The past few days I've hit one of my periods of discussing music. A lot of the music that really appeals to me tends to change time signatures a lot. This is not common in most popular music. It is common in things like Progressive Rock, Jazz, and Progressive Metal. I tend to talk about Prog bands quite a bit and I've recently encountered some amusing youtube videos that can actually help with explaining time signatures.

In music there is what is known as a measure. This is essentially a grouping of time. A Time signature specifies what type of NOTE in sheet music is to constitute a BEAT and how many of those should occur per measure.

The number on top when you see it as a fraction is the number of notes, and the number on bottom is the type of note that constitutes a beat.

1 = Whole Note, 2 = Half Note, 4 = Quarter Note, 8 = Eighth Note, 16 = Sixteenth note, 32 = a thirty second note, etc.

In the past it was common to have songs have pretty different time signatures for each song. This was fairly common in classical music as well.

Rock and Roll and Blues

These styles of music tended to focus on 4/4 time. This means four quarter note beats per measure. In fact, you'll find songs that talk about this. It is really easy to dance to, easy for the crowd to learn, and also easy for those not musically inclined to get into. It is also typically a lot easier to perform if you only have to stick with a well known time signature.

See what the Beatles have to say about it...

The lyrics in that talk about a back beat and basically most of the song is actually talking about the 4/4 time signature.

Changing Time Signatures

If you have or ever have the pleasure of jamming with people you'll quickly understand that changing time signatures mid-song increases the difficulty of performing that song significantly. It also can make the song difficult to dance to unless you are familiar with the song. If you know a song then you can dance to it (any song). 4/4 time made it so you didn't really need to know the song in order to dance to it. Most popular music sticks to 4/4 time.

Here is a good video on how to "speak" in odd time signatures...

Insane Progressive Metal Example

I am a big fan of watching Dream Theater. Watching them and listening to them perform melts my mind. As a musician, this is much like me STUDYING dancing and then going to a dance show to watch people that are vastly better than me.

Dream Theater LOVES to change time signatures VERY frequently, as well as keys. This is some of the most complex music I am aware of at this time. I want to show you a Dream Theater song as they perform it LIVE. I am then going to show you a video of a guy doing the same song ala beat boxing and using flash cards to show you the changing time signatures.

Dance of Eternity by Dream Theater Live Scenes From New York.