Time signature theory - Is it worth it?

[Glenn]

Is the theory behind time signatures stuff and nonsense?
Is all this theory really necessary to play well?
Is it frightening people away for absolutely no reason?

I have spent a lifetime reading music pretty successfully without bothering to learn the theory behind time signatures apart from the obvious ones.
If I have a complicated 3/4 I often count 6 in a bar to get things aligned.
Do I really have to consider it 2 beats of triplets?
Do I have to go 1 - ti - ta - 2 - ti - ta instead of 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6?
With lots of dotted notes etc. I just break it down to its smallest common denominator. Is that wrong?
From my schoolboy mathematics I realise that counting 6 at twice the speed equals 3 at half the speed (give me a PhD).
Of course I understand that the time signature is meant to impart a certain feeling to the music in the way it is interpreted but I believe that this will come from your innate musical feeling.
To be honest, if you have no musical feeling then knowing the theory inside-out will not help the performance.

I'm just posting this because I often encounter (starting) musicians that become constipated on this sort of stuff and are afraid to move for fear of getting it wrong.
Common sense and some musical ability in the form of a feeling for the music should be enough.

OK, enough said, you can shoot me down now.

 

[BobM]

One of the first signs off Christmas apart from mince pies with a "best before" date in October, is the first forum topic about TU SCENDI DALLE STELLE. This is in 6/8 but can be in 3/8 or 3/4, and there's also the erroneous idea that 2/4 is somehow faster that 4/4.

There's plenty to be going on with there!..

 

[Deleted member 48]

This reminds me that I must refresh my search for a Curt Sachs book Rhythm and tempo...
I have some of his books on musicology and music history, but failed to find a copy of Rhythm and tempo.
His theory of additive rhythm and divisive rhythm has some interesting points, can help to analyse structures and substructures music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_rhythm_and_divisive_rhythm

His book The Rise of Music in the Ancient World... has also some stuff about rhythm, meter, time in different music cultures:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Music-Ancient-World/dp/0486466612

This last one is still available

 

[TomBR]

To your three questions, I'd say,
No
No
Depends, but I think mostly no

[Edit: None of the "you" in this is directed at Glenn or anyone else!]

Taking the opportunity to ride a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine, I think people learning an instrument, and singers, often get hung up on pitch, but timing/rhythm is actually more crucial. Good rhythm with some "wrong notes" can still sound good. "Note perfect" playing with poor timing will tend to sound rubbish.
If timing is good you can play with other people, even if some pitches are wrong. Get your timing wrong and you either have to recover, or you've mucked it up for everyone. Wrong pitch is past and gone at the end of the note. Wrong timing lasts to the end of the music.

I agree that if notated timing is tricky it's often good to split it up into small units. That often gives the best chance of getting it right,

BUT (a great big but!) - where is the music? Play every note absolutely correctly as to pitch and timing and that's an achievement, but will it sound like music? We all know what a computer sounds like when it plays the notes exactly correct like that.

How to turn the notes into music? If you've got a natural feeling for music and a sense of phrasing, you may need no more help, you'll just naturally start to sound "musical." If you can listen to appropriate recordings that's likely to help, but in both cases, you may not be aware of what you've done, or how.

I think the theory of the pulse of the music is a way of helping people move forward. For some instinctive musicians it may just confuse, but for others it's a useful step on the way.

If the music is notated in 4:4 where's the pulse, the beat, the rhythm? Play with someone else, or if you've heard a recording, that may be telling you, play this in two, with two pulses per bar, and you don't even need to think about it. Then again, it may be in four, or even one.

Having an awareness of the concept may help with thinking, how do I make this better, or, how do I express to other people how I think this should go.

Music might be in 6:4 and change between being in three and in two, 3x2 and 2x3 are both 6. You could just "get it" by feel, or by talking about the change in pulse.
Time signatures like 7:8 or 11:8 become easy and natural when you know how the bar is chopped up, but the time signature gives you no help in that.

Often when I'm playing music in 3:4 with friends we'll play it pretty much three in a bar to "get the notes right," then say, OK, I think this should have much more of an "in one" feel.

Most of what I play is traditional dance music where the notation is often only a sketch, and you may play the notes differently from what's on the page.
Play a tune that's notated in 4:4 "in four" with four pulses in a bar, and you may be able to play it nicely as a hornpipe, or maybe schottische. If you want to play it as a reel, you've GOT to get it into two.

It's all about different routes from the dots to actual music, and what suits one person may well not suit another.

???
Tom

 

[donn]

Bear in mind that music is really "by feel", and musical notation is a very coarse written approximation of music.

The written meter may capture some of the feel - like cut time vs. common time - but doesn't cover everything, for example as TomBR mentions above the 3/4 meter that's "in one", or for that matter all the variations on the 3/4 feel.

It doesn't seem to me that there's really much theory involved, it's simply a matter of, first, acquaintance with the musical feel - which you must have got from somewhere else, as it's not really recorded in the time signature - and then, the musical literacy to recognize what the time signature refers to.

 

[artelagro]

2/4 4/4 Aly and Phil start with a practical demonstration



Garth

 

[bocsa]

Are there any Aly/PC clips where Fergie doesn't get a mention ?

 

[george garside]

just keeping time with ones foot or feet saves an awful lot of agonising over the obvious!

george :evil:

 

[TomBR]

just keeping time with ones foot or feet saves an awful lot of agonising over the obvious!

george :evil:

Fair point George, but watching a bunch of people playing a reel, I'll often see some foot tapping in two, some in four, and some apparently random jiggling!
Tom

 

[george garside]

True that can sometimes happen in a session but when leading a band I kept a close eye on everybodys foot tapping and if it was not the same exactly as mine somebody or other was in deep SHoneT!

george