Time signature symbols

In simple time — 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 — the top number is the number of beats in each bar and the bottom number is the note value of one beat: 4 for a quarter note, 2 for a half note, 8 for an eighth note.

Compound time works differently. In 6/8 the top number counts eighth notes, which are felt in groups of three: two beats in each bar, each a dotted quarter. Unlike the key signature, the time signature is printed only at the start and wherever it changes.

The beats have a pattern of weight: the first is strongest, the third slightly strong, the second and fourth weaker. In pop and rock the drummer's snare often answers that pattern by hitting beats 2 and 4, the backbeat.

It is common enough to have its own symbol, common time.

Counting 1-2-3 with the weight on 1 gives 3/4 its lilt. A dotted half note fills a whole bar.

3/4 and 6/8 both hold six eighth notes per bar, but group them differently — three beats of two against two beats of three — and they sound different. That difference is why both exist.

Although the top number is 6, 6/8 is usually counted in two. Each beat is a dotted quarter note, divided into three eighth notes: count it 1-and-a, 2-and-a. Jigs, many lullabies and a great deal of folk music are in 6/8, and 12/8 is the same idea with four beats.

At very slow tempos players sometimes count all six eighths, but the bar is still heard as two groups of three — which is what separates it from 3/4.

It comes from medieval notation, in which a full circle and a broken circle described different divisions of time. Despite the name, the modern C did not start as an abbreviation of 'common'.

Music in common time is read exactly as 4/4.

A bar holds as much music as a bar of 4/4, but the beat is the half note, so the music is felt in two. It is common in marches and in fast music where counting four would be fussy.

¢ asks you to feel longer, lighter pulses. It does not by itself mean 'play twice as fast'.