Episode 6: Simple and Compound Meter

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Hello and welcome back to the Music Theory Blog! Today's long awaited episode is about the difference between Simple and Compound Meter. I am here to help you along with understanding the material better by showing examples of what I am explaining and we'll see if this makes it better to understand!

 Now first, for those who are new comers, you must understand what the time signature is. The Time Signature is the symbol that shows musicians how many notes are in a measure and what note value gets the beat. For Example, 4/4 time means there are 4 notes in a measure that a quarter note gets the beat. If you need more help with understanding this, refer back to episode 4.

In order to understand why the two types of time signatures are important, you must understand what they are. A Simple Meter is a meter that's time signature breaks down into two parts. For example, you can divide a whole note into two half notes, a half note into two quarter notes, and so on. This is what most music is written as, which are 4/4, 3/4, and 2/4. Any variation of the signature will work, for example you can say 2/8, 3/2, or 2.16 as long as the measure breaks down into two parts anything is possible. Here is an example of a piece that is in 4/4, "Prelude" from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1. Some other examples of music you might see with a simple meter is Common Time and Cut Time. Common time () is simply another way to write out 4/4 and Cut time () is a simpler way to write 2/2.

Now, the difference from a simple meter to a compound meter is a Compound Meter divides the beat into 3 parts rather than 2. For example a commonly seen compound meter you may rn into is 6/8. There are 6 beats in a measure but most of the time it is felt in two parts and is conducted the same. The most common types of compound meter are 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 but changing the lower number would work the same. Here is an audible example of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" which is written in 9/8.

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Episode Recap 1: Episodes 1-5 Part 1

Hello and welcome back! Now before I begin the recap let's go over a few things. 1st off, you may have noticed the button above me. Finances are really low, especially if you want more reviews so please donate anything you feel comfortable donating to me. I am wanting to do more reviews and if you want to see more, then any money is good money! With that said, I promise I WILL NOT go crazy with the button! The only time I will post it is on general recaps (like such), and reviews. I want to provide everyone with a few service to learn music theory, tricks from professionals, and reviews so you aren't wasting your money on pointless or terrible stuff for your instruments (and yes, I have used some terrible stuff, and amazing stuff so I know what's good and what's not).

With that out of the way, I bet you're wondering "What's an 'Episode Recap'?". I feel after so many episodes on all my topics, I will post one giant summery for you on what is in that section. For today, this episode recap is on episodes 1-5, which are:

-Episode 1: Musical Alphabet and Note Values

-Episode 2: Sharps and Flats

-Episode 3: Treble and Bass Clef

-Episode 4: Defining the Signatures

-Episode 5: Dynamic Contrast

Now how this is going to work is like a review over the selections, and explain some harder to explain things.

Episode 1:

This was a presentation-Only entry so most people didn't read this entry, so I will count this as the actual lesson. There are two main elements when reading music: a Note and a Tone. A note is the visual representation of a sound (♪). The actual sound that goes with it is the tone. We could say that the note is an A, or a C but we don't see that when we are watching a group play: We hear the tones of the chord(s) the person or people playing make but we don't see the (♪) in front of us unless you brought sheet music with you.

When you link them together in any pattern going up or down until you repeat the first note, you get a Scale. There is no simple number of notes in a scale, because there are so many different types of scales. However, there is a "Western" standard of scales, which has 8 tones in a repeating pattern. I will discuss this more later on in the episode review. 

Now we have to discuss the Musical Alphabet. This is the way musicians learn their notes, and it is always repeating: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. 

A standard Octave or simply the "Western" style of 8 note scales, is the repetition of one note. For example take a C scale. If we wrote it out we would have C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. The bold C is an octave higher than the one we started on. This works out on the entire musical alphabet.

