I do not understand time signatures and can not find videos that explain why they matter.
How is 3/4 and 6/8 different and would a song sound different if a 6/8 song was played in 3/4?
Why not just write every song in common time and move the measure line?
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Music is all just patterns. Time signatures tell you how often patterns are repeated and how the patterns are emphasized. To fully understand how time signatures work you need to know that there are also bars and measures. A song in 4/4 will have four beats per bar and typically has four bars per measure. A verse or chorus will have multiple measures. For example, 12 bars blues is a common song structure, it has four bars per measure and three measures per section/verse/chorus.
With that out of the way. A bar is broken up into beats. Whole notes (lasting an entire bar), half notes (half a bar), quarter notes (four per bar), eighth notes, and 16th notes. There are 32nd and so on but we will stick to what is common. In 4/4, each bar will have four quarter notes which are where the beat is emphasized; you can still have other types but the quarters are what get the most attention. In 3/4 there are three quarter notes. In 6/8 there are six eighth notes and they get the attention.
While time signatures are written as fractions, don’t think of them like that. The top number tells you how many beats per measure and the bottom number tells you what type of note it is. As other have said, there are typical types of emphasis for different time signatures, but those aren’t hard and fast rules, you can even choose to not emphasize any beats but that would be boring. At the end of the day, it just tells you how often a pattern repeats.
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