Signature question: is 7 beats a 7/4 or 3/4 + 4/4?

[Omnidextrous]

Hi there,

 

Hoping this is the right board for this question, if not, please excuse me.

 

Thanks to the great help on this forum, especially David, I'm now beat mapping the entire "War of the Worlds" album into Logic in preparation of covering it. Besides the fluctuating tempo, I'm also running into "problems" with the signature throughout the album.

 

Since I have no musical background or education whatsoever, I'm sometime puzzled by the difference (if any) between different signatures with the same number of beats. For example:

 

In "The Eve of the War", there are sometime 6 beats in a bar, so will this be 6/4 or will this be an extra 2/4 after the regular 4/4?

In "Thunder Child" there is a part with a constant 7 beats in a bar. Will that be 7/4 or alternating 3/4 and 4/4?

 

In the end, it doesn't really matter since the result will pretty much be the same, but I was just kind of wondering what the exact difference is between 6/4 and 4/4 + 2/4 and the same for 7/4 and 3/4 + 4/4.

 

Just for my curiosity and education.

[Eriksimon]

The difference between those time signatures is (probably) in accentuation, but there's no rule saying you must use 7/4 or 3/4 plus 4/4 - generally, whatever is better readable to a musician is used. So within Logic it really (as you discovered) doesn't matter, since 7/4 does include a 3/4 anyway - that's why these type of signature's are called compound, because you can always split them up in smaller subdivisions: 7/4 as 2+2+3 or 4+3 (in any order), and 6/4 as either 2+2+2, 4+2 or 3+3. So it's about readability of the score, but also about the perceived "unity" of such compound time signature accidentals. But again, purely as a sequencing thing, it does not matter at all, it's completely your choice how you divide them up.

[Omnidextrous]

Thanks for the explanation and confirmation of my "guessing". So in the example of "Thunder Child", there is a clearly distinguishable "beat" or "punch" every 3/4 and 4/4, so for "real" musicians it would probably be best to write/print it as such, constantly switching between 3/4 and 4/4, but since I'm just sequencing (and lazy) I can just keep it a constant 7/4 all the time.

 

Seeing all these signature changes in the entire "War of the Worlds" album makes me kind of glad I don't read music at all, must be quite annoying to constantly have to adept to a different signature, isn't it?

[ViolaGhost]

The difference between those time signatures is (probably) in accentuation, but there's no rule saying you must use 7/4 or 3/4 plus 4/4 - generally, whatever is better readable to a musician is used. So within Logic it really (as you discovered) doesn't matter, since 7/4 does include a 3/4 anyway - that's why these type of signature's are called compound, because you can always split them up in smaller subdivisions: 7/4 as 2+2+3 or 4+3 (in any order), and 6/4 as either 2+2+2, 4+2 or 3+3. So it's about readability of the score, but also about the perceived "unity" of such compound time signature accidentals. But again, purely as a sequencing thing, it does not matter at all, it's completely your choice how you divide them up.

 

This is completely spot on - just what I was going to say. In a 4/4 + 2/4, you'd expect an accent on the first and the fifth beat 1 2 3 4 1 2, whereas in a 6/4, you'd expect the measure to be accented in 2, as in 1 2 3 4 5 6 or 3 as in 1 2 3 4 5 6. Likewise, in a 7/4 broken up in (for exapmle) 2 + 2 + 3, you can expect: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.... etc. Of course, there are no steadfast rules. Hope this makes sense!

[ski]

must be quite annoying to constantly have to adept to a different signature, isn't it?

 

Nah, it's not annoying at all. Time sigs are just part of the music. Believe me, there are far worse things that can be indicated in a score which will end up annoying and confusing musicians. And they're usually the kinds of things that appear minor on the surface but can cause real problems and eat up time in the studio.

 

Cheers,

 

Ski

[Omnidextrous]

Yes, you're probably right. I just can't imagine people enjoying music while they need to reed a score, think/interpreted about it and then play it. I just play by ear, don't want to read and think about it, but I guess if you can read music it will probably be like driving a car; you do it automatically without actually thinking about every single step. Alas; score reading it not for me. Tried it once, but then you start out with simple melodies (of course) and every time I played it once, it was in my memory and I played it from there, which I wasn't supposed to because I needed to read it from the sheet. But I must admit I miss some musical education sometimes. I recently learned myself the "circle of fifth", which is a great help when doing mixes by tone rather than tempo. And also trying to learn scales, which makes playing by ear a lot easier. Once you know what scale a piece is in, you know what keys on the keyboard you can "forget about".

 

Well, drifting very off-topic here. Just glad there is the internet and this forum to help me out with technical music questions like these.