what it means that Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” is written in 7/4 time?
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Imagine you’re playing a fun game with your friends. In this game, you have to clap your hands or tap your foot along with some music.
Most songs you hear on the radio or sing along to have a steady beat that you can easily clap along to, like 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. That’s called 4/4 time, and it’s like walking or running with a steady rhythm.
But what if I told you there’s another way to play the game? Instead of just counting up to 4, we can count up to 7! It’s like a special challenge. Instead of a normal walk or run, it’s like hopping or skipping to a different beat.
So, in 7/4 time, the music is divided into groups of 7 beats, and we clap or tap along with that rhythm. It’s like saying the numbers 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, over and over again.
There are two parts of the time signature of a piece of music.
The top number is how many beats are in a measure (or bar). The bottom number is which note duration gets a single ‘beat’ in the measure. When that lower number is a 4, that means the quarter note gets that value. So, in 7/4 time, there are the equivalent of seven quarter notes per measure. That may be seven quarter notes, one quarter, a half note (two beats) and a whole note (four beats), or anything in between.
Music is divided into portions called “measures.” Each measure is a certain number of beats. Most music uses 4 beats per measure.
When we play 4 notes in such a measure, we call them “quarter” notes. These notes are draw as a solid dot with a line coming off. If we want a note to last a whole measure, we draw it as a bold ring with no line, and call it a “whole” note. A note that lasts 2 beats is called a “half” note, and is drawn as a ringed dot with a line coming off it. A three beat note is called a “dotted half” note and looks like a half note with a small period after it.
So if the song’s basic melody follows this 4 quarter notes per measure pattern, the timing is written as 4/4, meaning “four quarter notes per measure.”
Where measures have other than 4 beats in them, we use the same notation and terms to describe note timing, but change the numbers in the timing staff.
A waltz has 3 beats per measure. Using quarter notes, we write the timing as 3/4, meaning “three quarter notes per measure.” For a note that covers the whole measure, we would use a dotted half note.
7/4 timing means “measures consist of seven quarter notes.”
Music is written in short intervals called measures. Usually a measure has 4 beats (the top number) of quarter notes (the bottom number). A quarter note just means it takes 4 of them to make one whole note, which in 4/4 is one measure. Solsbury Hill has an unusual time signature because it has 7 beats in each measure instead of 4. It still uses the quarter note for each beat, but there have to be 7 of them to complete a measure. It makes the song feel like it moves forward because you are taking away a beat each measure that most popular songs would wait for.
So the basic thing to know is that the rythm of a music is created by the length of each music note. For example it can be long-short-short (bamm dada) which is different from short-short-long (dada bamm).
In our western music system the length of these notes are always halved: there is the longest (whole), then half, then quarter and so on. The whole is represented by the number 1, the half is 1/2, the quarter is 1/4 etc. (And there are ones that break this rule.)
In a simple drum run (if it goes like dum-dum-dum-dum all the time without any extra trick), one “dum” is most of the time a length of one quarter, or in other words 1/4.
Now, people instinctively put emphasis on certain notes. Specifically, in our music culture we tend to group 4 of the quarters together and emphasize the first one of the group. It would be like (imagine a drum):
DUM-duh-duh-duh-DUM-duh-duh-duh
Note that the first DUM is not longer, just louder.
So these 4 quarters (or 4/4) make something we call a bar, that’s the basic unit of the music. In other words, a normal usual bar is the length of 4 base drum beats. Of course if a music would be only quarters, that would be very boring. In a normal bar you can put various kind of stuff (like one whole or two halves or a half and two quarters), as long as it has a total length of 4 basic drum beats.
Even the drum can vary like:
DUM-dada-duh-duh (where the “dada” is as long as one “duh”).
So in our culture the majority of the songs have this basic kind of “heart beat” like the bar is a group of 4 quarters and the first ones are emphasized. They are also the easiest to dance with, because you instinctively move your body with the bars, and a 4/4 bar gives you even number of movements. Left-right-left-right.
