Explain what it means to have a song without a meter, a song using "free time"
Meter Classifications
We've talking almost the basics of reading and deciphering fourth dimension signatures - now we get to learn how those time signatures tin can be understood as meters.
In that location are 2 levels of classifying meters. The showtime level of classification focuses on how the beat indicated by the time signature is subdivided.
There are merely two ways for the beat to be regularly subdivided in Western music, and that is into two or into three smaller notes. Refer to the annotation value charts above. All other subdivisions are either multiples of these two subdivisions, or some complex form of adding them together. For ease of notation and classifying the subdivisions equally meters so, we have: Elementary Fourth dimension , Chemical compound Time , and Irregular Time .
Simple Time
Unproblematic time is any meter whose basic note division is in groups of two. Examples of these meters include: Mutual Fourth dimension, Cut Fourth dimension, 4/iv, three/iv, 2/4, ii/2, two/1, and so on. These meters are simple time because the quarter note divides equally into 2 8th notes, the half-note divides equally into two quarter notes, or the whole note divides as into two one-half notes. Y'all can see these divisions if you refer back to the in a higher place note length nautical chart.
Compound Time
Slightly more than complicated is compound time , which is any meter whose bones annotation division is into groups of 3. You automatically know you are not in simple time if at that place is an eight as the lesser number of your time signature. An 8 to marker simple fourth dimension would be pointless, equally will exist demonstrated beneath in the beat hierarchies and accents section.
And so, when y'all see an viii as the bottom number of your time signature, y'all know that your eighth notes should be grouped together in groups of three instead of ii! In 6/8, you have 2 groups of 3 eighth-notes, in ix/8 you have 3 groups of 3 eighth notes, and 12/8 has four groups of 3 eighth notes.
Technically, to get a compound fourth dimension sound, composers could use a uncomplicated time signature and then mark all of the main vanquish subdivisions in triplets - making a duple division into a triple division - throughout an entire piece to get the aforementioned effect. However, using triplets throughout an entire piece to get a chemical compound fourth dimension sound would appear quite messy and chaotic on the page.
An example of the 12/8 confronting the 4/iv using triplets is in the tabular array below. To the listener, these examples sound exactly the same, and in practice there is the added risk of confusing performers unused to switching between fourth dimension signatures.
Fifty-fifty though it's more than common to see a elementary fourth dimension signature with the duple divisions in Western music for music of the past 5 or half-dozen centuries, it was actually compound time which developed and was notated first! Because Western music notation developed aslope church building music, much of the underlying theory surrounding music had a theological footing. For meter, the most common subdivision was in compound or triple divisions to relate musical time being iii in one, similar to the Christian Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Irregular Time
The last option for shell subdivision is an irregular or unequal subdivision of the beat.
Even though these are "irregular" meters, they do have patterns that are discernable for the performer. The near mutual irregular meters actually mix simple time and chemical compound time together inside a unmarried measure. Thus, in each measure, at that place are beats with 3 subdivisions and there are beats with two subdivisions. Examples include such time signatures as 5/eight and 7/8. Because in that location are v eighth notes per measure or seven 8th notes per measure, you cannot take equal groupings of 2 or 3 eighth notes. Therefore, similarly to 6/8, 9/8, and 12/eight, in which the groups of eighth-notes are beamed together to a larger count, in 5/8 and 7/8 they are also beamed together to make a larger count. All the same, because the number of eighth notes in 5/8 and seven/8 is odd (and prime), the count lengths in each measure are uneven—or irregular. The 8th note typically stays the same length, merely because some counts have ii and some counts take 3 eighth notes, they are irregular!
You tin see the groupings of three 8th notes with two eighth notes in each measure out of v/eight above, and groups of ii eighth notes confronting two groups of two eighth notes in each measure of 7/8. In five/8 and 7/viii so, the first count of each measure out is one eighth-note longer than the rest of the counts. Depending on where the placement of the longer beat, composers tin can create different accents and atmospheres.
Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840—1893) uses an irregular meter in the second movement of his Sixth Symphony. When you lot listen to the motility, it sounds like it should be a flit with iii beats per measure, merely the "beats" of the meter are uneven, sometimes the starting time beat is longer, sometimes it is shorter because the subdivisions are irregular. To the listener, because it sounds similar a waltz and like a dance, it feels at once familiar, only then also lopsided and distant. The irregular beat patterns are unexpected and un-danceable (at least without some serious practice and memorization!). The familiar becomes distorted, distant, potentially dangerous and frightening.
Source: https://www.libertyparkmusic.com/musical-time-signatures/
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