Hey you guys and welcome back to The Singing Studio. Today’s a theory factory episode and I’m so excited! In order to understand more about rhythm and beat and the rhythm values we need to understand the difference between different meters. Meter is basically just how the rhythm is broken up or how the beat is broken up. So let me give you an example. There are two types of meter: simple meter and compound meter. Simple meter breaks down the beat into two and compound meter breaks the beat into three. If we had two beats, one two, and we were supposed to break it down into a simple meter, two beats would sound like this: “one and two and”. If it was in compound meter, meaning we split each beat into three, this is what it would sound like: “one and uh two and uh”. The way I remember the difference is that compound meter has that waltzy dance type of rhythm. You can hear that waltz rhythm and simple meter is pretty simple. So for today’s video and what we’re going to be focusing on from here on out is mainly simple meter: breaking that beat just into two. So again, a simple meter means we’re breaking it into two and a compound meter means we are breaking it into three. We are going to be focusing on simple meter.
When we’re looking at music, you will see a lot of lines with lots of notes and then you’ll see these bar lines that go up and down that look like it separates out different sets of notes. Here is an example of that. These sets of notes or sets that you see on each line are called measures or bars. So measures are able to separate all of the beats because each measure is going to get a specific number of beats. We’re going to talk a little bit about how we can identify how many beats per measure we are supposed to be counting.
In order to know how many beats per measure there are, we need to look at the time signature. The time signature tells us how many beats per measure. Again we’re only focusing on simple meter examples where we break the beat into two. So a time signature tells us how many beats per measure and that top number will tell us. It kind of looks like a fraction, but don’t worry! We’re not doing any sort of crazy math or anything. So here are a few different time signatures that we will look at. 2/4: That means there’s two beats in a measure. ¾: That means that there are three beats in a measure. 4/4: That means that there are four beats in a measure. So if we were going to look at music the first thing we would want to look at is the time signature because the time signature is going to help us so that we can know how to properly clap and count the rhythms in each measure.
Now we know what a time signature is which tells us how many beats are in a measure. We know what a measure is and those are separated by bar lines. Within each measure are our beats and we also know all the different rhythm values. So putting it all together, how do we do this? How do we clap and count our music? Well let’s try a couple examples together!
Okay we’re going to look at our first example. The first thing I do is I look at our time signature and that is right here. So how many beats in a measure are we going to be counting? Three. That’s right. So we’re just going to do these two measures. This is a measure and this is a measure and they are separated by these bar lines. Awesome. So let’s go ahead and clap and count the first measure together. One and two and three and. So it will go (clapping): one and two and three and. Now let’s look at our second measure. Now remember when we move on to a new measure this bar line resets it back to back to one. So after we go “one and two and three and”, we’re resetting to our next set of beats. This is a half note. This is a quarter note. Let’s go ahead and count it. This is what’s going to sound counting and clapping: one and two and three and. So remember this gets two beats and this gets one beat. Let’s move on to our next example.
Okay here is our next example. Again, we’re going to look at that time signature that’s right there. How many beats are in each measure? That’s right. Four. Then we’ve got two measures and they’re separated by these bar lines. Remember when we hit the bar line we reset back to beat one. So if we have four beats in the measure, let’s go ahead clap and count, but I’m just going to tap with my pen as you clap and count it out loud. So here we go. One and two and three and four and. One and two and three and four and. Now remember these are eighth notes and sometimes eighth notes look like this with the little flag. Sometimes composers, just to make life easier, they’ll go ahead and connect those flags just like that. It’s still two eighth notes. They both still get half a beat, but I just thought I’d point that out. Sometimes you’ll see it like a flag and sometimes you’ll see them connected like that. So there we go.
I hope that you learned a lot and I really hope to see you in our next video. So be sure to like this one and have a great day!
I do these videos every other week, but if you still want more musical theatre, check out my newsletter! It’s called “Beyond The Score”, and it just takes a closer look at musical theatre history. You can find that at jskstories.com.