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Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures

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Re: Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures

#51

Post by nerflad »

nerflad wrote: post #40
DavidPiper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the case. While some inexperienced composers/arrangers/scorers may transcribe 3/4 pieces in 6/8 to make the score look better, it is a fundamentally incorrect thing to do. 3/4 has one significant beat per bar: ONE two three | ONE two three - Think any waltz you've ever heard. 6/8 has two siginficant beats per bar: ONE two three Four five six | ONE to three Four five six - Think Follow the Yellow Brick Roa…

> ONE two three | ONE two three This phrase also has two significant beats. There's just a barline in the middle. See my point?

In an effort not to be snarky, my point is that rhythm is fractal and these are essentially just two different levels of magnification. You're absolutely right that there are conventions and implications in how they are written, but the thing about conventions (let's use a software term: "best practices") is that people's opinions on what they are tend to be heterogeneous. As a jazz musician, to me the denominator is not important, as it only represents the level of magnification. The important part is that the piece is in (some multiple of) 3.

I would argue that We Are The Champions is actually a 12/8 groove (conceptually triplets in 4/4). And we would both be right!

Re: Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures

#52

Post by UncleMeat »

nerflad wrote: post #43
quadrangle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be a professional drummer, but you are of some sort of mindset that has you in denial of the concept of convention . You also certainly feel rhythm but do not intellectually understand it. Rhythm is a cognitive/perceptual/psychological process whereby we relate events to one another. It is not mere timing. When you impose in your mind a structure on a timing by giving extra attention to certain events, then y…

(1) 2 3 | (1) 2 3 and (1) 2 3 (4) 5 6 are rhythmically identical. You're only conceptualizing them differently. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to write this myopic and extremely condescending explanation of my area of study. I will be sure to return the favor someday.

They have different hierarchies. In typical 3/4, the first beat of each measure is given equal weight. In typical 6/8, the first beat is given a bit more weight than the fourth beat.

Same reason why we treat 2/4 and 4/4 differently.

Re: Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures

#53

Post by greglindahl »

sparky_z wrote: post #31
greglindahl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a waltz. Normally waltzes are notated in 3/4.

Why do you say it's a waltz? The intended audience is clearly not ballroom dancers. You might argue that anything in "waltz time" is a waltz, but then your argument becomes circular. You would be saying it's a waltz because it's in 3/4 time and it's in 3/4 time because it's a waltz.

I have no idea what the intent of the artist is, but it's worth noting that the overwhelming majority of rock music is in ballad meter, not 3. So this is extremely unusual music for the audience this artist usually plays for.

For this piece, I think it's a waltz because it's in 3/4, at a typical waltz tempo, and it "feels like" a waltz, which is to say that the emphasis on the beats and their precise timing feels like waltz music usually does.

So no, I would not argue that anything in "waltz time" is a waltz.

Re: Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures

#54

Post by nerflad »

dylan604 wrote: post #44
nerflad wrote: post #12

There is no difference between 3/4 and 6/8 unless you are trying to decide on which one makes your score easier to read. It's just different ways of conceptualizing the phrase. Mathematically (and therefore rhythmically) they are the same, of course. Maybe the site is trying to make some other differentiation but it didn't work at all in Firefox. (Source: I am a professional drummer)

In a non-Archer sense of the word, how do percussionists think of phrasing? As a non-percussionist/string player, a phrase was a great place to take a breath for us regular humans that can't circular breath. The basic definition I was always given was 8 bars. That was always worked well for me. As a DJ, the 8 bars would tell me the percussionist is due for a cymbal crash ;-). I always got a chuckle when I'd get a pie…

Well this gets subjective almost immediately, but in a general sense, not closely related to one instrument, I think of phrases as the music within the length of time (la dee da dee dum), as opposed to the length of time itself (1234, 1234). I wouldn't play a cymbal crash at the end of 8 bars if the musical climax didn't happen until the end of bar 9. The barlines aren't as important as the music sitting around them.

