A quick primer on time signatures

4/4, 4/2, 7/8, 8/16 … Arrrgh! What does it all mean? Let’s take a look at how metre works. Imagine, if you will, a sheet of music full of uninterrupted notes. One note leads to the next, which leads to the next and so on until the piece is finished. Makes sense right? After all that’s how we hear music, isn’t it? Well I am 100% certain that 98% of musicians sitting in front of that sheet music would complain. Their chief concern would be that of losing their place. To aid the hapless musician, order is brought to chaos and the bar (or measure if you will) is born. Yes, with the simple application of vertical strokes at predetermined intervals, this whole Gordian knot of notes becomes sensible.

But where to draw those lines? Hmm … If we’re going to decide that we should structure our music into little chunks of notes, then we need a way to determine what size those chunks should be. Well lucky for us there exists a system to do just that. That fraction (X/Y) at the beginning of each stave is a condensed way of telling you that each bar is X number of Y length notes long. So in 4/4 time the bar is 4 quarter (1/4) notes long. 3/4 it is 3 quarter notes long. 6/8 is 6 eighth (1/8) notes long. You probably won’t ever see Y going over 16. It just becomes too muddy to count at the resolution of a demisemiquaver, much less a hemisemidemiquaver!

But wait! What does it matter?

If a melody has a string of say …  3 quarter notes, an eighth note rest, then two eighth notes followed by one half note … does it really matter how we divide it? Aren’t the note lengths really what’s important? We can’t hear when one bar ends and another begins, can we? What makes one time signature preferable to the other? In truth we can hear when one bar ends and the other begins. We hear it in the accent. See, not all notes are created equal. Some notes get played more forcefully, while others get a lighter touch. Accented (or stressed) notes are often played at regular intervals throughout a piece. This regular patterning of accented notes is one component to a piece’s rhythm and helps give that piece a certain flavour. Think, for example, of waltzes. One of their defining characteristics is their time signature (3/4).

So the whole concept of time signatures is a means of describing the placement of accented notes. It is the spacing and concordance of accented notes that give the overlying music a specific feel, and which makes music done in one time signature sound different from music done in another time signature.

How does this help me?

Since so much music is written in 4/4 time, writing a piece that eschews this convention is a way of making your song stand out. It won’t necessarily be something the listener can point out, it will affect them in more subtle ways.

Once you’re comfortable with playing and writing music in odd time signatures, you’ll have at your disposal another means of expression; one that is not implemented by a great majority of songwriters (in Western music at least). You will have a songwriting secret weapon to help get your music noticed.

Break the cycle

It may seem difficult to count to an odd number when so many songs are written in 4/4 time. Counting up to 5 may feel downright silly. How does one get started? Well how does one get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice! Let’s start out with an easy one; 5/4 time is a good place to begin. Now this doesn’t seem too much of a stretch right? It’s just like 4/4 time with an extra beat right? Well if you think of it that way, you may have more difficulty in getting the hang of counting it out. I say this because counting to 4, then trying to append another beat on will not come naturally at all. Through years of exposure to 4/4 time, your habit is to start counting over once you’ve hit 4. Your brain will halt as it tries to figure out if it should keep counting or not. Let’s not try to break that habit, but rather form new ones.

The number 5 can be broken down in four different ways: 4 and 1, 1 and 4, 2 and 3, 3 and 2. As mentioned before, I want you to stay away from counting it out the ‘4 and 1′ way. Also I want you to stay away from the ‘1 and 4′ method too. Maybe once you get a hang of odd time signatures you can go back and try it, but for now I think there is a better way to start. My reasoning goes beyond what I mentioned above. I want you to focus on counting out beats in groups of 2’s and 3’s because any number (above 1 obviously) can be decomposed conveniently into mixed groupings of 2 and 3. Moreover, we can change the feel of the time signature by reordering those groupings.

Try this, count the following out loud and preferably with a metronome going:

1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2 & |1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2 & |1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2

Okay, now try this:

1 & 2 & 1 & 2 & 3 & |1 & 2 & 1 & 2 & 3 & |1 & 2 & 1 & 2 & 3

Now while these are both three measures of 5/4, we’ve shifted the stressed beats around to give a different rhythmic feel to each. The same sort of thing is accomplished in 4/4 time when you shift between playing downbeat to playing back beat. While there are no rules as to which beats in a measure are stressed, and which are unstressed, we shall try to avoid having two stressed beats occurring sequentially (although it may make and interesting piece to count 1 & 2 & 3 & 4, but master the basics first before taking flights of fancy to uncommon rhythmic lands).

On to bigger numbers

Now that we’ve stretched a bit, we can start to tackle bigger things. Another popular odd time signature is 7/8. This one has a rushed feel to it which is good for tense pieces. If we were to do some fancy math, we could say that this is 3.5/4 time. The rushed feel comes from our mind assuming that we’re cutting of normal 4/4 time half a beat too early. Try counting it out that way:

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 |1 & 2 & 3 & 4 |1 & 2 & 3 & 4

If the tempo is not too fast you may wish to count each eighth note (little tip — Say ‘sev’ instead of ‘seven’ so that the extra syllable doesn’t foul your count):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |1 2 3 4 5 6 7

If we were to consider it in our groupings of 2’s and 3’s, since we’re dealing with eighth notes, there are three distinct patterns.

You can get a feel for the rhythmic differences by counting in groups of 2’s and 3’s. I’ll just write out the first example:

1 2 3 1 2 1 2 |1 2 3 1 2 1 2 |1 2 3 1 2 1 2 |

Go forth and experiment

You can begin to see that once you start delving into odd time signatures, a whole world of rhythmic expression opens up to you. Also consider that the time signature doesn’t have to be the same throughout the piece. Indeed it can change every bar if you want it to. The signature is there to map where the accents are in a melody, it should be descriptive, not prescriptive in nature. That said, it is good to have the stability in a piece, and you will find that while there are plenty of songs that have changes in metre, a great majority do not, and very few where the metre is changed consistently. Again, this is often due to the repetitious nature of music itself.

You have the tools now to start making music in odd time signatures, I wish you the best in your songwriting endeavours. Do try writing at least one piece that is not 4/4 time. I think you’ll find it very rewarding to add another variable to your music. Cheers!