Is there some biological reason for this?
When there’s large crowds and music playing we naturally fall into clapping in 4:4 timing, and I guessed this is driven by the music itself. But is there some deeper reason for why 4:4 feels nice?
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I’d imagine part of it comes from rock and pop having its roots in blues which uses 4:4 time. In addition, gospel and southern spirituals and folk music which were also influences probably used a lot of 4:4 time.
However, this is definitely a “learned” reaction and is entirely based on societal cues.
For example, if you asked this same question during the Renaissance you’d get a bunch of confused stares as most waltz music is written in 3:4. Whereas as most Marches are written in 2:4 (common in organized Militaries)
We tend to like simple time signatures 3:4, 4:4, 6:8, etc. because it is easy for our ears to pick up the pattern and human brains really like patterns.
4:4 isn’t special, it just happens to be very popular in western music right now. There was a long period of time in Europe when 3:4 and 6:8 were super dominant.
Any simple time signature will feel natural if you listen to it enough. Have a whole culture that listens to one time signature more than any others, and it almost feels biological.
But it’s really just about exposure, even more complex ones like 5:4 and 7:8 can start to feel natural with enough exposure.
As a longtime musician, I actually prefer 3/4, and classical music employs a wide range of forms.
I definitely agree with another post that talked about the divisibility of 4/4 time. In more modern forms of music—pop, rock, and jazz—the drummer organizes the measure by playing notes with two hands, which tends to favor even counts that allows each hand to strike a beat. There is also the Western convention of the verse and chorus being divided into 4 bars, 8 bars, 16 bars.
So there is a bit of laziness or comfort, for sure, but it goes way back in history, so it’s tough to get an unbiased perspective on it.
Because it is mathematically “elegant.” Each measure can be neatly divided by two, and thus nearly divided into quarters, and eighths, etc. It is also probably one of the most common timings, which causes us to feel more familiar with it than other timings.
My ELI5 answer would be because we can shake our head/tap our foot/snap our fingers to it easily. If you try to shake your head to 3/4 it’s unnatural because one phrase would end on an upbeat and the other would be a downbeat.
I have trouble with English music terms, but I hope I can get the point across anyway.
I think it’s largely learned. People in the Balkans are used to what we think of as weird time signatures, because their folk music revolves around dancing in short and long periods. A short is 2, a long is 3.
A piece might then use short short long short
Which would be **1** 2 **1** 2 **1** 2 3 **1** 2
Which we would probably end up calling a 9/8 time signature. That’s not how you’re supposed to think about it though, you’re supposed to think 2 2 3 2.
So, I’d say it’s because western music has decided to revolve around the bass on beats 1 and 3 and the snare on 2 and 4. You grew up with it, so it’s easy.
I promise you, if you sit down and practice odd time signatures, they’ll feel natural to you. Children find it easy, because they aren’t locked into thinking about music like that yet. You have to make the effort to break the very western thought that 4/4 is a natural time signature.
Anyone, feel free to correct me on Balkan music if I got something wrong. I’m just a westerner myself.
Just a tangent since this has been answered.
There is a game known for brutally hard boss fights. There was one fight that was infamous for difficulty as the boss followed a 3:4 timing in its attack pattern whereas everyone else followed 4:4.
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