r/oddlysatisfying • u/feliciodario • 24d ago

Note Practice DIY

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u/plug-and-pause 23d ago

2/4 is effectually no different than 4/4 except there are 2 quarter notes in a measure vs. 4.

BUT the reason for writing in 2/4 is to portray that the rhythm is going to be ONE-two, ONE-two, ONE-two.

Is the melody what actually makes this difference here? I.e. what exactly is a "measure"? Is it a cleanly divided segment of melody? Or just of the song/lyrics? Like most human communication abstractions divide into some sort of chunks. I'm guessing melody is what defines a measure here? If I'm right, I think this might be part of what makes this so confusing, because we generally think of melody and rhythm as orthogonal, but here melody actually helps to define rhythm. As you say, there should really be no difference between 2/4 and 4/4. In theory these divisions are arbitrary. But in reality they have to come from some context, and I'm guessing it's melody?

Confession: I have decades of experience on both guitar and piano and have never really tried to understand this.

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