Eli5 – Why does music come in bars of four instead of 5/10?

Question

Recently I’ve been attending a lot of gym classes and the counts are always 4, 8, 16 etc. It made me wonder why music is set out this way and not in 5’s and 10’s like I would expect. Or am I missing something obvious?

In: 23

Answer 1

Dance music, particularly in the modern era, heavily favors 4/4 time, as people seem to be able to instinctually dance to it. Workout music is, effectively, doing the same thing, as many people will try to match physical movements to the beat.

But there’s tons of music in other time signatures; it’s just that music that isn’t 4 beats per measure isn’t conducive to working out.