Amelia from Georgia asks, "What do time signatures in music mean?"

Great question, Amelia. I'm going to give you a little more info than you asked for; I'm going to give an answer to your question, and then I'm going to give you some examples of some unusual time signatures in musical compositions.

A time signature is a pair of numbers that you'll see, always at the beginning of a piece of sheet music, and sometimes in the middle of the sheet music as well, since some musical compositions have more than one time signature. Here's an example of a fairly common time signature in the picture to the left.

What exactly do these numbers mean? Well, the bottom number means that a quarter note gets a beat, and there are three beats in a measure. That may or may not help you understand, depending on what music terminology you understand, so let's break that down a bit.

A Beat is the basic unit of time in music. It's like the pulse, or the heartbeat, of a piece of music. If you're clapping along with a piece of music, then there's a good chance you're clapping on the beats. If you're tapping your feet, you're doing the same. If you hear a band playing, and they start off by saying, "1 2 3 4" before they start playing, that counting is helping to set the heartbeat of the music. If you're listening to a drummer, you'll probably hear drum strikes that aren't on the beat, but you'll definitely hear the kick and the snare on the beats. The underlying pattern in most songs is kick-snare-kick-snare over and over again (with other things mixed in). that kick-snare pattern is what sets your toes tapping.

A Measure can be thought of as another unit of time in music; a measure is a set or group of beats. In most music, every measure has the same number of beats, and the first beat in a group gets more emphasis than the others. Sometimes a beat in the middle of the measure will get some emphasis as well. Going back to our example of the kick-snare-kick-snare, that bass drum kick is the emphasis (you could think of it as KICK-snare-Kick-snare/KICK-snare-Kick-snare/etc.), and it repeats over and over throughout the song. In music, measures are defined by a vertical bar right through the middle of the musical staff, like this:

You can see those vertical lines before the words "world," "Lord," "come" and the second syllable of "receive." Those lines mark of groups of beats. And if you were to sing this song aloud, you would realize that the words (or syllables) immediately following those vertical lines are the ones that receive the stress or accent.

We have one more thing we need to explain in order to fully understand a time signature...note names. Take a look at the chart below:

In this chart, the notes, from left to right, are: "whole note," "half note," "quarter note," "eighth note," and "sixteenth note." Why are they called those? Because in the most common time signature (4/4 time), a whole note takes up a WHOLE measure, a half note is HALF of a measure, and a quarter note is one QUARTER of the measure. Of course, if you're not in 4/4 time, that's not true, but the name has stuck. So if you see a 4 in the bottom of a time signature that means a quarter note gets one beat. If you see a 2 in the bottom of the time signature, that means a half note gets one beat. If you see an 8 in the bottom of the time signature, that means an eighth note gets one beat.

Okay, with all of that behind us, let's go back to the original example of 3/4 time. The three means that there are three beats in a measure, and the four means that a quarter note gets a beat. So if you were clapping this one, you would do "CLAP-clap-clap-CLAP-clap-clap," and each "big" clap is the beginning of a new measure. If you were playing the drums, you might play "KICK-snare-snare-KICK-snare-snare."

Interesting Time Signatures

The majority of music you'll listen to is written in 4/4 time (four beats per measure, a quarter note gets a beat). Some will be 3/4 (which is often referred to as a waltz), or 6/8 time (six beats per measure, an eighth note gets a beat - this is the common meter for Irish jigs). Once in awhile you'll hear something that's a bit different.and I've selected a few that you can listen to on youtube.

Of the Father's Love Begotten - since I've already brought up a Christmas song, here's another - an old old Christmas hymn. If you look at sheet music for this one, you'll likely find that the publisher hasn't even bothered trying to put a time signature on it, and has more-or-less given up on doing measure markings; the measure markings are actually just phrase markings, and every phrase is a different length. The link I've provided has no singing, but does show the sheet music.

Waltz from Tchaikovsky Symphony #6 - This one is called a waltz, but it is not in the normal 3/4 time; it's in 5/4 time instead. This means that it has 5 beats in a measure, which gives it a slightly off-kilter feeling because our brains aren't used to processing that kind of rhythm. It's a beautiful, elegant piece of music.

Finale from Stravinsky's Firebird Suite - My introduction to this piece of music was in high school when I participated in the All-State music festival. In the linked video, the section in an unusual time signature starts at 2:00, but it's interesting to listen to the lead-in to that, so it's worth listening to the whole video. The unusual time signature is 7/4 time. I remember looking at the sheet music and thinking, "What in the world?" because every measure was subdivided into groups of 3 beats and 4 beats - presumably to help us get the count right! 

The Dargason from Holst's Saint Paul Suite - This one I played in university orchestra, and oh, was it fun! What makes this piece so unusual is that there are two melodies going on simultaneously, and they are in different time signatures. One melody is "Greensleeves," which is in 3/4 time, and the other is a jig, which is in 6/8 time. Now, as a mathematician, I notice that these two fractions - 3/4 and 6/8 are equivalent. This means that the measure marks fall in the same place for each melody, but what happens in the middle of the measure is quite different.

