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Looking For A "TIME SIGNATURE" APP
**1. * # **Ok I will admit that I have been playing, performing, and recording for years and I still cannot wrap my dumb head around time signatures. I know that there are BPM apps but I can figure out BPM's. I write pieces that seem like 4/4 to me but only to find out that they are not. Other musicians tell me it's not 4/4 but then cannot tell me what it is. Is there an app that I could tap a beat into and it could tell me the time signature? Some riffs I write loose all the groove and feeling when forced into quantized time.
Comments
If it grooves good, then it is good (modding a famous production motto)
Just leave quantization off - I never use bars in any DAW.
Sorry, forgot: time signature is often a question of interpretion, also depending on accents.
To experiment and practice some of the more sophisticated drum apps may help, for example:
„Beat Vibe for iPad“ von Guy Shaviv
https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/beat-vibe-for-ipad/id383585800?mt=8
It is hard for me to determine time signatures too, mainly because they seem to be open to interpretation.
What I try to do is tap out a tempo on a metronome while listening to the track I am trying to determine the time sig for. Once I have it pulsing in a correct sounding manner, I count the pulses in what seems like a measure. This gives the top number in the time sig.
For the bottom number, I pick quarter or eighth notes depending on which seems to fit better at the tempo I am working at. At slower tempos I tend to use quarter notes, at faster tempos I tend to use eighth notes. I usually pick one or the other to avoid having to think in 32nd notes, and also to keep measures at a nominal length.
This is just a method I came up with. There may be an absolute method for determining time signatures, but I don’t know of one. If someone does know, I hope they post about it so we all can learn about it.
Count in groups of 2 and 3 and you can play/hear any time sig.
5 = 123 12 or 12 123
7 = 123 12 12 or 12 12 123
3 or 6 is usually counted in 3's but 6 can be counted in 2's as well.
That's for the "top" number. For the bottom number, deciding whether it's 2 or 4 or 8 or 16 is again just as easy as you will feel which is best.
Some players like to use the indian approach for counting rhythm. Ta = 1 Ka = 2
Ta ka ta ta ka ta
Ta ka Ta ka Ta ka ta
or the full blown system:
If other musicians cannot tell you what time sig it is, they best be quiet on the matter.
Yep I'm clapping with one hand here. I have an issue, some sort of dead spot in my brain. I've had it explianed many times, I have read about it, I have watched videos. I just don't get it. I try to record a riff in 4/4= nope then I try 3/4= nope then 5/4= nope 7/8 nope, so I end up just recording 1/8 notes on a hi hat and recording my riff to that but it won't line up with any grid system forget about linking it up with any drum patterns or editing. Is there an app that can tell you the time signature of a rhythm? My bassist says "that doesn't hit on the one" but he can't tell what friggen time signature it is in!
And that "system" makes no sense at all you may as be speaking East Indian that is like saying oh your answer is bla plus blah blah = salamander?!!!! Get it? ...Nope
I love music that I can’t find the “one”. It keeps the brain guessing so i’d Like that aspect of your music. But that is hard for the bass player to find the pattern to make that part sync up.
An app will look for a fundamental pulse like that hi-hat you used. If it’s not evident in the audio it will fail to define any time signature. Do you tap your foot? If not can you do that so the bass player has a clue? Then you count the taps until something repeats. Divide that number by 2,3,5,7,11... and that’s the bottom number or a number that fits perfectly into the bottom like a 2 fitting a 4/4 song.
If you can’t do this easily then every thing you play is in 1:1 matching that hi-hat. Is there a drummer in the group? The drummer and the bass player could conspire to play in a given time signature and you can just tell them when you like what they are doing.
Time signatures only exist to allow musicians to communicate. The music doesn’t require it. Free flow of time is perfectly valid. Some people dance to their own drummer too.
Could you record some of this and post it so that we can listen? It might give us some insights.
Are you able to find an accentless click to which you can play and record to?
RE: METER IN GENERAL TERMS
When you think of notated meter (3/4, 4/4, 5/4,6/8, etc), things are a bit more complicated than if you think of rhythm as 'pulse'.
Some decisions about meter are somewhat arbitrary and have to do with what would be easiest to follow if you were reading the music. I.e. when do you use 6/8 rather than 3/4 -- and when do you use 12/8 rather than 4/4 or 6/8 or 3/4. When do you write something as 9/8 rather than a series of measures of another meter. If one is competent at notating music, some of these are pretty unambiguous but others are quite ambiguous -- which you see when people notate really slow blues shuffles with a swing feel: you see equally competent transcribers choose different meters.
It just so happens that people, without needing any musical education, naturally internalize the "rules" (which are just cultural norms) of the music that they get exposed to. Our brains (see the book "This is Your Brain on Music") seem to have some deeply embedded processes for internalizing the rules (rhythmic, melodic and harmonic) to which we are repeatedly exposed.
