Uncommon Time: Difference between revisions

See also [[The Other Wiki]]'s [[wikipedia:List of musical works in unusual time signatures|list of musical works in unusual time signatures]].

 

* The "top" number of a time signature indicates how many beats are in a measure, and the bottom number indicates the length of the beat, as determined by how many multiples of the beat make up a semibreve (whole note). For example, a 4/4 time signature means "four beats per measure, counted in quarter notes." As such, the top number is usually what makes a difference: a song that's in 4/4 will sound more-or-less the same as a song that's in 4/2 because both of them go "one two three four", even though it'll ''look'' longer on paper. Likewise, a song in 4/4 is ''not'' the same as a song in 2/2, because while each measure has the same "duration" (4 x 0.25 versus 2 x 0.5), a 2/2 song only has two ''beats'' ([http://www.homestarrunner.com/onetwo.html "One, Two, One, Two..."]). (And "duration" is a relative term anyhow since a song in 4/4 can be played super-slow and a song in 2/2 super-fast, or vice-versa.)

* Time signatures are conventionally divided into simple, compound, and irregular. In a simple time signature, each beat is subdivided into ''two''—thus, a simple duple meter might be 2/4 ('''1''' and '''2''' and) and a simple triple meter might be 3/4 ('''1''' and '''2''' and '''3''' and). In a compound time signature, each beat is subdivided into ''three''—compound duple meter being '''1''' and a '''2''' and a, complex triple being '''1''' and a '''2''' and a '''3''' and a, etc. These time signatures are often written as 3/8, 6/8, 9/8, etc, which may seem somewhat counterintuitive; a 6/8 bar is the same length as a 3/4 bar and may look visually similar, but they sound nothing alike. For audialization purposes it might help to divide top and bottom of a compound time signature by 3 -- 6/8 is more properly understood as 2/2.666..., but fractional notation never caught on.

 

Also realize that a pattern of several different time signatures (such as 3 bars of 4/4 and one of 2/4) are not usually combined and called by the combined time (14/4 in the example given). This is mostly because musicians rely on bar lines as a visual navigation aid; very large measures are easy to get lost in (and hard to fit on a single piece of paper!). So although unique combinations of time signatures are '''Uncommon Time''', your musicians will hate you if you combine them into something like 27/4.

{{examples}}

== Examples in Music Genres ==

=== Christian ===