What Time Signature is This?

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jimmys69 said:
Do we also need a 'Time Sig' sub forum as well as a 'music theory' sub forum? :)

Math was never one of my favorites in high school. But 2+2 always sounded good. lol

Sorry, I am just making light of the conversation. You all just enjoy. :)
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I'm thinking we need more new rules.
 
FingerzAndKeyz said:
I've tried to follow all of the posts in this thread, but at this point, I think you have all gone loopy with your oopappas, prime time, etc. No offense meant...just an observation and I've enjoyed the humor.

This is NOT in 4/4. I'm sorry, but you can't just put a metronome up to some music to find the signature. Just because it fits with the beat and seems to follow the beats doesn't mean it's correct.

You could make this work in 8/8, but then you'd want to lower that into 4/4 and the feel just isn't there for a signature of 4/4. If you try it in 4/4, those eighth notes keep moving from beat to beat in each successive measure and that's just crazy for someone to try and play off of sheet music.

This fits better in a 5/4 signature. That allows the two eighth notes to stay in the same area though out the piece and it has a better feel to it, for the musicians that are going to play it. It's all in the phrasing.

If you are just looking for some midi signature to match it up with other tracks, I guess 4/4 might work in that case, but if you want to be correct and have it come out playable by people who actually can read music, it's 5/4.

You don't believe me? Check out the Mission Impossible Theme by Burt Bacarach against this. That song is in 5/4. Check it out for yourself. Check the feel of the beat of this sample while humming the Mission Impossible Theme along with it. You have to slow the Impossible Theme down a bit, but it fits.

Dave Brubeck's Take Five is another example. Again, you have to slow it down a bit to match the sample in this thread, but it fits. It's 5/4.
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Are you talking about the OP's tune? It's definitely in 4/4 and nowhere near 5/4. Mission Impossible is 5/4. That has nothing to do with the OP. The OP's tune is in 4/4. If you can't count that in 4/4, you shouldn't be posting novels trying to educate people on time signatures.
 
fat_fleet said:
No it doesn't. If you pull two triplets out of the OP song so it's

1231231212

and not

1231231231231212

THEN it would fit over Take Five, because you would be pulling out 6 16th notes, ie 3 8th notes, and making it 5/8 intead of 4/4, which it is now.
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He has no idea what he's talking about.
 
gecko zzed said:
This thread is the awesome.


I'm going to try and squeeze the OP's song into 5/4 now.
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It's easy. Just take out a few notes, slow it down, mention some other song that's in 5/4 that has nothing to do with this song, write a 15 paragraph post about nothing that makes any sense, and voila...5/4. :)
 
It's actually a cool little feel that the riff has .. whatever the time sig.

I can see how you can count 5 through it, but it strikes me that when you do not all the beats are the same length - you have to hang onto the 5. ;)

I'm going to totally write something now with that rhythm in it though - and then we can have the discussion again. :D
 
Armistice said:
you have to hang on the 5. ;)
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Which means it's not 5. Hang on a little longer, you can make it 13 if you want. :D


Anyone can program a straight 4/4 drum beat to this, with a simple kik on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4.

It's 4/4....with no "hang". :D
 
Well if you LIKE having all your beats the same length... so old skool :laughings:

I'm totally in the 4/4 camp on this one.:thumbs up:
 
Armistice said:
I'm totally in the 4/4 camp on this one.:thumbs up:
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I know that. :)


For someone to think this in 5/4, they obviously don't understand time signatures. A time signature isn't about how similar something might sound to something else. This riff has 5 accents in it, just like "Mission Impossible", but that has nothing to do with time signature. Time signature is about the amount of quarter notes or 8th notes there are in a bar. Counting it out shows that "Mission" is in 5/4 and this riff is 4/4, unless you can't count. It's impossible to come up with anything else. Claiming this is 5/4 simply shows a lack of basic musical theory.
 
sample in 5/4

5/4? Not a problem.

