eli5: what’s the difference between songs in 4/4, 3/4 and 6/8? why is there maths in music?
In: 1
That’s the time signature. Basically, music is divided into what we call compasses. If you listen to an average pop song, you can count 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, and so on to the beat of the song. Each of those groupings of 1-2-3-4 is a compass.
The time signature basically tells us how those compasses will work for each song. To summarize, 4/4 means 4 beats per compass, like the standard pop song, so you’d count it as “1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4”. In 3/4, each compass only has 3 beats, so it would be “1-2-3, 1-2-3”. In 6/8, there are 6 beats per compass. A 7/8 compass would have 7 beats per compass, etc.
The first number is how many beats per compass, the second number is a bit harder to explain in eli5 terms if you don’t know music theory but basically it tells us how long those beats are in the sheet music. Basically, those symbols 🎶🎵and others, they have different durations. The second number in the time signature tells us which of those symbols will be worth 1 beat in the compass. A bigger number is a “faster” (shorter duration) note. So think of “6/8” as 6 shorter notes per compass, while a “3/4” is 3 medium notes per compass, and “4/4” is 4 medium notes per compass.
That’s the general idea, hopefully I made sense lol
Edit: not Compass, they’re called Bars or Measures in English, had a brain fart while typing
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