# Question about time signatures



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

By just listening to a piece, is it possible to distinguish between 4/4 time and 4/8 time (or 3/4 and 3/8)? If so, how? If not, what factors would determine which time signature a composer would choose?


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## omega (Mar 13, 2014)

This could be a fun and difficult game: _Guess the time signature_






I've always thought this was written in 3/2 (or any number/2)... in fact it is in 2/4 (but the conductor does not mark the quarter notes)


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyN0ObSYNpE#t=1940

The original version of Bruckner's Scherzo for the Fourth is written in 3/4, but the theme is so overloaded with duple rhythms that it sounds mostly like 2/2. Amusingly, the rewritten version is in 2/2, but sounds like 3/4 because of the preponderance of triplets.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

brianvds said:


> By just listening to a piece, is it possible to distinguish between 4/4 time and 4/8 time (or 3/4 and 3/8)? If so, how? If not, what factors would determine which time signature a composer would choose?


Choice of a time signature can be a matter of tempo, accent, or phrasing (the shape of a phrase or how many notes are crammed into it).

Triple time could be written as 3/4 if each group of three beats is equally accented on the first beat - ONE two three, ONE two three - but if a stronger accent falls on alternate groups of three beats, 6/4 would be a more logical choice: ONE two three four five six, ONE two three four five six. This needn't be a matter of strong accentuation; it could just be a matter of phrasing, a _feeling_ that three or six beats belong together. 3/8 and 6/8 work more or less the same as 3/4 and 6/4 but would tend to be used if the tempo is faster; short notes (eighth notes in this case) look like they should move faster than longer notes (quarter notes). This is just convention, though; in practice a piece in 6/8 could be pretty slow if a composer wants for some reason to do that, and a piece in 3/4 could be marked "presto." On the other hand, 3/2 or 6/2 would be an unlikely choice for anything but a slow piece. The longer the value of the note that serves as a single beat - in 3/2 it would be a half note - the finer the subdivisions of the beat you can conveniently make in the score. In general, accent and phrase structure are more reliable hints to a listener than is tempo as to what the time signature is. But really you can't always be sure just by listening.

Obviously, the same considerations apply to duple time, 2/4 and 4/4. You rarely see 2/8 and 4/8, though. It seems pointless to divide duple time that finely, and the page would be cluttered with bar lines!


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

brianvds said:


> By just listening to a piece, is it possible to distinguish between 4/4 time and 4/8 time (or 3/4 and 3/8)? If so, how? If not, what factors would determine which time signature a composer would choose?


Generally, the smaller the base value, the faster the piece, so 3/8 will usually be faster than 3/4.
One does sometimes see a slow 6/8, for example, or a fast 3/4.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

MoonlightSonata said:


> Generally, the smaller the base value, the faster the piece, so 3/8 will usually be faster than 3/4.
> One does sometimes see a slow 6/8, for example, or a fast 3/4.


Depends on the piece. In the Fitzwilliam book, you will see some 4/2 that end up going like a train because of the variation structure. In general divisions usually start with either half or whole notes (minins or breves) and can end up with 32nd notes. (demi semi quavers)

Some of Bach's 3/8's end up sounding like slip jigs (9/8) - invention 6 with its shortened notes in 3/8 has a similar feel to the corresponding sinfonia in 9/8; whereas invention 10 in 9/8 is matched with a sinfonia in 3/4
There is also a general discussion, partly related to speed and partly related to emphasis as to whether hornpipes should be written in 2/4 with 16th (semi quavers)notes or in 4/4 with 8th notes (quavers).

The whole thing's a total minefield.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Taggart said:


> The whole thing's a total minefield.


So I have noticed. 
I'm a bit rhythm deaf, I think. With most classical music, I find it extremely difficult or impossible to work out even if it's duple or triple rhythm, let alone being able to discern the precise time signature. The more romantic and expressive the music, the more difficult, because then the performer usually throws in rubato, which makes it even more difficult.

But it seems to me now that one could quite legitimately write the same piece with different time signatures without necessarily making a discernible difference to how it sounds in performance.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

MoonlightSonata said:


> Generally, the smaller the base value, the faster the piece, so 3/8 will usually be faster than 3/4.


