Wanted to share :)

musicteach

New member
As the title says, I wanted to share this with everyone. I've noticed that even with with musicians that have been playing for decades upon decades that a lot of musicians seem to have issues with weird time signatures, such as 12/16 time:
JqN64.png


So what I wish to explain will hopefully help you in your own playing, if you are having issues!

But before we can do this, we must first explore what a "time signature" is. All it does, which of course most of us know, it tells us how many beats there are per measure, and what subdivision gets the beat. Let's look at 12/16 time.
JqN64.png

The 12 tells us that there are 12 beats per measure, and that each sixteenth note gets the beat.
As musicians, we have to realize that music is simply the art of interpretation and that everything is relevant. What I mean is, that just about everything in music is subjective to how you as the performer look at it. We also most realize is that music is simply applied math.
This being said, does this:
JqN64.png

equal this:
kg2yS.png
?

Aside from groupings, the answer is yes! There's too ways you can go about playing 12/16 time (or my personal favourite 20/16). This applies to all other time signatures with a smaller subdivision then an eighth note. You can try to count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 every single measure or you can count 1e&a 2e&a 3e&a 1e&a 2e&a 3e&a. In playing, there really isn't a difference between 3/4 and 12/16 when the entire piece is written in that time signature.

When you change the subdivision of measure, all you're really doing is changing where the quarter note lands. As musicians we're taught from day one that quarters get one beat. That's because as a young musician, all we're going to be playing is stuff in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, and possibly 5/4. This becomes a problem when suddenly you see 3/8 or 9/8 or 12/16 etc etc thrown into a piece of music. Especially young students have difficulty grasping the concept of how exactly do you count these. And it's only mathematics, and applying things you've already know! Even 9/8 time can be done doing this.
ZCNnx.png

Here you see a masure of 9/8 time followed by a measure of 3/4 time. Look at the grouping of the eighth notes. They are exactly the same! The notation is slightly different because of the time signatures, but the point remains. Again, you can count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 each measure or you can count 1 trip let 2 trip let 3 trip let each measure. Which is easier?

Hope that helps if anyone is having issues!
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
Musicteach,

Thanks for posting this ... great information for the non-musician and for those just getting into music.

Our choir director keeps telling this to our singers ... just because the time signature changes from 6/8 to 7/8, it doesn't change the note value - it's still an eighth note. :)
 

John Watt

Member
Yeah! I liked just the look of that posting, nice notes!
Jimi Hendrix is the only rock musician to have a hit single written in 3/4 time,
"Manic Depression", very appropriate, at least for rock musicians.
I got into it easy, knowing 3/4 from country waltzes.
"Manic depression is searching my soul, I know what I want but I just don't know,
how to go about getting it,
music sweet music, drops from my fingers, manic depression is taking control".
 

musicteach

New member
Musicteach,

Thanks for posting this ... great information for the non-musician and for those just getting into music.

Our choir director keeps telling this to our singers ... just because the time signature changes from 6/8 to 7/8, it doesn't change the note value - it's still an eighth note. :)

Thanks :) I think when we apply it in such a matter of thinking...suddenly, performing such things as 12/16 or 20/16 time becomes 10x easier.

Another thing I found out today, and I'm 100% sure this will blow your mind. We all know that there's only a certain number of octaves and pitches that the human ear can hear. This raises the question of will we ever exhaust the number of unique melodic possibilities. This creates a finite number of possibilities. However, this number is massively large that we will never​ exhaust it.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Another thing I found out today, and I'm 100% sure this will blow your mind. We all know that there's only a certain number of octaves and pitches that the human ear can hear. This raises the question of will we ever exhaust the number of unique melodic possibilities. This creates a finite number of possibilities. However, this number is massively large that we will never​ exhaust it.

Methinks some of the more avant garde are having a darned discordant try!
 

John Watt

Member
It's amazing for me to think that the range of human hearing, all aspects of human hearing,
are just a small part on an eternal scale. Same as sight and smell.
As far as using too many notes goes, Mozart may have died in vain.
 

musicteach

New member
It's amazing for me to think that the range of human hearing, all aspects of human hearing,
are just a small part on an eternal scale. Same as sight and smell.
As far as using too many notes goes, Mozart may have died in vain.

It really is! There's only a very very limited range that our senses can detect.
 

John Watt

Member
It took a while for uh, white researchers to realize that elephants use the dome on their foreheads
to send sub-audible (for humans) bass tones for many miles, communicating.
Once a year, in Africa, a herd of elephants gather on the beach by the ocean and whales approach,
sending tones back and forth. That's a conversation I'd like to get in on.
 

Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
Thanks :) I think when we apply it in such a matter of thinking...suddenly, performing such things as 12/16 or 20/16 time becomes 10x easier.

Another thing I found out today, and I'm 100% sure this will blow your mind. We all know that there's only a certain number of octaves and pitches that the human ear can hear. This raises the question of will we ever exhaust the number of unique melodic possibilities. This creates a finite number of possibilities. However, this number is massively large that we will never​ exhaust it.

Average Human hearing from 20Hz-20Khz, frequencies in which we can distinguish every individual musical "note" - I question the research used to "settle" the question. I have normal hearing but yet I can distinguish individual musical notes far below 20Hz.
 

John Watt

Member
Okay, I got into 3/4 when that's not what this was about, remembering waltzes I played in bands,
and I was wrong about Jimi Hendrix being in 3/4, when it was 5/4.

One thing that creates the illusion of different notes is the use of tone,
especially extreme tones, for instruments and vocals.
A busy, jazzy and smooth vocalist can be singing up a storm, as Sade and Buble, sounding cool,
while someone with a whiskey or pipe voice, or loudly straining, barely singing, can sound more intense.

Every classical musician should try playing through a Marshall stack on a symphony stage,
and see how it feels for their instrument or voice to fill the room as the symphony does.
That really makes you feel more concise with your notage.
 
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