but one certainly would not do this in classical music. Three hundred years ago (think William Byrd, Frescobaldi) it was typical to designate a beat with a whole note rather than a quarter note. It is difficult to read with my modern eyes but I'm sure it was not so back then.

As someone has already said, the primary criteria in choice of time signature is how easily it can be read and understood by the musician. A piece in 6/8 could be written in two using triplets but the latter would be a little more difficult to read. Likewise, a piece in 19/16 could be written in several ways and depends a lot on how the 19 is subdivided. Just like a piece in five is typically subdivided in either 3 and 2 or 2 and 3, a piece in 19 will have smaller subdivisions. You might get a hint from how the sixteenth notes are grouped. It might be 4 4 4 4 3. For the latter, some would choose to change the time signature to 3/16 every fifth measure.

The main point here is that time signature gives you a starting place for how to count the notes, but other things such as tempo, placement of accents and grouping of notes need to be figured out by looking at the whole piece.

[TomTyrrell]

In the early years of music education students often learned that certain time signatures have certain meanings. 3/4 is Waltz time. 2/4 is March time. 6/8 is Jig time. 15/16 is just slightly less than one inch.

The subtleties usually come later in the learning process. Few people actually get far enough through the formal music education process to even need to analyze 19/16.

So we end up with three basic groups of musical people. Those who don't read music notation, those who read music notation well enough to play it and those who actually understand what all those dots really mean.

Many members of the second group consider 6/8 to mean "six beats per measure and an eighth note gets one beat." Since they know what a Jig sounds like they have no trouble playing Jigs in 6/8. They will tend to play anything they see in 6/8 as a Jig. Those in the third group are annoyed by this. Those in the first group don't care, they just play the tune.

So, depending on the audience the Time Signature may or may not have more meaning than it should.

[ApK]

15/16 is just slightly less than one inch.

<ba dum bum> He's here all week. Try the veal.

[Red Henry]

So we end up with three basic groups of musical people. Those who don't read music notation, those who read music notation well enough to play it and those who actually understand what all those dots really mean.

Right, and the same happens with key signatures-- folks of the second kind show up all the time. Maybe they had some high-school band or music-lesson experience long ago, and they retain just a dangerous amount of information. Once in our local Celtic group we turned to a reel in two sharps, and a guitar player said, "This is in D!" -- I gently informed him that the tune was actually in B-minor. Glad we got that straightened out before we started playing...

Red