Re: Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures

#55

Post by nerflad »

UncleMeat wrote: post #52
nerflad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) 2 3 | (1) 2 3 and (1) 2 3 (4) 5 6 are rhythmically identical. You're only conceptualizing them differently. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to write this myopic and extremely condescending explanation of my area of study. I will be sure to return the favor someday.

They have different hierarchies. In typical 3/4, the first beat of each measure is given equal weight. In typical 6/8, the first beat is given a bit more weight than the fourth beat. Same reason why we treat 2/4 and 4/4 differently.

Who's we?

Your decision to give certain beats more or less emphasis is a subjective one. You can glean absolutely no information about a piece from the way the rhythm is subdivided, except maybe the intended tempo.

Re: Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures

#56

Post by cube2222 »

aftbit wrote: post #2

I'm a pretty non-musical person, and time signatures have always confused me. Unfortunately, this explanation left me just as confused. I can hear the difference between the two sample beats but I cannot figure out how to generalize this to other time signatures beyond the 3/4 and 6/8 described here.

You may be confused. I've spent 9 years in a music school, and whenever there was an exercise to tell the measure by listening to the music I've always been confused how others manage to discern 3/4 from 6/8. Or 2/2 vs 4/4 for that matter. However, I've got the hang of it in the latter years. Point being, this is something that just requires some bigger time commitment to learn.

Basically you try to hear what groups of notes are "played as one". You also hear how the accents are distributed among the notes. It's easier to get the hang of it if you have to actually adhere to it when playing an instrument.

Re: Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures

#57

Post by sparky_z »

greglindahl wrote: post #53
sparky_z wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say it's a waltz? The intended audience is clearly not ballroom dancers. You might argue that anything in "waltz time" is a waltz, but then your argument becomes circular. You would be saying it's a waltz because it's in 3/4 time and it's in 3/4 time because it's a waltz.

I have no idea what the intent of the artist is, but it's worth noting that the overwhelming majority of rock music is in ballad meter, not 3. So this is extremely unusual music for the audience this artist usually plays for. For this piece, I think it's a waltz because it's in 3/4, at a typical waltz tempo, and it "feels like" a waltz, which is to say that the emphasis on the beats and their precise timing feels lik…

Well, my whole argument was that while it superficially "feels like" a waltz in some ways, it's clearly in 6/8 because of how the underlying beat is grouped. That's what matters.

Just as a sanity check, I decided to look up some sheet music and see how others have interpreted the song. Every single one that I can find notates it in 6/8 (interestingly with some individual measures in 9/8).

http://www.musiclassroom.com/partitions/Seal_kiss_from_a_ros...

https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0159794

https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0078268

https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/kiss-from-a-rose-satb-a...

https://www.onlinepianist.com/sheet-music/seal/kiss-from-a-r...

https://www.sheetmusicdirect.us/sheetmusic/song/1000176568/k...

Re: Using John Varney's rhythm wheel to differentiate 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures

#60

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

soperj wrote: post #47
skywhopper wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full time signature is arbitrary, and partially related to how the notes are written. It's wrong to put too much weight on "6/8" vs "3/4" per se. There are conventions that have developed in western music as to which time signature matches which natural beat pattern, but there's nothing _inherent_ in the time signatures that's important. Instead, I find it useful to think about combinations and layers of twos and…

Can you explain what the difference between /4 and /8 are? like for example, what is the difference between 9/8 and 9/4? I've made something up that has an 11 time signature, 2-3-3-3(or 3-3-2-3), but how do I know if it's 11/8 or 11/4?

It only indicates which note symbol is the beat unit. /4 means that each quarter note gets the beat, while /8 means that each eighth note gets the beat. 3/4 means there are 3 quarter notes of time, while 6/8 means there are 6 eighth notes of time. This might help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note_value
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