Time Signatures

In the diagrams on the Counting Notes page there are two measures of 4/4 music using the treble clef music staff. OK, now lets explain what all that means.

There are two clefs in music notation that are most common, bass and treble clef. They are pretty much meaningless for drum music, but for melodic instruments it is very important. This is beyond the scope of these lessons, but it is important to know that there are two distinct musical clefs.

The time signature is what tells you the length of notes and rests and how many are to be played within one measure, which are indicated by the bar on the music staff.

Lets take a look at 4/4 time signature and figure out what it means. The top number indicates how many beats are in a single measure. The bottom number indicates the length of the notes being used. So, there will be 4 quarter notes in a single measure. How'd we know that the bottom 4 represented a quarter note? Think of it like this, if you replace the top 4 with a 1 you now have a fraction that is equal to one forth of something...or a quarter. Same thing if you replace the bottom 4 with 8, you now have a fraction that is equal to one eighth of something...or an eighth. Make sense? I hope so!

The examples below show the number of notes needed to fill a single measure of music


4/4 time
# 1 whole
# 2 half
# 4 quarter
# 8 eighth
# 16 sixteenth
3/4 time
#1 half + 1 quarter
# 3 quarter
# 6 eighth
# 12 sixteenth
5/4 time
# 1 whole + 1 quarter
# 2 half + 1 quarter
# 5 quarter
# 10 eighth
# 20 sixteenth
7/8 time
# 1 half + 1 quarter + 1 eighth
# 3 quarter + 1 eighth
# 7 eighth
# 14 sixteenth