Time Signatures: 3/4 compared to 6/8 ... or something else?

[ozboomer]

HidyHo folks... Yass, he's back again with another curly one...

I was listening to a tune I'd like to record... and upon listening to it more critically, it was obvious that it was some sort of '3-based' beat -- "ONE-and-a ... TWO-and-a..." ...but upon doing some research on this, I found this is something actually pretty complicated..

It could be 'simple' 3/4; it could be 'compound' 6/8; it could be a triplet in 4/4 time... or a few other options (arithmetically). If you listen to the music and all you hear (with, perhaps, an uneducated ear) is 'bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang...', with no accent, lilt or anything else sonically (with timbre, let's say) to differentiate each 'bang', the notation/rhythm/meter could be any of the options... I think.

IF! you hear "ONE... TWO... THREE...", you'd probably take it as 3/4; if you hear "ONE-and-a... TWO-and-a..", you'd maybe take it as 6/8, maybe getting cues from a kick drum, say (or other form of accent)... Maybe phrasing/rhythm has an effect... but ultimately, I think it's more about how the listener interprets it rather than something 'absolute'... Maybe.

The music I'm listening to that started all this:-



I've read things explaining that 3/4 time means the 'beat' is a quarter note (which is all I ever learnt - bottom=note 'duration', top=number of said 'note durations' per bar)... but (apparently) 6/8 time does NOT have a 'beat' of an eighth note; rather, it has a 'beat' of a 'dotted quarter note'... (Wot!?)

Other than for notation issues... and probably, playability... what difference does it make... to the listener?... to someone transcribing the tune? How would YOU determine the 'time signature' from listening to the above tune? For me, the rhythm as well as the phrasing points me more to 6/8 than 3/4 (or something more exotic)... but how could you say I'm wrong?... or I could say someone else's interpretation is 'wrong'?

...or maybe all of this is just a question of semantics... and if someone is playing/transcribing purely by ear, maybe it doesn't really matter..!?

The mind boggles...  as usual...

[reTrEaD]

Great subject, Oz!

Dec 20, 2020 5:48:17 GMT -5 ozboomer said:

I've read things explaining that 3/4 time means the 'beat' is a quarter note (which is all I ever learnt - bottom=note 'duration', top=number of said 'note durations' per bar)... but (apparently) 6/8 time does NOT have a 'beat' of an eighth note; rather, it has a 'beat' of a 'dotted quarter note'... (Wot!?)

This would be an appropriate time to introduce the term: Compound Meter.

Here's an example of a well-known song in 12/8 time:



While you could think of this with each eighth note being a beat, the tempo would be rather brisk at over 180 beats per minute.

If we assign four beats per measure (slightly over 60 bpm), then sub-divide each beat to three eighth notes that makes the notation simple, without the need for writing 3 over each group of three eight notes like this:


Here's a link to the sheet music for Norwegian Wood.

---

We often think of 3/4 time as being light and breezy:



But that isn't always the case. In fact the song in the video you posted was written in 3/4 time.

Theme from 'The Persuaders" -- John Barry

Does that mean you're wrong to conceptualize it in 6/8 time? Nope! But the author did use 3/4 time when he wrote it out.

[ozboomer]

A recently posted video that explains things pretty well for mine:-



So, as I was alluding to with my 'rhythm' comment... and as reTrEaD suggested with the comment about 'grouping', it's more often than not the 'lilt' or 'swing'-type feel that pushes us towards '6/8'... and with the sort-of 'shuffly'-bit at the end of each phrase in The Persuaders Theme, I think that's what got me thinking it sounded like it was in '6/8'.

...but I found the tempo 'component' interesting..

As far as the 'quiz' in the video is concerned, I picked 7/10 correctly... I'd be keen to know how some other folks did with it

[JohnH]

Nice to hear The Persuaders theme again, I used to watch it when it was new. Roger Moore and Tony Curtis.

On the theme track, I find I count to 6 within each pattern, but I don't know what that implies in terms of correctly calling it.

[unreg]

Dec 20, 2020 5:48:17 GMT -5 ozboomer said:

If you listen to the music and all you hear (with, perhaps, an uneducated ear) is 'bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang...', with no accent, lilt or anything else sonically (with timbre, let's say) to differentiate each 'bang', the notation/rhythm/meter could be any of the options... I think.

IF! you hear "ONE... TWO... THREE...", you'd probably take it as 3/4; if you hear "ONE-and-a... TWO-and-a..", you'd maybe take it as 6/8, maybe getting cues from a kick drum, say (or other form of accent)... Maybe phrasing/rhythm has an effect... but ultimately, I think it's more about how the listener interprets it rather than something 'absolute'... Maybe.

hi ozboomer, while listening to that interesting song, I couldn’t “hear” the beat, but my head let me hear a simple 3/4 beat. As reTrEaD said, you are free to interpret it in 6/8.

When writing sheet music, usually the smallest time signature is preferred bc smaller time signatures make the compatible music easier to write, as reTrEaD pointed out. Remember that a 3/4 song may be composed of 16th notes… so an audible beat is not a good way to make a time signature. It’s all about what would make the music most simplest to write.