Time Signatures.

This is designed to be a basic introduction to one small aspect of music theory. There are far more extensive, better written, articles on the subject. This one is most likely the most easy to find for you though

First of all, we have to understand how notes are divided in music. Here is a picture of a note tree. As you look from top to bottom, each note lasts half as long as the note above it.



From the top we have

1 Semibreve - (Whole note)
2 Minims - (Half notes)
4 Crotchets - (Quarter notes)
8 Quavers - (Eighth notes)
16 Semiquavers - (16th notes)

There are notes larger than a minim, and smaller than semiquavers, but for the purposes of this article, you won't be required to know what they are.


What is a time signature?

Okay, firstly lets take a look at one:

The time signature is the two numbers (both the number 4) stacked one on top of the other. This may look a bit like a fraction, but in this case, both numbers mean a different thing. The top number refers to the number of beats in a bar. The bottom number tells us the type of beats that represent the timing. (It is important, that you remain aware that the type of note is just a representation, when you go on to learn topics like the speed (velocity) of music. Time signatures do not tell you how fast a piece of music should be played).

Right, so the time signature above, the 4 on top tells us that there are 4 beats in a bar. The bottom 4 (If we look at the list from the note tree, tells us that those notes are crotchets, or quarter notes. So there are 4 quarter notes in a bar. I've created a power tab file for examples in the rest of the article, you can open it by clicking on this link:

Time signatures

If you don't have the powertab editor, it can be downloaded for free from here:

http://www.power-tab.net/

Please try to disregard the tab, it will make good practice to look at the actual musical notation (for those who might aviod it normally !! )

If the time signature showed 3/4 time, you would have 3 beats in the bar, all crotchets. It would look like the powertab file bar 2.
If the time signature showed 2/4 time, you would have 2 beats in the bar, all crotchets, and it would look like the powertab file bar 3.


Okay so far? Theory is not so difficult really


It's either simple, compound, or damned irregular.

Right, now it's time to get into the interesting stuff. There was a specific reason why I've shown you the three bars I have, as these are the basic building blocks of music. If you look on the file, I've written something specific on the top of each bar. On the 4/4 bar is written simple quadruple (quadruple meaning that there are 4 beats in the bar. On the 3/4 bar is written simple triple time, (triple meaning.. well I think you can guess what triple means ).

So why are these times simple
It's all about how we split the notes up. Look at the first bar of the second line. It's in 3/4. But now instead of playing 1 quarter note on each beat, we are now trying to cram two eighth notes into every beat. (Two notes, 3 beats, that's six notes altogether by my reckoning.)
Notice how they are grouped. In pairs. If the beats are to be divided rhytmically by splitting into halfs, it's called simple time. The simple time signatures are ones like 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4.

Compound time signatures
So we've now got a bar of music, with 6 eighth notes in it. The rhythm would be 1 and 2 and 3 and...
There is however, a time signature, called 6/8. So isn't this the same thing? Indeed wouldn't this be a better choice? Look at the second bar of the second line. There are still 6 eighth notes, but they are grouped in threes. Brilliant for those 3 note per string scales eh? So that's it. If the beats are divided rhythmically by splitting into thirds, it's called compound time. I've provided the equivalent compound times to the ones in the first section. They are 6/8. 9/8, and 12/8. You will note that the crotchets now have a dot beside them, this indicates that you play them for 1 and 1/2 as long as you normally would, (fitting 3 eighth notes in each beat).


Irregular times
Okay, we've covered the basics, how about that weird 5 notes per bar stuff. How does that work? To understand that, we need to understand how time signatures give a sense of rhythm. It is good practice to start to think of beats grouped in 2's, or in 3's. They are grouped by emphasising one of the beats, so you get a strong beat followed by a weak beat. So the beats in:

4/4 time are - 1 Strongest, 2 weak, 3 strong, 4 weak.
3/4 time are - 1 Strong, 2 weak, 3 weak.
2/4 time are - 1 Strong, 2 weak.

It's important in music to get a feeling of how rhythmical accents like this sound, and what you can do with them. Then you can begin to understand how rythms with irregular numbers of beats, like 5, 7, and 11 work.

Here's how
Let's look at 5 beats per bar. Remember that beats are generally grouped by 2's and 3's. So 5 beats per bar works mainly in two ways. 2 beats, followed by 3, or 3 beats followed by 2. The effect of this is shown in the powertab file, 4th line, from bar 9. If you concentrate on the higher C note, you start to get a feeling of the "off beat" feeling, of short long, short long.
If the time signature is 7 beats, we would have two groups of 2, and one of 3. So 7 beats per bar can work in 3 ways:
1. 2 beats, 2 beats, 3 beats
2. 2 beats, 3 beats, 2 beats
3. 3 beats, 2 beats, 2 beats.

These are shown on the next line of the powertabs file.

As you can see, music like this needs a strong sense of melody to clearly show which variation it is.

So what about 11 beats? Well if you have gotten this far, I'll leave for you to figure out how many simple variations there are on that.

Good luck

Tank.

Great lesson Tank! But when do bands that dont read sheet music use this? I really cant see some rock band actually counting the rhythms to the song, you know like, "well this phrase starts w/ two eighth notes followed by a quarter, then......." Dont most bands just count off and then sort of "feel" the beat and the rhythms of the song?

Certainly, there will be people who don't want to bother doing any theory at all, and it will not diminish their ability to get on stage and knock out some simple songs.

However, take the situation where you are a professional musician, asked to play in a band for one night only. You turn up to rehearsal to learn the first song, and they say to you "It's in 5/4 time, chord changes are Bmin, F#7, D7, E7, F, just noodle something over it". Unless you've got any idea what that's going to sound like in your head, you'll look like a complete amatuer the moment you begin to poke around, trying to find a note to start on, or "tripping up" over the extra beat in the bar.

I'd also suggest, that when you come to write music, it is a lot easier to write a far more original sounding piece, if you have the ability to put away the guitar, and instead be armed with a good knowledge of rhythm and melody. From my experience as a guitarist, (and having played other instruments to orchestral standard), we have a tendancy to write by letting our fingers take charge lead. We fall into "racing up and down the pentatonic", in order to produce a melody, and inadvertantly "working over" riffs that we've practiced in the past. The result is usually music that sounds suspiciously like whoever we listen to.

Learning wider aspects of music expands the boundries. So that's why I feel it's important

/Tank

... Its just reading music i really cant stand, it gets so boring sometimes. Should I force myself to get better at reading music? Can it really hold me back for becoming a better player?

It depends.

I think we need to make be aware of the distinction between improving as guitarists, and improving as musicians. If you're goal is to be able to play Slash solo's, I would suggest that you don't need to learn musical notation, or theory to do that. Just grab the tab, and work at it. But be aware that once you reach the point that you can do that, you will be one of thousands of guitarists, who can copy a solo.
However, if you have developed a good grounding in reading score, you aren't limited to what has been tabbed out. You might hear a snippet from an Aaron Copeland symphony, a Louis Armstrong trumpet solo, or a bit of Bach, or that sounds particularly cool to your ear, and think "Yeah, I want that in my playing". But unless you have the ability to decipher the sheet music, and put it into practical use on your guitar, you'll quickly find yourself getting frustrated.
My point is that learning theory, and eventually learning standard notation, isn't about technique. It will not enable you to play sweep arpeggios at 180bpm. What it will give you is an understanding of how musical form works, and for my experience, a better ability to tackle the "difficult bits" of working out music while in rehearsals. It will also give you access to music that's outside of the guitar world, and an ability to bring it to your instrument. And I would suggest that this is the easiest route to becoming original with your playing.


/Tank