In the end, I do agree that the sample is in 4/4. But I don't think it is completely cut and dried. For example, if you take three equally weighted notes: dah dah dah, and that's all you have, you might conclude that maybe they're part of something in 3/4. However, the sample has three such notes, but they are actually triplets spanning a couple of quarter notes at a tempo of 87 bpm. It's the rest of the notes that add context that allows you to detemine they are in fact triplets and not three quarter notes of a 3/4 bar.

But even the snippet we have can be assigned a different time signature were we to discover that it sits in a broader musical framework to which we are not privy.
 
gecko zzed said:
sample in 5/4

5/4? Not a problem.

In the end, I do agree that the sample is in 4/4. But I don't think it is completely cut and dried.
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No, sorry. It's completely cut and dried. I don't even know what that is that you just did. You can't just take another rythm pattern and super-impose it, or else you can do that with anything if you slow it down or speed it up enough that it starts and ends at the same time. That's not how time signatures work.

Later on, I'm going to put this in my DAW, find the proper tempo and count it out for you guys. This is a simple 4/4. How do you even count what you just did?
 
RAMI said:
Later on, I'm going to put this in my DAW, find the proper tempo and count it out for you guys. This is a simple 4/4. How do you even count what you just did?
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No need. I've already done it in 4/4. Here it is at 87bpm:
sample in 4/4, 87bpm

RAMI said:
You can't just take another rythm pattern and super-impose it[/URL] You can if the rhythm you are superimposing is the actual rhythm of the piece of music in which the sample sits, and not the rhythm that suggests itself because you can't hear the rest of the piece.
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This is how music is counted. I still don't know why you're putting it with such a complicated, syncopated rythm, even in your 4/4 example.

This is how you count music. This is 4/4 and nothing else.:
 

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I'm still trying to get my brain around your 5/4 example. The patterns don't even start and end at the same time. It sounds totally random, which it has to be since it's not in 5/4. It just can't sync up properly for good reason.

Earlier in the thread, you said it "can be 7/8". Now, you're saying it "can be 5/4". No offense, I know you're not an idiot when it comes to music, but are you sure you understand how time signatures are determined? Because it can't be 4/4, 5/4 and 7/8. Music doesn't work that way.

I want to hear someone simply snap their finger and count the way I did, and come up with anything other than 4/4. If you can't do it that way, then forget it, because that's how it should be done.
 
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RAMI said:
You can't just take another rythm pattern and super-impose it,
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I mean, technically, you can map out any pattern into any other time signature, it just won't necessarily make any sense, and the sheet music will be pretty illegible.

Say a standard kick-snare 4/4 pattern in 7/8:
| K 2 S 4 K 2 S | 4 K 2 S 4 K 2 | S 4 K 2 S 4 K | 2 S 4 K 2 S 4|
It lines up every 4 measures. Is it a coherent way to do things? No. Is it technically possible? yes.
(And where would music be if we all refused to do something just because it's ridiculous? :D )
 
VomitHatSteve said:
I mean, technically, you can map out any pattern into any other time signature, it just won't necessarily make any sense, and the sheet music will be pretty illegible.

Say a standard kick-snare 4/4 pattern in 7/8:
| K 2 S 4 K 2 S | 4 K 2 S 4 K 2 | S 4 K 2 S 4 K | 2 S 4 K 2 S 4|
It lines up every 4 measures. Is it a coherent way to do things? No. Is it technically possible? yes.
(And where would music be if we all refused to do something just because it's ridiculous? :D )
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Yeah, but now we're talking polyrythms. The only way it "works" is because it ends up lining up after a certain number of bars. There are many songs that are in 3/4, but the drums are playing a straight 4/4. They end up lining up down the road. But until it lines up, the kik is playing on 1, then it's playing somewhere else on the next bar, etc.....Just like in your wacky example above. :)

We're not talking about the same thing.

The OP's song is in 4/4.

I'm just going to re-post my recording of my counting and talking about the OP because I don't want it get lost in the conversation:
 

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7/8 has a specific feel to it, as does 6/8 and 5/4, etc...

If something is written in 7/8, it has to feel like 7/8. That's the whole point of a time signature...to communicate the feel to the musician playing it.

Otherwise, you could simply just chart the song out in one long bar and call it 368/4 time.
 
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