what is time sig?......

what does this mean in the time sig....4/4...or5/4 or 13/8 ...32/32 etc.
what would be the best way to take advantage of this....

4/16 - 4 beats, 16 bars
4/4 - 4 beats, 4 bars, AKA Common Time Signature

Think of the bar as that black thing that looks like, well, a bar, in sheet music. It is called a bar

Say you were making house music (yuck, I know .. but just for example purposes). Of course your main drum would be the kick. In 4/4, the kick would go:

kick ... kick ... kick ... kick ... (next bar)
kick ... kick ... kick ... kick ... (next bar)
kick ... kick ... kick ... kick ... (next bar)
kick ... kick ... kick ... kick ... (back to start)

4 beats, 4 bars. And in 4/16, it would repeat 16 times the go back to the beginning.

In 3/4, however, it goes
kick ... kick ... kick ...(next bar)
kick ... kick ... kick ...(next bar)
kick ... kick ... kick ...(next bar)
kick ... kick ... kick ...(back to start)

3 beats .. 4 bars.

This of course would not match with ANY other house records that were trying to be mixed in, if you were at a DJ gig. 3/4 is waltzy .. like:
dooo dee dee
dooo dee dee
dooo dee dee
dooo dee dee

or if it helps, say the number of the note.
1 2 3
1 2 3
1 2 3
1 2 3

and Polka is 2/4
1 2
1 2
1 2
1 2

A semi popular song that is 3/4 is the christmas song 'Carol of the Bells'. I tried remixing it to DnB and learned the different time signatures REAL quick when it wasn't in sync with the drums. It would start off OK of course, but then the solos and the chorus would hit WAY off from when the drums broke down, etc, because the drums had that extra beat in there.

If you're just doing pop music (not what is misconstrued as pop, but stuff that is popular .. hiphop,rnb,dnb) I'd suggest stickin to 4/x unless you're going to do a bit of experimenting (or youre doing Waltz or Polka hah) ... 4/1 if you just want a quick drum loop, 4/2 if you want a little more, etc.

Here are some other time signatures (jacked from http://www.musicarrangers.com/star-theo ... =time&p=19):

3/2 (slowly) - Religious music .. stuff sang in Church
2/4 (fast) - Polka
3/4 (any) - Waltz, Minuet
4/4 (any) - Common .. pretty much anything
2/2 (semi fast) - Swing, some Jazz
3/8 (uber fast) - Traditional Latin
12/8 (slow) - Ballads
7/8 (any) - Greek

As for me, I'm getting back to my jump-up darkcore polka track. Hope this helps

bk

Your explanation is not correct. 4/4 does NOT mean 4 beats, 4 bars. A time signature tells you nothing about the amount of bars, but tells you which notes (and how many of them) are grouped together to form one measure (one bar).

The top number of a time signature tells you how many beats are in each measure (bar). The bottom number tells you which note receives one beat (one count). In 4/4 time, a quarter note gets one beat and you have four of them in each measure. So, a bar in 4/4 time contains four times a quarter note.

For example, the most basic rhythms in rock music are the ones played in eighth-note feel. This essentially means that the music is in 4/4 time, and that you play eighth notes on the closed hi-hats. Remember that 4/4 time means that a quarter note receives one beat (one count), so two eighth notes equals one beat (2 x 1/8 note = 1/4 note = 1 beat in 4/4 time), so each beat will contain two successive closed hi-hat hits. The snare comes on beat two and four, and the bass drum (kick) plays most of the time eighth-note patterns. The easiest way to count such a rhythmn is: "1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &" (for each bar).

It should not be difficult to understand that if the given time signature is 4/4 and the given tempo (the "BPM", Beats Per Minute) is 120 (i.e. the default tempo of the MPC which you can change of course), that this number "120" refers to how many beats per minute you play the quarter note.

I got 0wned .. you are right. I can't believe I was mistaken all this time Sorry for the misinfo.

if yall wanna hear a hip hop beat with a 3/4 time sig, check out my soundclick site, and peep "Beautiful Asia".

I was about to say after you wrote all that aoism I would of felt bad to tell you your wrong, good thing someone else did.

yeah i wondered aoism was on about too....

greg

4/4 in conventional music notation means 4 beats to a bar and evey quarter note gets one beat.

The MPC doesn't think of it this way. anyone program on an 808? It has a step sequencer. There are 16 steps in a bar on those drum machines. If you broke down the conventional 4/4 it equals 16 16th notes per bar. Beat One is comprised of step 1-4 equalling one beat or one quarter note
Beat 2 is comprised of step 5-8
Beat 3 of step 9-12 ect. you get the idea.

I find programing the beats in with the tsig: 16/16 (traditionaly 4/4) is easier because when you edit your beats in step edit mode you can scroll through the bar with the step button.

For instance lets say you have an 8 bar loop but your beat starts with a pick-up, or an orch stab or whatever and then gets into the beat. You could make the 1st bar 4/16, then the 2nd to 8th bars 16/18 and the 9th bar 12/16, so that the 1st and last bar equal a bar and you get an even 8 bar loop. This works great for cutting and pasting that pick up that may repeat in the course of your tune.

hope this helps. I learned on an 808 and it makes sense to me to program with a bar at 16/16. Then I add the swing feature which is dope (not literally). I knew there was something weird with that tsig: cause no conventional music transcriber would ever write 16/16. If you reduce the fraction it still equals one.

ST