4 ms·

That always did my head in and still does. Ok, so each bar has 6 notes and they're eighth notes. But there are only 6 of them, so why are they specified as an 8

That always did my head in and still does. Ok, so each bar has 6 notes and they're eighth notes. But there are only 6 of them, so why are they specified as an 8th note? They're sixth notes by definition surely? I'm with the crowd that 3/4 should be correctly written as 3/3 even though we were told that was a misnomer in school.

UncleMeat 3y ago
It isn't a fraction. The bottom number just refers to the size of a beat, with the added convention that certain time signatures imply a hidden 3x on the size of a beat. 6/8 has two beats of three eighth notes in a measure. It is just an idiom.
- taylodl 3y ago
  People are worried about pitch and melody notation while a lot of people don't understand rhythm specifications!
- navane 3y ago
  Technically its still a faction. It also says each whole bar has the duration of 3/4 note.
mathw 3y ago
No, they're eighth notes because there are eight of them in a whole note. In the UK we call them quavers, so we don't have this misconception. The time signatures are the same though - fortunately. They have to be represented somehow, although I'm sure we could do it better than we are it does the job. 3/4 is definitely meant to be 3/4, as it tells you are three beats in the bar, and those beats are represented by crotchets/quarter notes. They're not quarter notes because they're a quarter of the bar, but because you need four of them to make up the duration of a whole note. You can just as happily have a piece in 3/2, or 3/1, or 3/8, although in most genres all of those would imply different things about exactly how the rhythmic emphasis works. I do think we could do better around compound times like 6/8 and 9/8 vs simple times like 3/4 and 4/2, but we seem to manage okay. You do need genre knowledge to read music correctly, there's just no getting away from that. Any system which is capable of recording every nuance required would be unreadably dense. Although we have sound recording now, lucky us, so we can just use that...
navane 3y ago
If it says 6/8, it means the bar has a duration of 6/8th note. To play that, you play six 8th notes in a bar. Eight 8th notes have the duration of a whole note, so six of them fit in a bar.
- partomniscient 3y ago
  Yeah, but to me it makes as much sense as measuring everything in 3/4 of an apple. How many per grouping(/bar) is what is important, not conformance to some symoblic notation in which 4/4 is much more popular and recognisable and forcing it into other less easily divisible circumstances. I agree with those carrying on about rhythmic importance over time signature notational importance. da-da-da-da-da-da. Everything is relative to everything else, and not to some explicit concept of an 'eigth note'.

UncleMeat 3y ago

It isn't a fraction. The bottom number just refers to the size of a beat, with the added convention that certain time signatures imply a hidden 3x on the size of a beat. 6/8 has two beats of three eighth notes in a measure. It is just an idiom.

taylodl 3y ago
People are worried about pitch and melody notation while a lot of people don't understand rhythm specifications!
navane 3y ago
Technically its still a faction. It also says each whole bar has the duration of 3/4 note.

mathw 3y ago

No, they're eighth notes because there are eight of them in a whole note. In the UK we call them quavers, so we don't have this misconception. The time signatures are the same though - fortunately. They have to be represented somehow, although I'm sure we could do it better than we are it does the job. 3/4 is definitely meant to be 3/4, as it tells you are three beats in the bar, and those beats are represented by crotchets/quarter notes. They're not quarter notes because they're a quarter of the bar, but because you need four of them to make up the duration of a whole note. You can just as happily have a piece in 3/2, or 3/1, or 3/8, although in most genres all of those would imply different things about exactly how the rhythmic emphasis works. I do think we could do better around compound times like 6/8 and 9/8 vs simple times like 3/4 and 4/2, but we seem to manage okay. You do need genre knowledge to read music correctly, there's just no getting away from that. Any system which is capable of recording every nuance required would be unreadably dense. Although we have sound recording now, lucky us, so we can just use that...

navane 3y ago

If it says 6/8, it means the bar has a duration of 6/8th note. To play that, you play six 8th notes in a bar. Eight 8th notes have the duration of a whole note, so six of them fit in a bar.

partomniscient 3y ago
Yeah, but to me it makes as much sense as measuring everything in 3/4 of an apple. How many per grouping(/bar) is what is important, not conformance to some symoblic notation in which 4/4 is much more popular and recognisable and forcing it into other less easily divisible circumstances. I agree with those carrying on about rhythmic importance over time signature notational importance. da-da-da-da-da-da. Everything is relative to everything else, and not to some explicit concept of an 'eigth note'.