I just started learning music theory after years of on and off playing. I'm reading a book called "Total Guitar" that's actually very good. I'm confussed about time signatures. I understand 2/2, 3/4, and 4/4 , but the book gives an example of 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 I don't fully understand, well I have an idea of what I think it means..... Wouldn't 6/8 be played as common time, because Nevermind, my question is how would you play this?

Just count out 6 8th note beats per bar.

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So, on every beat you just play one note slightly faster, because an 1/8 note only lasts half of a beat?

6/8 is basically 3/4 as in notes per bar, but the rythym is different.

3/4 is 1 2 3

6/8 is 123123123

at the same tempo.

As you can see, you have no idea what I am talking about, it's really hard to explain for me. You should search googleand get results in .01 seconds.

Basically, changing time signatures in a song changes the rythym (if you play accordingly). Thats why composers change time a lot in a song, to change the rythym.

No, that would be if a quarter not got the beat. . . . but in this case the eighth note takes the beat so the eighth note would be 1 beat, quarter note would be 2 beats, half note would be 4 beats, whole note would be 8 beats and theorhetically the semibreve would be 16 beats. . . . . in this situation with the eighth note taking the beat everything is actually one division bigger than it should be. . . . but don't get so hung up on that for now, just recognize the eighth note as the beat. . . . hahaha.

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6/8 and so on is called compound time.

Like what was said before it has EVERYTHING to do with the rhythm. It deals with the grouping of beats together.

But what was said earlier was wrong. It is basically is 2 groupings of 3 1/8th note beats.

i.e

888 888



(8 being an 8th note)
The 6 is divided by 3 creating 2 beats. Beacuse of the way compound time is the 2 beats are then subdivided into 3s (just like triplets) . 6/8 is the compound version of 2/4 while 9/8 is the compound of 3/4 and 12/9 is the compound verson of 4/4 timing.


So if you were to see it on sheet music the 8th notes would be beamed together into 2 different groups. The reason this is different than 3/4 time is because 3/4 time has 3 quarter note beats. Although it has the same amount of time as the 6/8 timing its not even remotely the same thing.

If you were to replace the quarter notes with 8th notes in the 3/4 timing they would be grouped together. 88 88 88 instead of 888 888 with 6/8 timing.


Hopefully this clears this matter with everybody. Compound timing isn't that difficult

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Thanks, for posting, it seemed like this forum was pretty dead. I understand how to play it, but I really don't understand why or why it would be written like that. I guess you have to just accept things for what they are.

This isn't a dead forum. Power Tab forum is a dead forum.

This is a very question to answer.

Basically when reading sheet music you can pick up and understand the rhythm of 888 888 (6/8) just as easy as if the rhythm is 88 88 (2/4).

It has almost everything to do with the ability to read and understand the music quicker and faster.

When composing sheet music anything 8 or higher is beamed together to distinguish the beats. (Beaming if you don't know is the little beams that connect notes together across the top or bottom of the not staffs) I.E. say you have 4/4 timing. And you are using lets say all 8th notes for a measure, you will beam 88 88 88 88. (each set of 8s is beamed, creating 4 sets of 8, equivilant to 4 beat notes) And if you have like 6/8 timing its the exact same thing. Because its compound time you divide it by 3 giving you 2 sets of beams of 888 888. Creating 2 beat notes.

This is why 6/8 is similar to 2/4
3/4 is similar to 9/8
4/4 is similar to 12/8.

Basically attempting to tie this all up before i confuse myself haha.

It has everything with being able to see and understand the beats of the music. And this is done through beaming of 8+ notes. Interestingly enough because of this rule you don't beam the 3 8th notes in 3/8 timing together, because they distinguish the 8th note beats.


Here is a guitar pro example of this entire idea. Pay attention to the beaming of the notes in standard notation.

The best way to view this is if you have guitar pro 5 make it show only sheet music, then click the multitrack view. You can then compare how the beats are compared to the beamed notes and see what i mean by the visually seeing the beamed notes. Because when reading music it gets hard to distinguish what the actual beat is without doing the actual math on it. It allows for faster sight reading.

Attached Files

Beat example.gp5 (2.3 KB, 122 views)

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^that helps. so the rule for compound time is divide the beat by three and combine the notes values in threes. and to play it you, you play three note evenly in one beat even though an 8 note only lasts half a beat...... then if you group 12's or any number for that matter, in to three's you would play it the same?

Hmm... in a nutshell yes. To what you've said, although you're saying some things that are making it seem a lil confusing

More on compound timing (that i forgot to mention). You will almost never see anything other than 6/8, 9/8 or some multiple of 3 over an 8th note. Technically you could have 6/4 timing, but the grouping of 8th notes is the purpose behind the compound timing.

Now in response to the playing 3 notes evenly in one beat that is correct. But the 8th note last LESS than half a beat. Its only a third of the beat. To do what you're saying right there that would be normal timing just using 8th notes in triplets. Basically you have 4/4 timing. A quarter note being your beat. Now when you are in this timing an 8th note IS half a beat. So if you were to play 3 8th notes during the duration of a quarter note it would be considered a triplet.