Now, we talk about basic note values. They work the same was as fractions, which is they break down and are seen as fractions, like for example ♪ is an eighth note while ♫ is two eighth notes or a quarter note. The way the notes flow is demonstrated in the following picture:

The top note is a whole note, and it breaks down into two half notes. each half note breaks down into two quarter notes and so on all the way down the line. This is the proper way to subdivide notes. Now we must figure out how this fits into a staff. A Staff is a bar with 5 lines and 4 spaces that fit together and are split to make Measures. This will be further explained in a later chapter.

Episode 2:

Going back to notes on a staff, you can have either Sharps, Flats, or Naturals. Naturals are notes that haven't been altered and these are the white keys on a piano. Then if you take that note and go up a half step (going from a white key UP to a black key) your going from a natural to a sharp. When you go down a half step (going from a white key DOWN to a black key) your going from a natural to a flat. *Editor's Note* I just realized there was a glitch in the episode, and I fixed it so it's legible.

Episode 3:

There are 2 major clefts to playing most instruments. You have Treble, or the G cleft, which is the higher side and you have the Bass, or the F cleft, uses the lower side. Back to the discussion on scales. The "western" or non-asian countries use a standard for scales which goes with the "standard" of 8 notes that repeat at the base note but at a distance of an octave. For example: C Major is C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C.

How to Practice: Episode 2 - Using YouTube and Recordings

Welcome Bach everyone! Today's tip of the day is on how to use YouTube and other forms of recording to your advantage. Teachers will not normally agree with this tip because watching the video too many times may go against what he or she is trying to teach. For example, search "Bach Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude" and look at how many results you get. Think about how many variants there are in each performance, because no two people will play it the exact same. However if you use this the way I believe is the best way to do, you will increase efficiency in your practicing.

YouTube has now become a world wide business for almost anything you want to see. You can go on there and search for videos on the "Traxxas Rustler" and find several thousand videos (When searched on 5/23/12, I found 13,900!), and as stated above if you search for "Bach Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude" you will find a large number of people preforming it (On 5/23/12 there was 4,720). Keywords does make a difference, however that's a topic for the end of the lesson. Anyways, as I said, when you search for Bach's Prelude from Suite No. 1, you see there are almost 5,000 performances of that song alone, and rarely does the same video get re-posted, so the overall possibilities are varied greatly. One person could begin with the first phrase (the phrase almost everyone recognizes when someone starts playing) very well, but make a small mistake in the second phrase. Then take another video and that person might play it very well throughout, but not stick to the stylistics perfectly throughout. There are many possible differences, and that is the 1st reason why this is a good way to practice: Find a couple recordings that suit either how you imagine the piece to sound or how your teacher thinks it should sound and begin listening to them constantly.

The more you listen to a piece, the more familiar you feel when you see the sheet music. Just picking up the sheet music, you can see how "insane" it looks, or how much of a push in mental and physical level that the piece will push you but unless you already know the piece the sheet music will look a little foreign. It's like when you go to a new school: You can see from the outside of the building that there are few classes, or many classes in the building. You can also tell when you get inside the same thing, but you see more than you did before, but until you actually walk around the school and see for yourself where everything is and know where you should be, the place is pretty much foreign territory to you. The same applies to music. You hear Prelude and you hear that there is a lot going on, but the melody is pretty straight forward. When you get the sheet music however, you see that there is a whole lot more to the sheet music than you anticipated (most people don't know that the piece is almost entirely 16th notes). But just from hearing you know that it is fairly simple to learn.

Another advantage of this tip is when you see some people playing the music, it helps develop fingerings and articulations you may or may not have thought about using before. For example, watch someone preform the Haydn Cello Concerto No. 1, and see how many possible fingerings there are for some of the actual performance. Same rule applies to articulations, if someone wasn't aware that Haydn was from the Classical time period and thought he was from the Baroque era, the articulations of his music would be entirely different. However, by listening to the music you can tell that he wasn't from the Baroque era.

Remember that this is no substitute for practicing, this is simply a tool to make practicing easier, and more efficient.