The two numbers that are stacked on top of each other at the beginning of every piece of music is known as a time signature, is not to be called or confused with a fraction. The time signature is there for a reason – it determines the overall feel and flow of a piece of music.
The most common time signature is 4 written above another 4 and unfortunately when it is written away from any music notation it is written like this: 4/4 . What this means in simple terms is that there are 4 crochets (or quarter notes) in each and every bar (or measure). So that gives you a technical definition of what 4/4 is but it doesn’t really help on a practical level. If we look at a bar of 4/4, each beat of the bar has a different strength or emphasis, so it is:
1 2 3 4
Strong Weak Medium Weak
So even though the first beat of the bar is the strongest, its quite subtle and certainly not punched out every bar. As I stated before, 4/4 time signature is the most common and would likely be the time signature of at least ninety percent of all the music that you listen to. The 4/4 time signature is so commonly used that sometimes a “C” ( for common) will be written instead of a 4/4.
Another time signature that you may come across is 2/4 which means that there are two crochets (or quarter notes) in every bar (or measure). The practicality of playing 2/4 is:
1 2
Strong , Weak
The 2/4 time signature doesn’t seem that much different to that of a 4/4 time signature, especially when you are playing many bars (or measures) and really the difference is quite subtle. When I am teaching I find that sometimes the technical explanation is not enough for a piano student to understand what it feels like to play 2/4. The way I explain it this; when I am playing music in 2/4 time, I think of marching and walking, where your dominant foot would step on the first beat and the non=dominant foot would be stepping on the second beat.
If you are working on a piece of music in 2/4 time and are still struggling to internalize the feel of it, I suggest you take a moment to march around a room thinking of which foot would be on the first beat and the other foot naturally being on the second beat. This may seem an unorthodox way of learning the feel of 2/4 time, but it does actually work.
The last of the simple time signatures is 3/4. This time signature has a completely different feel to both 4/4 and 2/4. Technically it looks like this:
1 2 3
Strong Weak Weak
As there is two weak beats in a row, it gives the feel of swaying or floating. 3/4, like 2/4 is not used that much, so getting the correct feel can be challenging at times. The 3/4 time signature has sometimes been referred to in the past as waltz time, so if you can (or could) waltz, then you know what 3/4 feels like. Again, it’s a little unorthodox, but with young students that have never heard any music in 3/4 time, I spend some of their lesson time teaching them the footwork of a basic waltz. Even though its unorthodox, it has always proven to be a successful way to teach 3/4 time.
If you are struggling to get the feel of 3/4 time and really don’t want to learn even the footwork of a basic waltz, then here is a list of pieces of music that you can listen to , that are all in 3/4 time:
Mull of Kintyre by Wings http://youtube.com/watch?v=Plhtk_XJqhM
Piano Man by Billy Joel http://youtube.com/watch?v=gxEPV4kolz0
Delilah by Tom Jones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSoQYQOhBYQ
Que Sera Sera made famous by Doris Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc
My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music by Rogers and Hammerstein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IagRZBvLtw
Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTYymbbEL4
So hopefully you now have a better understanding of the simple time signatures. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I cover time signatures that are known as compound time signatures…