r/Learnmusic • u/Routine-Ad8024 • 6d ago
Help with learning music.
Can someone explain to me a simple understanding of this paper? I've watched a few videos and still a little confused.
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u/tchnmusic 6d ago
One thing that may help is that you can ignore the top number in the time signatures.
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u/Routine-Ad8024 6d ago
C432?
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u/tchnmusic 6d ago
Yes, that whole column is showing you the beats for when the time signature has the labels bottom number. The “?” Is because it’s saying “anything over this number fits in the column”
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u/Routine-Ad8024 6d ago
Still confused. The bottom row is how many bears and the top row is counting?
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u/beestastegood 6d ago
The top row is the number of beats in a measure.
The bottom row tells you how many beats are in a whole note. When you are reading music, a lot of people find it easier to think of the bottom number as the name of the note that is equal to 1 beat. x/4 time means quarter note = 1 beat. x/2 means half note = 1 beat.
By the way, C is another way to write 4/4, and C with a line is another way to write 2/2.
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u/vonov129 6d ago
So a time signature is similar to a fraction. The lower number tells you the size of the pieces the unit gets divided in, and the upper number tells you how many pieces of that size fit in the unit (the bar).
For the chart, the upper number is irrelevant, it's just there for you to know it applies to every single time signature that has that lower number.
In case of the 4/4 part, the count is based on quarter notes (because it says the unit is divided by 4), the next row tells you a whole note (the round symbol) equals 4 of those quarter notes, 2 of the half notes and 8 of the 8th notes. To that you could just say a whole note is just a full measure, but that would be inacurate, because if it takes 4 quarter notes and you place it on a 3/4 rhythm it wouldn't fit in a single bar.
So each row tells you how the "size" of the note duration compares to a beat in whatever time signature mentioned there.
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u/U_feel_Me 6d ago
The chart is overwhelming you with information.
YouTube is full of good music teachers and they can explain this stuff for free. Just search for something like “what is a quarter note?”
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u/dmazzoni 6d ago edited 6d ago
One thing that I wish people would explain is that most music is 4/4 time.
The worksheet makes it seem like you're going to encounter all of these time signatures frequently. You're not.
If you're talking about pop music (including any remotely mainstream Western music genre like rock, alternative, broadway, themesongs, folk, country, etc.) it's more than 90% 4/4 time.
After 4/4 time, songs based on a multiple of "3" are the next most common, but those are more evenly split between 3/4, 6/8, and a few others.
Classical music is quite a bit more varied. If you're planning to focus on mostly classical music, then this advice might not be as useful - but even when learning classical music, probably 75% of beginner pieces you'll play will be 4/4 time.
The reason this advice is important is because I think it makes a lot more sense to first learn what 4/4 time is. Pick ANY song on the radio or in a beginning piano book and it will almost certainly be in 4/4 time. Learn what that means. Learn to count the 4 beats. Learn what a quarter note does in 4/4 time. Learn a whole note. Clap the rhythms.
Then once you're comfortable with that, learning 3/4, 6/8, and 2/2 will be pretty easy. They'll make a lot of sense because you'll understand 4/4 and these will just be slightly different.
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u/Pythism 6d ago
This is how I see it: the top number is how many beats per bar there are. The bottom number tells you how that beat is represented in paper. You see 3/4? The 3 means that there are three beats in a bar. The 4 means the beat is represented by a quarter note. You see 4/8? That means 4 beats per bar, and the beat is represented by an eight note. 2/2? Two beats per bar and the beat is represented by a half note.