Here Comes the Sun - In general, the Beatles were notorious for shifting into unusual beat patterns. I've picked "Here Comes the Sun" as an example. You can feel the 4/4 beat through most of the song, but when they get to the bridge, everything seems to go haywire. I haven't looked at the sheet music for this one, but Wikipedia says that the bridge goes through the following rhythm structure: 11/8 + 4/4 + 7/8.

Second grader Phushisa from Thailand asks this question: "What is your favourite song?"

Thank you for asking that question, Phushisa! Normally I get asked questions about math, or about poetry, or science, and I don't usually get to talk about myself, so this is a fun question.

Before I begin, I should point out that there is a huge amount of music in this world, and I really love a lot of it, and listen to a lot of it, and it would be almost impossible to pick on single song. In fact, my favorite song varies from day to day and time to time, depending on my circumstances, my mood, etc.

So I'm not going to pick one single favorite. I hope that's okay.

Also, I'm going to stretch the definition of "song," because I'm a big fan of orchestral music - symphonies, concertos, and so forth. And no one calls those things "songs" - they call them "pieces" or "compositions" or (of course) "symphonies" and "concertos".

If I'm doing computer work, or preparing lessons for school, I don't really want my brain actively engaged in the music, so I will rarely listen to music with words. This is when I spend time listening to "classical" music. (I put the word "classical" in quotes because "classical" is an era of musical composition, but outside of the music education and performance community, people use the word "classical" to describe any orchestral or operatic music.)

Speaking of which, I'm not a fan of opera, just to get that settled.

So here are a couple of the pieces of orchestral music that I most love:

Tchaikovsky's Symphony #5
This is the one that I give as my standard answer when someone asks "What's your favorite symphony?" In general, I love anything by Peter Tchaikovsky, but this one tops the list for me. There are some absolutely beautiful, lyrical sections, and some sections that are full of drama and intensity. The last movement (section) keeps building and building, and just when you think it's almost done, it keeps building some more. If you'd like to hear it, there's a recording on YouTube of Leonard Bernstein conducting it. If you don't have time to listen to the whole thing, jump to the last five minutes, and watch how insanely excited Bernstein gets while conducting. It's worth a few minutes of your time.

Khatchaturian's Symphonic Poem #3
This thing is what I listen to when I feel like getting a little more modern. Aram Khatchaturian's music sometimes seems a bit discordant, and off-kilter, but for sheer power and drama, it's pretty amazing. This piece of music has an organ as one of the instruments, and the organist's fingers have to be flying across the console. I think it must be a very challenging piece for the entire orchestra, because I've listened to several recordings of it, and none of them sound at all like the others. My favorite is the Chandros recording, which can be found on YouTube as well. One commenter described the end of the piece as "insane, pure musical carnage," Good description.

If I'm not working, I'm more likely to want music with lyrics (singing), and there's so much music out there that rather than picking a favorite song, can I pick a favorite musician? I promise, it'll be interesting, because he's a musician most people I know haven't even haven't heard of. His name is...

Andrew Peterson
Peterson is what I would consider to be a real wordsmith. His use of language, metaphor, rhythm and rhyme ranges from elegant to almost comical, depending on what he's trying to say, and what he's trying to say is usually very thought provoking (even when he's funny). He's a master of slant rhymes and unexpected rhymes. I remember listening to one of his songs and hearing this line: "We've got Andy on the guitar 'cause I promised him Some Texas barbecue." And every time I heard that line, I felt like it was a pair of lines that rhymed, yet for the life of me I couldn't figure out why, because there are no rhyming words in there. Finally, I realized that the rhyme was the second syllable of "guitar" with the first syllable of "barbecue" ("tar" with "bar"). And I thought, "Who in the world comes up with something as crazy as that, and makes it work?"

And the answer is, obviously, "Andrew Peterson."

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you'll hear a song and really love it right off the bat, but gradually get tired of it? Peterson has the opposite effect on me; it usually takes me a few listens to really appreciate it musically and lyrically, but then it just keeps growing on me, and I don't tire of it easily.

Favorites? My wife says that one of her favorites from Peterson's most recent album is "Be Kind to Yourself," which Peterson wrote for his teenaged daughter (and then sang with her, which you can watch/listen to in the video linked).

From the same album, one of my favorites is "The Rain Keeps Falling," which is about finding both peace and hope for the future in the troubles of life. I'd also add this one, which has a similar theme: "The Sower's Song." If you listen to this one, pay attention to the percussion underlying the words. Usually the drummer gets to show his stuff during the pauses between lyrics (that's why they call them drum fills - because they fill the gaps between lines of words), but toward the end of this song there are some really interesting things happening with percussion that builds in intensity during the line of singing.

I hope you enjoy some of this music as much as I do!