Basically this whole paragraph is talking about how an 8th note is not half a beat in compound timing, its a third of the beat. Thats why compound timing is the same thing as simple timing except it doesn't use triplet notes. Its already set up to do triplet notes.

Here is another example of how its basically the exact same thing. Now half way through the song it changes from 12/8 timing to 4/4 timing. Notice how its the exact same amount of notes except that 12/8 is set up with nothing but 8th notes and notice how the 2nd set is set up in triplet 8th notes.

This is basically the main difference in it. But this is such a basic example. Complex music thats out there isn't set up so easy as this, and its the length of the beat that creates it easier to play. Imagine quarter notes thrown in there with some dotted notes and what not. It gets intresting.

(Rereading what you wrote) Yeah i think you basically have the idea now.

(The triplet example is a little better than the other one haha. Its a bit more enjoyable.)

Attached Files

triplet example.gp5 (9.2 KB, 101 views)

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Time signature is really quite easy.
It's for working out how long a measure or bar goes on for.

Let's take a bar of 11/8. Very weird and off-throwing time sig' generally.

It is a bar that endures for the duration of 11 8th notes.

Doing time sig's are easier if you did alright with fractions in maths at school, or anytime. That way, you realise 2/2 is actually 4/4 and, in a more complex case, a bar of 21/8 and then one of 23/8 are actually two bars of 11/4.

9/8...
That's cool. The swinging swing time: 3 of 3!

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You know, I heard for awhile they tried many different systems for compound time, and the one that they really found out sucked was like having it written by what the beat is, for example, rather than using the subdivision of eighth notes, they would put a number of beats above a drawn dotted note. . . . . really confused the hell out of a lot of people. I don't know why I felt the need to mention that.

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2/2 is not the same thing as 4/4 timing. Theres almost nothing about it, that makes it the same thing other than you can have the same number of total notes.

I.E. 2/2 timing is to emphasis only 2 beats in a measure while 4/4 is to emphasis 4 beats in a measure. (completely different).

21/8 timing is also not a complex version of 11/4 timing by anymeans. Its for the same reason. Just because it has the same number of notes really doesn't mean anything. It has everything to do with grouping beats together and every comparison you made fails to do that.

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thanks for the replys. def. went "beyond the call of duty" to explain it. an 8th note lasting 1/3 of beats in compund time really helps. one more question..... so are 16th notes ie. x/16 (not 16th's in 4/4) called compound time? if so is the beat, now divided by 4 or still 3.

What's up w/ your myspace cant hear your music.

Hey its not problem, it helped me reremember the things that i had been taught, and actually look at alot of modern music in a different way. (the 2nd example helped me prove that to myself)

I'm having to think about more with the rules of compound time.

Its basically the exact same thing except using 16th notes. You will end up with sets of 3 16th notes per beat. You're beat ends up becoming a dotted 8th note instead of a dotted quarter note. And i would suspect that if you went down to 32nd notes it would be the same thing. Dotted 16th notes, with sets of 3 16th notes.

After doing a lil more looking it up because i'm slightly rusty in some of the aspects. In another response to what Unanything said. I'm not sure if this is what he meant but this kind of sparked my interest. Basically you can take a look at compound timing to be the addition of one or more 3/8 meters together. (generally)

Such as in this case. 3/8 + 3/8 would be 6/8. And that holds true. Although the one difference between the the simple and complex is the beat. In the 3/8 example it is an 8th note beat, while the 2nd one is a dotted quarter note beat. Kind of wierd thinking about it now. But who knows i didn't make it up.

This might be able to fill in the gaps where i might have missed or lacked at explaining. Wikipedia Time Sig


(not sure what you mean by my myspace. At first it wouldn't load then i went into it and now its loading... so try it again.)

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No!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I meant 21/8 and 23/8 together are 11/4!

2/2 and 4/4 have the same time value but you would use 2/2 if you had two half notes in the bar and 4/4 if you just had anything that fitted really. I used 4/1 for the beginning of a song because each bar had four chords that endured for a semibreve each. It was more appropriate.

I have a riff in that song that goes 5/4 then 15/8. 25/8 in total.
I got told that was compound time.

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I'm not telling you what you you should be doing but 4 bars of 4/4 are much more appropriate. 4/1 has a much different rythym, four slow 'clicks' if you may have it, and 4/4 has four 'clicks'. Ok fuck me, I dunno what the fuck im going on about.

Basically if you were composing on sheet music, most composers would put four 4/4 bars, as the bar lines generally keep everything organised. Seperation is good for the eyes. Just look at Jerry Springer. Anyway, I don't think i've ever seen 4/1 on sheet music. Keep shit organised. Then again I'm being hypocritical since i've used 15/8 purely for formatting reasons but then again i'm a cunt so fuck me.

Actually i agree with this. Changing the meter of a music just to make individual notes or a small group of notes fit into one measure seems pretty backwards to me. I would imagine the 4/1 timing would basically just be like 4 chord changes or 4 single notes held out for a full measures length (of 4/4 timing) It would be rediculously hard to keep track of timing in a 4/1 case. So unless its doom metal or something i think that would be a case of attempting to use too much "theory" if you will when it could be replaced with something more simple.


Best words ever for composing. Make it only as complicated as needed. I'm definately not a person thats into the senseless use of crazy meters or wierd scales.

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