But there are other kind of music. One famous non 4/4 music is waltz, which has 3 quarters in a bar (3/4). The waltz beat would be
DUM-duh-duh-DUM-duh-duh
And it’s also kinda difficult to dance.
And then there’s this song you ask, in this one one bar consists of 7 quarter beats. These kind of songs sound unusual, they are difficult to sing (because normally you want to sing in 4/4), difficult to dance. They often convey some excited or unfinished or odd feeling. And this is why musicians, if they want to give you this subconsciously odd feeling, make music in such timing as 7/4.
When writing music, you need to tell anyone who plays your piece three things:
* The pitch of each note
* The rhythm of the notes
* The volume of the notes
When we say “Solsbury Hill” 7/4 is written in 7/4 time, we’re referring to the rhythm of the notes. Let’s talk about the bottom number first, because it’s a bit more complicated.
When writing music, we break it up into parts called measures. Within each measure, we’ll place notes that tell the musician the pitch and timing of each note. These notes are broken up into fractions of a measure.
* The [whole note](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_note) is an open oval. This tells us to play the note for the entire measure.
* The [half note](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_note) has an open oval with a stem. This tells us to play the note for half of the measure.
* The [quarter note](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_note) is a filled oval with a stem.
* The [eighth note](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_note) is a filled oval with a stem and a flag. The flags are sometimes connected along the tops/bottoms of the stems.
* The [sixteenth note](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_note) is a filled oval with a stem and two flags. Like the eight note, the flags might be connected along the top/bottom of the stems.
* There is a [thirty-second note](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-second_note), but it is not nearly as common. We’ll see why in a moment.
When we break up the measure, we count the beats: one, two, three, four, five, six, etc. The “4” on the bottom of the time signature tells us that the quarter note represents one full beat. If the time signature were 7/8, the eight note would be one full beat.
In addition to counting one, two, three four, we might need to break the measure up into smaller parts for the eight and sixteenth notes. For eighth notes, we add syllables to our counting: one-and, two-and, three-and, four-and, etc. For sixteenth notes, we count: one-e-and-uh, two-e-and-uh, three-e-and-uh, four-e-and-uh.
Rather than use thirty-second notes, most music will simply change the bottom part of the time signature and double the tempo (the rate at which you count).
From here, understanding the top part of the time signature is easy. It’s just the number of times we count per measure. So 7/4 would be: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two three, four, five, six, seven, and so on. If we used 4/4 instead, it would be: one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and so on.
[Solsbury Hill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGaqmvIEyaI) is such a great example of 7/4 time, because there is a steady bass drum beat in the background of the intro. Try counting along with it the next time you listen to the song. Just note that you don’t start counting with the three guitar notes that lead in. Start counting at the first hit of the bass drum.
An interesting aspect of 7/4 time is that many artists will count it as two separate measures of 4/4 followed by 3/4. So it would be counted: one, two, three, four, one, two, three, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, and so on.
If you enjoy this kind of thing, I’d strongly recommend Rick Beato on YouTube. He has a video on [how to count odd meters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffnwaHtfzg) (another name for time signatures). Rick covers a ton of music theory content in a very accessible way. He’s a very down to earth guy with an incredible amount of music knowledge that he shares on YouTube.
(EDIT: I used the word “bar” in my response below but noticed others are using the term “measure”. For ELI5 purposes it’s just a different word for the same thing.)
4/4 means there are 4 quarter notes in every bar. ie: 4 1/4 notes… which gets written in music more simply as 4/4.
7/4 means there are 7 quarter notes in every bar.
Queen’s song “we will rock you” is 4/4. It’s using a 4/4 time signature where there are 4 quarter notes available to play per bar. How can you tell? Well it starts with a simple 4/4 beat that most people are familiar with clapping along to:
STOMP-STOMP-CLAP-REST,
STOMP-STOMP-CLAP-REST,
etc.