That may be sort of observation you could make about Baroque and early Classical but I disagree that it's a principle of composition. It's certainly not a useful generalisation after the classical period. Just focus on spotting duple and triple, and ascertaining where the strong beats are


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

brianvds said:


> So I have noticed.
> I'm a bit rhythm deaf, I think. With most classical music, I find it extremely difficult or impossible to work out even if it's duple or triple rhythm, let alone being able to discern the precise time signature. The more romantic and expressive the music, the more difficult, because then the performer usually throws in rubato, which makes it even more difficult.
> 
> But it seems to me now that one could quite legitimately write the same piece with different time signatures without necessarily making a discernible difference to how it sounds in performance.


It is not 'just you' when it comes to later romantic era music. Part of the aesthetic was to 'get away from both the distinct feeling of _metric_ pulse, and using Brahms as a rather fine somewhat extreme example, then throwing phrases over the bar-lines, and a polyphony (found in Schumann and Brahms) where that is happening at different places in the metric, one coming in while another is already running, and not at all in the clear baroque manner of a Bach fugue. The intent (and successful effect) of that _is meant_ to obscure or obliterate the listeners perception of the bar-lines. (This became such a predominant technique and factor in later romantic music that when Stravinsky came along, it was then "newsworthy" that along with what else he was known for, _he had "restored" to music a strong feeling of pulse_ (!) 

In addition, confusing the beat, (_where is 1?_) and at the least the obfuscation of the usually palpable bar-lines did allow for something else which is a marked trait of the later romantics -- a longer, very elastic way of 'sculpting' music into grander-scale 'shapes.'

If you did not know, the 'compound' of a six eight (imagine a gigue) is for a notational convenience of music which is marked in beats of _groups of triplets,_ i.e. the main beat is 'thought of' pretty much as a performer would treat a quarter note, but each beat is three sub-beats of eighths, which in normal musical addition add up to a dotted quarter IF that were not the accepted convention that gigue in 6/8, or 9/8, would be ink-heavy with a bracketed line over each group marking them as triplets -- it allows the main pulse to be 3 eighths which are "normally" a dotted quarter total, without so much notational clutter.

All meters, at their best, as others here have said, import an accepted standard sort of directive where the performers then know something of 'the feel' of both phrasing and speed (apart from tempo and other markings.) More abstractly, since others have pointed out that tempo markings so affect what is heard, there will still be the import of a particular 'feel,' to the overall length of phrases, how those are then rendered, and (often slight) the main groups of beats, as they are mildly emphasized, regardless of tempo.

"Hearing and identifying," _if you are keenly aware of and practiced in the conventions,_ you will make a better and more likely accurate guess... but there is no sure way for even the best trained and keenest ear to know other than looking at the score


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

PetrB said:


> "Hearing and identifying," _if you are keenly aware of and practiced in the conventions,_ you will make a better and more likely accurate guess... but there is no sure way for even the best trained and keenest ear to know other than looking at the score


A few days ago I followed the core of Brahms' 3rd string quartet while listening to it, and noticed that in any event, he changes the time signature within movements, just to confuse matters even more!

It leads to another question: when was the first time a composer did that (i.e. change time signature within a movement)? Which composer?

What I find curious here is this: in the process of composing, the composer himself has to work out what the time signature is of the music he is imagining. I.e. he has to do the same thing I am doing when trying to work out the time signature by listening to the work. Apparently composers are better at that than I am. 

I have played around with composition myself, and found that working out the time signature was always the most difficult part of the whole process.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

brianvds said:


> A few days ago I followed the core of Brahms' 3rd string quartet while listening to it, and noticed that in any event, he changes the time signature within movements, just to confuse matters even more!
> 
> It leads to another question: when was the first time a composer did that (i.e. change time signature within a movement)? Which composer?
> 
> ...


_If_ you do the full study, ear training and all that, rhythmic dictation is completely in there with all the rest, intervals, sight-singing, etc. This kind of training is like any other, i.e. if you do not, after the training is done, pretty much use it every day / all the time, you get rusty more than a little quickly.

Last year -- and this is embarrassing, I did a (less traditional harmony) choral arrangement of _Happy Birthday_, realizing it was mid-day of my Nephew's Birthday, and that I had not thought of it until that moment and having nothing in hand for him, I sat down and got to work on arranging the tune. I finished it within several hours, including a neatly written piano score of it, and telephoned him, got the answering machine, played it on my (digital) piano, so left the 'message' there for him.

