Time Signatures – The different meters!
Time Signatures - This is nothing but the number of beats in every measure/bar of music. And what is a “Measure/Bar”? It is nothing but the series of sections that you get when the vertical black lines called “bar lines” divide the staff. A time signature is also known as “meter” and it is the composer of the music who decides what should be the meter of the song. The meter is mentioned at the beginning of the first bar.
This is the most common meter in music. It is also known as 4/4 meter. This time signature indicates that every bar has four quarter note beats.
Waltz Time
Another common meter is the ľ meter, which is also known as Waltz time. This meter has three quarter note beats in every bar.
March Time
This is the 2/4 meter, which is also known as March time. This meter has two quarter note beats in every bar.
Other Time Signatures
The above mentioned time signatures are the most common and you will find almost all the songs based on them. But there are some other time signatures as well, basically the non-quarter note time signatures.
6/8 time - It has six eighth notes in a bar
3/2 time - has three half notes in a bar
Simple and Compound Time
We have discussed some of the most common meters used in music but we will take this discussion a bit further to improve our understanding of Music theory.
All the time signatures can be classified further based on two factors.
Number of beats in a bar - Based on the number of beats in a bar, a meter may be called as Duple, Triple, or Quadruple.
Simple or Compound - Simple time would mean that each of the beats in a bar can be divided into two notes whereas Compound meter means they can be divided into three notes.
Examples
3/4 time is simple triple - "Triple" because there are three beats in a bar and "Simple" because each of the beats can be divided into two notes!
6/8 time is compound duple - This sounds a bit confusing so carefully read the explanation. The six eighth notes in a bar can either be spread across two beats, in which case it would be a “compound duple”, or across three beats, in which case it would be “simple triple”. Since 3/4 is already known as “simple triple”, as shown in the first example, 6/8 is referred to as a “compound duple”.
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