Point taken. Perhaps I should have said "3/4 could be a waltz time", but let's keep things simple for now, eh? Not that that's really possible ...

You gotta feel it!! And there's the issue of how many "beats" are in the measure, on paper, vs. how you feel, or count, or conduct it when you perform it.

A piece in 3/4 time will always have three quarter-notes' worth of music in each measure. But you may play some of those pieces in one beat per measure (example: Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker). Or three beats per measure (example: AMazing Grace). Or six beats to the measure (example: 2nd movement of Beethoven's 4th symphony). And that's strictly down to how fast the piece moves.

Could you do the Tchaikovsky in 3? Sure, but it would either be 3 really fast beats (awkward to conduct and to follow), or it would be slower than most people would want it. ("Most"--there's no accounting for taste.) Could you do Amazing Grace in 1? Sure, but again, that's not how it's most comfortable to most people.

One of the trickiest pieces I've played lately was the Cello Concerto by Victor Herbert. It's in 3/4, but it's too fast to be entirely comfortable in 3, and not fast enough to be entirely comfortable in 1. One could argue that this was strictly down to our soloist's choice of tempo, but IMO that tension was a big part of what made the piece interesting.

The best way to explain is with some audio examples, but I don't have any at hand.

Good point. How you "write" a piece of music, or how you "count" it, is simply an aid to performing it.

Another kind of example: the intro to Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll is best written/counted as starting on "the and of three" (that is: one ee and a two ee and a three e AND). You play the first note on the AND of three. You COULD count that note as 1 (there is no "law" against that). But if you did, the count wouldn't make sense for any of the measures in the rest of the song.

Engineer sez: "Music is hard!" :dunce:

Thanks for your answers I am digesting them now.

I'll ask my voice teacher next time I have a lesson and when I hear it I should be able to understand. It's hard because I don't really know what the words mean. know = experience

I consulted my ex-pert. Dave Brubeck, Take 5, is an example of 5/4 time.



The Blue Danube is an example of 3/4 time.


Most songs are 4/4 time.

If you can hear/count along...it makes more sense. I'm just a layperson, but I can "hear" the counts.

Duh. Here's a better example of The Blue Danube.

It doesn't start until 4:12.

Right. People say you have to "feel it" and that is literally true. Music involves theory which is absorbed via muscle memory.

Here is a good example of what note subdivisions are. The song starts with 8 quarter notes, two measures (bars) of 4/4. If they kept doing this for one full minute, you could count up all the quarter notes to get the beats-per-minute tempo.

INTRO (bar 1), quarter notes..|..INTRO (bar 2), quarter notes......
tick......tick......tick......tick...|...tick......tick......tick......tick.......
1..........2..........3..........4....|....1..........2..........3..........4.......

When the song kicks in (0:06), the hi-hat goes to 8th notes (the hi-hat is being struck twice as often, but the song hasn't increased in tempo). The quarter notes are now being played alternately between the bass drum and snare drum. Bass drum takes the 1 and 3, snare drum takes the 2 and 4.

Bass/Snare, quarter notes
boom....CRACK....boom....CRACK
1..........2..........3..........4........
Hi-Hat, eighth notes
1....2....3....4....5....6....7....8....
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick

As I usually say, we're all ignorants but we don't ignore the same things.

Tonight, I'll sleep with a bit more of knowledge than when I got up this morning.

4/4 time walks, hup two three four. The Caisson Song, and Marines' Hymn.
3/4 time waltzes, or ice-skates. Roller skates too. Also one heckuva lotta country music about cheatin' hearts, broke country singers, and pickup trucks. You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Me Lucille.
6/8 time walks/marches with a swing and a swagger. It helps to be in a kilt, and strutting hard enough to make your horsehair sporran go "swingity swingity," which is the 1 2 3, 4 5 6 beat of 6/8. A lot of jigs are also in 6/8.
5/4 is the Mission Impossible theme. True story.
9/8 is slip-jig, which is a jig time takes half again as long to come round to the beginning of the cycle as a 6/8. I think it's also the meter for the baritone solo in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

5/4 is also Take Five by Dave Brubeck, and the opening of Rush's YYZ.

Most of "Turn It On Again" is 13/8 and this may be the oddest time signature for a hit single ever.

Pink Floyd - "Money" - 7/4 until Gilmour's solo, which is 4/4, and then it returns to 7/4. I think Gilmour joked that they changed it to 4/4 because it was too hard for him otherwise.

Watching people try to dance to Pink Floyd's Money is always fun.

Max Roach had a whole album called, plainly enough, "Jazz in 3/4 Time."

When I want to play double bass as "123,123,123,123" instead of "1234,1234,1234,1234" I always think of this song: Dream Theater - Take The Time (this could be written with either a 3 or a 6 as the numerator in the fraction which states the time signature).

That's what she (I) said.

Hey Flint!

And all y'all.... of course.



I love this song. I have listened to it countless times. I find myself unable to reliably hit the beat you're hearing from the hi-hat. I have tried counting...


1...2...3...4AND1...2...3...4AND1...2...3...4
AND1...2...3...4AND1...2...3...4
AND1...2...3...4AND1...2...3...4
AND1...2...3...4AND1...2...3...4.....


I tried counting on the very first beat Nina starts with, tapping her foot, putting the "AND" between 2 and 3, but it really feels like it belongs between 4 and 1.

This counting represents a bit of a breakthrough for me. I initially was going to ask about syncopation, in the thread you referenced up there ^^^, but that search revealed this thread which is better suited to my question. Having reread this thread, I think Nina's performance is in 4/4 time, at a moderate tempo. That goddamn, brilliant hi-hat though... I could not corner it.

I guess I don't have an actual question anymore... but please enjoy Nina's performance.

The song doesn't start on 1, it starts on 3. That's the confusion. In order to process the song in your head, you have to imagine that the 1... 2... happened in the musician's heads.

If you beat 1... 2... and then start the video, it will work.