From the course: Learning Music Notation

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Time signatures II

Time signatures II

From the course: Learning Music Notation

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Time signatures II

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- [Narrator] In our first conversation about time signatures, we focused on the most common, all of which featured the quarter note as the primary beat. Let's take a look at some other common time signatures and discuss the difference simple and compound time. So in our discussion of 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4, we saw that they're so commonplace and that they're found in all musical styles from classical to heavy metal music. And there are several other common time signatures that instead use the eighth note as the beat. For example, 3/8. We get three beats per measure and the eighth note equals one beat. So if there's a quarter note in 3/8, it would be worth two beats. In 6/8, we have six beats per measure and the eighth note gets the beat. And in 12/8, we get 12 beats per measure and the eighth note gets the beat. So in this example, I've notated something in 2/4 and 6/8 to make a comparison. So if you were to count this top example, we would be thinking of an eighth note as a subdivision…

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