If you think about 'pulse' as your baseline, you can ignore time signature. If you can play along with it repeatedly, then there is a pulse. If you have trouble finding an accented click that works but can play to an accentless click, there is a pulse there even if you can't figure out what the numerical groupings are.
It is not uncommon for music to play around the pulse. I.e. in an awful lot of jazz and swing-influenced music, phrases often tend to start and/or end off the beat. A musician that I used to play with, had awesome time and also had an idiosyncratic sense of time in the sense that he counted the pulse as the pulse that his phrases started on. So, when he would tap his foot, it would throw us off if we paid attention to it. It was perfectly rhythmic -- but he was tapping the 'and'. If he paid attention to our foot tapping or the click we wanted, it threw him for a loop.
Some musicians have an idiosyncratic sense of rhythm and naturally have irregularities. There are quite a few Beatles tunes where there is the occasionally measure of 3 or 2 in the midst of music that is mostly organized in 4. You don't even notice that there is anything odd until you try to play along with it or count it at. Burt Bacharach does the same thing -- and it is mostly just very natural to how they hear things.
Maybe you need to take swing into consideration. If what you record gets quantized to a grid with no swing, it could sound very different from what you played and recorded.
If you listen to a Midi pattern in 4/4 with no swing, then crank the swing to maximum, you will easily hear what I am talking about.
Sounds to me like you just need to connect with some musicians that are more of the same mindset. I remember an interview with a guy that went on tour playing keyboards for the band Yes, substituting for whoever the latest keyboard player it was that had left them. He’d ask the band what time signature(s) certain parts of the piece were in and they would just give him blank stares and say “Hey, it’s not like that man. We just play it.” And he did.
You’re lucky! I have to work like hell when I want to free myself from making 4 on the floor beats all the time.
I have it recorded but I do not know how to attach it here? It is an M4a and it says this file format is not accepted here?
Yes yes I have irregular rhthym!!!! I wish I did not but stuff just comes out that way
Post it to SoundCloud (you can do it privately and post a link here) or Dropbox and share the link.
No reason to with it otherwise. Are you able to lay down tracks and play along with what you have laid down? If so, there is no problem. Different is generally a strength for a creative artist -- even though it can be frustrating trying to find people to work with that are on the same wavelength.
You can also share a link to a file in iCloud, if that is all you have.
Here is the drop box link please excuse part of the intro, I cut most of it off
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cat0ds0dpydi64b/Techno Riff.zip?dl=0
I can lay down the main track, but then I have to "play" the drums to fit the riff and if I knew the time signature I could edit and line up parts correctly.
I know Cubasis2 does not allow tempo or time signature changes and I cannot figure out how to input bizarre time signatures to see if they would work i.e. 9/8, 7/5 etc.
I am one of the weird keyboardist tapping my foot on the "and" I say, "see, it's in time" and the the rest of the band just looks at me with disdain
I struggle to write in 4/4
It helps if you think of time signature telling you two things:
So with 4/4 you have the default accents H - S - M - S (Hard, Soft, Medium Soft) for the beat.
and if you write a motif with four notes, it's kind of going to fit into your song in a kind of boring way. Whereas a 5 beat motif, or a 3 beat motif is going to feel a little off in a more interesting way (it provides a kind of syncopation).
More interesting songs tend to diverge away from the things, which provides rhythmic interest. You're 'pulling' away from the time signature by syncopating your beats (accenting different beats to the default ones), or writing motifs/ideas that extend over longer periods.
One way to try is to try and identify what the pattern that your song is reacting to. That works for more rhythmic stuff, harder with other stuff. If your music is lyrical, then your time signature should probably relate in some way to your lyrics (and you may find that you have some time signature changes caused by your lyrics in some place) as that will make the song sound stronger.
Another thing to consider is that all songs have either a 2 feel (e.g. 2/4, 4/4, 5/4), or a 3 feel (e.g. 3/4 6/8).
Another possibility is that your song has some kind of compound time signature. For example you have might have a song which is 4/4 for a bar, followed by 3/4. That's totally valid, but you'd write it as 7/4. Often you'll find that songs that are hard to identify a time signature use one of those compound time signatures.
@ralis: I am finding the snippet you posted a little hard to analyze, partly because of the click and partly because I am not sure what a single complete cycle of your riff is. Maybe others are better at this than me. I would find it helpful if you could put together a project or just the stems that has one or two complete cycles of your riff only (no click or drums just the riff) so that if one plays it as a loop it plays as If you were repeating it over and over seamlessly. Even better would be if you also laid down a kick drum by playing it from your keyboard representing what you hear as the pulse.
