Time Signature

Time Signatures

The time signature appears at the beginning of a piece of music, right after the key signature.

I'll explain Key Signatures later. The time signature is the symbol that tells you the meter of the piece and how it is written. The time signature tells you two things: how many beats there are in each measure, and what type of note gets a beat.

A short review on note durations

The simplest-looking note, with no stems or flags, is a whole note. All other note lengths are denoted by how long they last compared to a whole note. A note that lasts half as long as a whole note is a half note. A note that lasts a quarter as long as a whole note is a quarter notes. The pattern continues with eighth notes, sixteenth notes, thirty-second notes, sixty-fourth notes, and so on, each type of note being half the length of the previous type.

The following chart explains the beat patterns.

The Meter

The meter of a piece of music is the arrangement of its rhythms in a repetitive pattern of strong and weak beats. These are the repeated pattern of pulses. Based on these pulses, you tap your foot, dance etc. So the written music is divided into small group of beats called Bars or Measures. The lines dividing each measure from the next help the musician reading the music to keep track of the rhythms. In piece of music time signature tells the performer how many beats to expect in a measure and what type of note a beat gets.

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