what it means that Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” is written in 7/4 time?
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(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.
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