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
A “bar” is a unit of length in music. The time signature (something like 4/4 or 6/8) tells you how long it is. For example, music in 4/4 time has 4 (top number) quarter notes (bottom number) per bar. Music in 6/8 time has 6 (top number) eighth notes (bottom number) per bar.
If you look at the sheet music, you’ll see each bar marked off by vertical lines separating it from the bars on either side. [Here’s an image](https://i.imgur.com/0yJKPRO.png). This music is in 3/4 time, so each bar lasts 3 quarter notes. In the melody (the three notes at the top of the bar), these are actually 3 quarter notes; in the bass (the single note at the bottom), it’s a dotted half note (which is a half note + half a half note = a half note plus a quarter note = 3 quarter notes in length). This image contains 16 total bars of music.
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