Lesson 6: Simple Time Signatures

Reading sheet music is like reading a foreign language. There are rules and patterns that must be followed for the music to sound pleasing to the ear and so the musician can interpret the music correctly in order to perform it.

Before we get to the music, we must first know how to write it correctly, understand the notes, and know how to organize it.

To learn about how to correctly label a note, head to: http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-is-c4.html

To learn about clefs, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2012/12/lesson-2-staffs-clefs-and-lines-oh-my.html

To learn about the major scale and whole and half steps, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-3-major-and-minor-scale.html

To learn about key signatures, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-4-key-signatures.html

To learn about notes and their rhythms in simple meter, head to:
http://nomusicbflat.blogspot.com/2013/01/lesson-5-notes-and-rhythm-part-i.html

Now that we know how to count notes and their rhythms, we can now understand meter, or the relationship between rhythm and time in music.

Music has 2 aspects. Pitch, the highness or lowness of the sound, and time, which is shown in rhythm, or how the sound is notated so that their starting and duration is notated and predictable.

We know the note relationships from Lesson 5: notes and rhythms part I, however, we still dont know how long a whole note, and therefore any of the other notes, are. This is because the duration of the notes depends on the time signature, or how many beats are in a measure (partion of music)

A time signature consists of two notes written vertically, like in a fraction, with one important exception. A time signature does NOT have a line seperating the top and bottom notes!!!!!

The top number shows how many beats are in a measure. If the top number is 4, then there are four beats in a measure. In simple meter, the top number will always be either 2, 3, or 4.

The bottom note indicates what note gets the beat. If the number is 4, then the quarter note equals one beat. If the number is 16, then the sixteenth note gets the beat. this number will always corespond to one of the notes listed in Lesson 5: notes and rhythms part I.

Now using any of these rules, you can create a simple time signature. These are some of the simple time signatures commonly seen in music from the Common Practice Period. (1650- circa 1900+)

This concludes our lesson for today.