Re: Question about time signatures


"John Salerno" <johnjsal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:478cde9c$0$9131$607ed4bc@xxxxxxxxx
SleepyHead wrote:

3/4 means "3 lots of '4' per bar", or 3 crotchets per bar;

Hmmm...well, I guess my ignorance is to be expected given that I'm just
sort of jumping into all this without any kind of background in it. But
I'm still confused about what you mean when you say "3 lots of 4"...What
is a "lot"?

John,

Simon is British (or something like that).

In America we call that filled in black note with the stem a "Quarter Note",
and in England they call it a "Crotchet". Our 8th note is their "Quaver".

1/4 = Crotchet
1/8 = Quaver
1/16 = Semi-Quaver


English people also use the word "lot" to mean "group" as we might say it
(like, "Get out of here, the lot of you"). He means:

3/4 is three of those things that we name because they are one out of a 4
per measure group (by the way, measure and bar mean the same thing).

I know, not any clearer.

Think of the "fraction" LITERALLY:

3/4 means "three-quarters", or, literally, 3 quarter notes in a measure.

You count 4/4 like this: One two three four | One two three four | One two
three four, etc.

3/4 = One two three | One two three | One two three, etc.

In both, the quarter note (this is where the English system is more elegant,
because "crotchet" doesn't imply a fraction - at least to us) is the "unit
of beat" - the thing we count. So 3/4 just tells us we count three quarter
notes, and after that, the measure's up and we're on to the next measure.

Or again, the top number tells you the number of beats per measure, and the
bottom number tells you what kind of note gets one beat. In 3/4, there will
be three beats per measure, and a quarter note will equal one of those
beats.

HTH,
Steve



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