See how there’s 4 “slots” in each of those repeating bars to put either a stomp, a clap, or a rest (rest is a fancy way of saying “silence” in music)? Those are the 4 quarter note positions available in every bar of 4/4 time. That beat keeps repeating every 4 quarter notes, and each repeating group of 4 quarter notes is equal to 1 bar (four 1/4ths = 1 bar; just like 4 quarters = 1 dollar).
4/4 is the most common time signature for popular western music. 3/4 and 6/4 are less common but not unexpected. 7/4 is notable because it’s not very common and therefore a little trickier to play or clap along to. But you could think of it as one bar of 4/4 followed by one bar of 3/4 before the beat repeats (ie: 4 + 3 = 7).
Here’s a 3/4 beat (think tubas playing “oom-pah-pah” music, or if you’re familiar with waltzes they are 3/4):
STOMP-CLAP-CLAP,
STOMP-CLAP-CLAP,
etc.
Now if you add the 4/4 “we will rock you beat” in front of each of those 3/4 bars, you get:
STOMP-STOMP-CLAP-REST-STOMP-CLAP-CLAP,
STOMP-STOMP-CLAP-REST-STOMP-CLAP-CLAP,
etc.
Now if you’re right handed and playing in front of a right-handed drum-kit setup, hit the “STOMPS” with your right foot on the kick pedal, and the “CLAPS” on the snare with your left hand, and then simultaneously hit the hi-hats (the two clamped-together cymbals) on EVERY quarter-note-beat (ie: each stomp, clap, and rest) using your right hand. Now you’re a drummer playing a 7/4 beat!!!
With that in mind, the stomps, claps and rests can go anywhere in any arrangement or combination just so long as there is some element of repetition in that arrangement every seven beats. You can also get fancy and throw eighth notes in the middle inbetween the quarter notes (14 1/8 notes fit into a 7/4 bar), or 16th notes inbetween the eighths, or 32nds inbetween the sixteenths!!! Those can all be used to add variation so that the repetition between each bar doesn’t get boring. But so long as the beat’s main theme repeats every 7 quarter notes you’re playing in 7/4 time.
4/4 is by far the most common (and easy for anyone to clap along to because they are familiar with it), but 7/4 is sometimes used (although much harder to clap along to because it’s much less popular and therefore much less familiar).
In summary: it’s all just mathematical fractions that denote how many quarter-note beats fit into the smallest rhythmic “loop” (ie: one bar) that makes up a passage of music.
It means that there are 7 beats per measure. Without knowing music, this may not make sense.
Imagine a waltz like “The Tennessee Waltz” or “Amazing Grace”. There are three beats per measure… 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3… Solsbury Hill being in 7/4 means that it will be 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7.
The phrases will match that timing as well.
Alternatively, that song can be counted as 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4.
If you wanna get really crazy, try listening to Electric Sunrise by Plini https://youtu.be/Rv_a6rlRjZk and enjoy some 13/8 time.
First be aware of the ‘tempo’: the sense of a steadily recurring beat, the ‘downbeat’, usually sounded by the bass drum. Imagine the hits of the bass drum in ‘Solsbury Hill’ as footfalls on a pavement.
The pavement is made of blocks called ‘measures’. Seven footfalls take you the length of this measure before you reach a line in the pavement and start another seven footfalls on the next measure.
Start the song. Now listen for the lyrics ‘Climbing up on Solsbury’.
Now take ‘Hill’ as the initial ‘downbeat’ or first step into a new ‘measure’. Count the beats as the lyrics continue, up to: ‘I could see the city’.
Now take ‘Lights’ as the initial downbeat of the next measure. You counted seven beats last measure. Keep counting in tempo and notice that the measure is always seven beats long.
Running the lyric phrases across the ends of measures like this is a party trick but it doesn’t affect the length of each measure: seven beats.
It’s a musical convention to cut an imagined ‘whole note’ lasting an entire measure into four equal chunks called ‘quarter notes’. The ‘4’ in ‘7/4’ lets you know that each ‘footfall’ or beat is understood as one quarter-note long, or a conventional length of stride for music of average tempo.
To test your ear with another song in 7/4, listen to Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’.
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