Around that same time, I had been working on several simpler level piano pieces, including some simple mixed meters, and another more technically demanding piano piece which has some mixed meter, often with your basic 11/8 as the more predominant length of measure. Somehow, this is relatively simpler, i.e. often, as you first 'hear it' you kind of know the metric at the same time (maybe this is or not a bit odd, but I also know very near the exact right tempo then and there as well.)

I did not bother to look up _Happy Birthday_ on line, etc. but wrote it down 'by ear,' casting it in Ab.

*However*, I won't tell you how long it took me to realize that this simple and well known to all _Happy Birthday_ song is in 3/4


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2015)

That's because the phrases are in five + one and in four + two. And the occasional syncopation doesn't help!

It is an odd little monkey, to be sure.

(I mean no offense to any primates with this observation.)


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

Some dances or common rhythmical patterns - traditionally - deserve to be indicated with a predefined time-signature, but in other cases it's not easy to recognize the meter just by listening. The first time I listened to Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, I couldn't believe that the slow arabian dance is written in 3/8 and not 3/4 until I saw the score!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I have learned to distinguish "beats" from the *"pulse"* of a piece. For example, a blues shuffle can be notated in 12/8, which means "12 beats per measure, eighth note gets one beat," but the rhythm is not "felt" that way, mainly because the bass is "walking" a 1-2-3-4 "* pulse. *

This is counted *ONE*-2-3-*TWO*-5-6-*THREE*-8-9-*FOUR*-11-12, in eighth note terms. But really, the "pulse" is felt as *1-2-3-4* and is divided into three instead of two parts per beat.

When determining whether something is in 6/8 or 3/4, I listen for how the melodic phrases fit in: Silent Night is 6/8 because the phrases are 6 beats long.

As to whether something is in 4/4 or 4/8, this is a question of the bottom number, the* beat unit*, not the *number* of beats ( the top number), so this is really a notation question. How fast is it, and does one want to write quarter notes with no beams, or eighth notes with beams?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> That's because the phrases are in five + one and in four + two. And the occasional syncopation doesn't help!
> 
> It is an odd little monkey, to be sure.
> 
> (I mean no offense to any primates with this observation.)


Hey, mister! Got a banana?

But really...
Doh! (slaps self on forehead.) _That_ is what I got for not paying attention to texts in music -- the text completely dictated that phraseology. (Doh, doh, doh.)


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

PetrB said:


> _If_ you do the full study, ear training and all that, rhythmic dictation is completely in there with all the rest, intervals, sight-singing, etc. This kind of training is like any other, i.e. if you do not, after the training is done, pretty much use it every day / all the time, you get rusty more than a little quickly.


So it is with all skills, though I have to say, once you have mastered it once, you very quickly pick it up again. Not that I have ever undergone any significant formal training of any kind. 



> Last year -- and this is embarrassing, I did a (less traditional harmony) choral arrangement of _Happy Birthday_, realizing it was mid-day of my Nephew's Birthday, and that I had not thought of it until that moment and having nothing in hand for him, I sat down and got to work on arranging the tune. I finished it within several hours, including a neatly written piano score of it, and telephoned him, got the answering machine, played it on my (digital) piano, so left the 'message' there for him.


You are going to get sued - the Happy Birthday song, believe it or not, is copyrighted.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Just write everything in 1/1 and forget about it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> Just write everything in 1/1 and forget about it.


I can't put my finger on exactly why, but this is the funniest thing I've read in a very long time.

:clap:


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Just write everything in 1/1 and forget about it.


I always initially draft without bar-lines, using beaming to keep track of the phrase-bar lengths -- even if in one meter -- and / or draw the slightest / lightest of bar- lines, but without any time signature on them. That happens after a fair amount is determined and the pencil draft starts getting inked over into 'first draft' status. Not having them helps you not think your phrases in the regular meter, even if they are in a regular meter, if that makes any sense


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

brianvds said:


> So it is with all skills, though I have to say, once you have mastered it once, you very quickly pick it up again. Not that I have ever undergone any significant formal training of any kind.
> 
> You are going to get sued - the Happy Birthday song, believe it or not, is copyrighted.


LOL. I know that. This was played (it could have been sung if I'd had a number of singers handy) _over the phone,_ not broadcast or otherwise published


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Here's an interesting read about the "Happy Birthday" copyright issue, asserting that for the last few decades, at least, we've all been played by Warner/Chappell: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...it-that-happy-birthday-is-public-domain.shtml


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