Eli5 what a “bar” means in music?

Question

I was notified of a local theater production hosting a staged reading and I wanted to audition. The auditions aren’t for another few weeks, but as part of the audition, I need to sing 32 bars of a modern musical song and then give a conflicting one minute monologue. I can handle the monologue, but what the hell is a bar?

In: 5

Answer 1

As others have said, a bar is just a way of dividing music into smaller pieces, usually for ease of counting rests, length of notes and entries and exit points; and making rehearsal marks, like “Everyone that was awful after bar 35, can we go back to 20 and get the latest entry right please “.

The numerical notation of the “time signature” is just about which notes in the bar get a bit of extra ‘oomph’.

Slower, melodic music will generally be in x/4 or x/8 (I once saw a x/16), as the first beat of the bar is generally given at bit extra attention by the players. Faster music intended to be more energetic, such as dances, will often have x/3 or x/2 as more of the notes get stressed as the start of the bar.

The actual speed of the bars is determined by the composer in the first instance with markings like: allegro, accelerando, adagio, etc. While not entirely prescriptive, they have some generally accepted speeds in terms of beats per minute, sometimes also noted as (note)=[number]; which indicated how many of those notes should be in a minute. The higher the number, the faster the song. These are usually quarter notes per minute, but will vary according to the piece in question.

{Please note these are different to volume notations such as crescendo or diminuendo (get louder or softer), forte (loud) or piano (quiet), which are often used in the same place and font in sheet music.}

But often in practice, the speed of an orchestra is determined by the conductor, who may decide to increase or decrease the speed of the whole song or just sections, based on whatever they feel is appropriate. A great example is the the end of a lot of symphonic music, where the conductor slows down to hold on to loud, rich chords.

So to answer the question of ‘how long in seconds is 32 bars’ the answer really is it depends on the song. But as a lot of theatre types have chimed in that 45-60 seconds should be sufficient for a verse or two and maybe a chorus, go with that.