Welcome back to the music theory series! Today is simple meters and time signatures. What is meter in music. At it’s most basic definition it’s how many beats there are within a measure. What is a time signature? It indicates in the staff how the music is measured and organized. There are essentially a few basic types of simple meters or time signatures. They are as follows…
4/4 There are four beats in a measure and a quarter note receives one beat. A whole note is one entire measure in 4/4 time. Let’s see what that would look like…
This would be counted as 1 2 3 4 in the first measure. One count for each quarter note. The second measure counted as 1 2 3 4 with one and two for each quarter note. Three and four count for the half note. An example of 4/4 in my own music would be ‘At this Moment‘
3/4 is three beats per measure and is a waltz of 1 2 3. 1 2 3. An example of that would look like this…
The first measure is counted as 1 2 3, one beat per quarter note. The second measure is counted as 1 2 3, for the dotted half note. An example of 3/4 in my own music would be ‘Haunted Past‘
2/4 is two beats per measure with a quarter note getting one count. So 1 2. 1 2. This is very much a march. An example of this would look like this…
First measure is counted as 1 2. Second measure 1 2. Each quarter note getting one count each. Think of the song ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag’