Your riff has an interesting syncopation against the click, but I can’t tell if it is intentional. Hearing the pulse as you hear it would help.
Ok when I try to write to a click it is plain and boring. Then when I write a riff just playing it has the feel and groove I want but then when I attempt to record it to a click it just will not sync up. I try all the available time signatures that I can and nothing works.
Is there something that I can use " an APP" to "listen" and tell me what time signature my riff is in? Then I can set up my DAW with the proper time signature and click
You can try to explain time signatures to me but as I have stated previously many already have and I have read articles and watched videos but my brain for whatever reason is not able to comprehend them
I can read sheet music notation but have no idea about the time signatures so I have to hear the rhythm and tempo then I can play it.
I do not like or enjoy the fact that I a too stupid to "get it" it is very frustrating. And trying and always failing is infuriating I have been attempting this for years! And failing
I will try to record that now
Ok here is the riff with a cleaner sound played without a click
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nyhvdfemlio144p/Techno 2.m4a?dl=0
A couple of questions:
This will help you figure out if the issue is that you play in odd time signatures or if you are still refining your sense of rhythm and beat. As long as you can do that, it is a matter of practice playing against a click. For some people, playing to a click comes easily for some it requires a lot of practice.
It is a worthwhile exercise (in my opinion) to spend time practicing with a metronome. If you don't know the time signature, just set it up so there is no accent. Years ago, one of my bandmates badgered me to do this until I got on it. It was a real struggle at first. I spent five or ten minutes a day doing that and eventually it stopped being a struggle, but it took quite a while.
@ralis, I’m fairly confident there is no program that would lay out a time signature for that riff. In fact, it sounds to me as though the time signature is changing over time. You seem to have a combination of 6/8, 4/8, and 5 or 7/8 bars.
The thing is, the riff is changing. It’s not consistent over time. Your timing is good and consistent but the actual repeats of the notes are in evolving cycles over time. I don’t say that’s a bad thing at all. But yes, it would take talented musicians to play along. I think you’d need to establish a consistently repeating pattern of some length so that anyone could anticipate where to put accents. Otherwise, if you’re just randomly starting cycles whenever it sounds good to you, no one else other than a mind reader could know how to play along.
The only thing I can suggest is you chop up your recording into something that can loop consistently. As it is, you have several measures of essentially free form playing. Sounds great, but impossible to play along with.
Or, you could look carefully at the waveform for your music and try to lay down drum beats that fall at the same time as the peaks that represent the beginning of a phrase.
Don’t get me wrong. I highly value stuff like this that isn’t locked into a rigid structure. But if your goal is to play with others, you’re going to have to how to consistently repeat some kind of fixed length phrase. Time signature is less important than that one thing.
Good stuff btw!
Your time sounds good. It is a cool riff.
The snippet doesn’t loop because of the tail. I trimmed it so that it loops (I think).
How many repetitions of your riff is there? I ask as I am not 100% sure that I hear it as you do. I hear it as 4 times through your riff.
If that is correct, what I am hearing is something in 10 (or ) that breaks down as sub units of 3 + 3 + 4.
If that is what your are hearing, a standard drum track will be hard to play against. You might find some patterns in MidEast Drummer (or whatever it is called) or some of the tabla apps useful. A lot of Indian music is based on rhythms made up of various combinations of 2,3,and 4 beat sub units that don’t necessarily line up to Western versions of 3, 4, 5, etc.
Sorry, it can look like gibberish but I highly recommend looking into it. I learned about it from John Mclaughlin and have had a 100% success rate using it to teach different time signatures to people who had given up trying.
Have patience and try it with an open mind. If you can play/count a triplet then you can learn time signatures!
My guess is 11/4 at around 133 BPM.
It is a funky compound rhythm, first 4/4 then 3/4 then 4/4 again, adding up to a 11/4 cycle on your riff.
Here is my attempt at adding a beat to a loop of your riff, as I interpret it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ntmyxjplw45z5o0/Techno Riff (1).wav?dl=0
FWIW, I hear it as 10/4 (or 5/4) at about 115.65 bpm
Sort of... the first note is misssing from my riff on your version
Here it is written out
d1,d2,d1,d2,d1,d2,d#2,d1,d2,d1,d2,d1,d2,g#1,d1,d2,d1,d2,d1,d2,d#2,f#2,g2,f#2,d#2.
A 25 note riff then repeat.
The d#2 and g#1 are kind of rushed sort of in between the down and upbeat?
When I tap my foot to it, seems to be around 109 bpm?
Can you record and trim it so that it loops one complete repetition as you hear it. Make sure that it is complete with no notes cut off and not tail, so that it loops perfectly. Even better would be if you also recorded a track that is you tapping out the beat on a separate track that syncs with the bassline.