FretSpider!

Music is written down in sections of notes, often known as bars or measures. Bars are a great way to measure music, most rock songs are in a simple 4/4 time signature. Which means that each bar contains 4 notes, ie; you would count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

A time signature is basically a measure of how many notes are in each bar, and the symbol would appear at the start of a sheet music document and often a guitar tab. Some examples are 4/4, 2/4, 6/8, 7/8, etc.

Time signatures are a measure for counting beats within a song, they are not the timing or speed of a song. The timing of a song is counted in beats per minute and don’t effect the time signature when changed.

Time signatures are written with 2 numbers right? this tells us two things right away:

The top (first number) tells us the number of beats per bar.

The bottom (second number) tells us what type of note is each beat:

2 = Half Note
4 = Quarter Note
8 = Eighth Note
16 = Sixteenth Note

This is hopefully all you we see in the second number (thirty-second or sixty-fourth notes are very rare)

For the example of a 2/4 time signature:

1. How many beats are in each bar. – 2 beats

2. What type of note is each beat. – 4 = quarter note.

So, with this information you are able to figure out that there are just 2 notes per bar and each note has a quarter-note length. (4/4 timing would be 4 quarter notes per bar. equaling one full note per bar)This is more useful when reading notation, but it is applied in guitar tabs as we are about to find out.

2/4 Time Signature Example

e|---------|---------|---------|---------|
B|---------|-6---4---|---------|---------|
G|---------|---------|-3---5-5-|---------|
D|-------3-|---------|---------|-3-------|
A|-3-5-6---|---------|---------|---------|
E|---------|---------|---------|---------|

The above tab is just some random notes from the Cm scale, this is tabbed in 2/4 timing. To analyze this further, the first bar contains 4 notes, each note is an 8th note (half of a quarter note) this is why 4 of them fit on this bar. The second bar is 2 quarter notes. The third bar contains a quarter note, followed by 2 eighth notes. The last bar contains just one half note, equaling 2 quarter notes.

So 4/4 timing would be very similar. The length of the notes are the same as 2/4 timing, but there would be 4 beats per bar, not 2. So the above tab would be written as follows.

4/4 Time Signature Example

e|-------------------|-------------------|
B|-----------6---4---|-------------------|
G|-------------------|-3---5-5-----------|
D|-------3-----------|-----------3-------|
A|-3-5-6-------------|-------------------|
E|-------------------|-------------------|

See, so the same tab in 4/4 is that same as the 2/4 example but without the 4 separate bars, it fits into two bars because there are 4 beats per bar.

When we analyze this tab, we see that both bars contain 4 notes:

The first four notes are all an eighth of a note in leg nth, so this is actually 2 quarter notes so far. The next 2 notes are spaced apart a little more, these happen to be 2 quarter notes. So there’s our four quarter notes for the first bar.

The first note of the second bar is a quarter note, the next two notes are eight notes, so this equals 2 quarter notes so far. The last note of the riff is a half note, which equals our next 2 quarter notes.

These were some fairly complex examples for a beginner so if you have grasped this so far then that’s great!

In normal musical notation, time signatures are allot easier to work out, as each note is clearly recognized as a half note, quarter note, etc. With guitar tab, it’s more of a guessing game by the amount of space between each note.

6/8 Time Signature Example

6/8 Time signature is also a commonly used timing. It contains six eighth notes per bar.

e|-------------|-------------|
B|---------6-4-|-------------|
G|-------------|-3---5-5-----|
D|-------3-----|---------3-3-|
A|-3-5-6-------|-------------|
E|-------------|-------------|

The first bar above is fairly straightforward, there are six notes in there, so each one must be an eighth note in length. The second bar contains the first note which is a quarter note, + four eight notes, equally 6 eighth notes.

Pretty simple right? So time signatures are basically a measure to tell us how to count the music.

Example:

4/4 = 12341234
2/4 = 12121212
3/4 = 123123123
6/8 = 123456123456

There are many other time signatures that I haven’t mentioned here. This has been a basic guide to time signatures and how they are applied to music and even guitar tab. In later lessons I will explain time signatures in greater detail, but for now, you should have learned the main concepts behind this universal musical counting method.