After receiving comments on the last two of my "time signature" posts (see "Take Five" and "Take...Eleven?"), I realized I should post something to clean up a few miscommunications.
"Common Time" is the wording used to describe 4/4 time, and only 4/4 time. No matter how "common" a time signature might be, it is only proper to call it "common time" if it is in 4/4. This opens the question of what 3/4 and 2/4 time signatures would be called, since most people would think of those signatures as a commonly used signature. In fact, the right wording for these would be "simple" time signatures. Even 4/4 time falls under the "simple" time signature category, but seeing how the vast majority of the songs in this world are in 4/4, it's given its own distinguishing name of its own.
All of the other times are the ones that I focused on in my past two posts. These times (5/4, 7/8, 43/62, etc.) are classified as "complex" times. These are the very interesting ones that either require lots of practice from a musician working within its boundaries, or call upon a unique (and quite genius) beat or groove that allows both the musician and the listener to feel the time subconsciously.
Also, in response to a question, the Dave Brubeck Quartet released an album titled "Time Out", which was an album devoted to complex time signatures. In fact, "Time Out" is the album that contains the hit song "Take Five", which was the focus of my post with that respective title. A lot of credit goes to this album, it contains a lot of groundbreaking works that have changed the music industry as we know it. I would highly recommend listening to this album.
Hopefully this cleared up a bit of confusion about time signatures. Good luck with the listening! Be sure to keep looking for complex time signatures in songs you regularly listen to.
2 comments:
That did clear it up, thanks. And thanks for the name of the album.
After reading all your posts on complex time signatures, I think you might like to check something out called, math rock. I am a musician, having played French Horn for seven years, and bass for four. From what I gathered from your previous posts, you are talking about songs that are written in strange time signatures, but this time signature is constant throughout most of the song. Math rock is different. They use a mix of different time signatures in each song. The whole idea behind the music is to find a common beat throughout several time signatures, and make a rhythm that contains (usually) three or four alternating time signatures. The most common are 3/4 to 7/8 to 9/16 and 4/4 to 4/2 to 5/8 to 9/16. I have listened to a fair amount of math rock. For the most part, it isn't very good music(which is why I don't know the names of any bands), but as a musician, I can appreciate the complexity and ingenuity that goes into making a flowing beat across time signatures. If you want to check it out, check youtube. I am pretty sure I have seen some there.
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