How to Read Time Signatures in Music

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Katie and I’m here on behalf of expertvillage.com to talk with you about being aware of time signatures. The numbers at the very beginning of a piece of music are what’s called the time signature, this gives you important information about the way the time is broken up over a piece. The top note tells you how many beats are in a measure, measures are defined by these vertical lines, the bottom number tells you what kind of note gets the beat, so for example in this thee four time signature we know that there would be three beats in a measure and the quarter notes because it’s a number four gets the beat. Here is a quarter note, so there would be at least four beats represented by quarter notes of quarter rests in each measure, down here we see an example of another type of time signature six eight, we know that there would be six beats in each measure and that the eighth note would get the beat. Here for example is an eighth note, so always be aware of time signatures."