time signature

cant work this one out, any ideas??

hi all

ive got a band thats recently added a sax and a flugelhorn (very exotic i know) to our guitar, drums, bass setup. ive been using sibelius 4 with the horn players to map out the music that they need to play (very handy to then just print out the score for their parts) and so have been going over some of our old songs, inputting into sibelius as chord progressions, then getting sibelius to convert those progressions to midi acoustic guitar, then add in the sax and flugel parts etc.

however, i dont read music and have no real training in it, and whilst sibelius is good enough for me to not need to, the only thing im having trouble with is evaluating what time signature ive written some of the songs in…

could anyone please, if they have time, go here and tell me what time signature the song ‘medusa’ is in?? please, i just cannot get my head round it…i just play it, if you know what i mean…

the light fantastic @ myspace

many thanks in advance if anyone can help

4/4

Yep, 4/4, but the subdivisions are counted like this in 1/8 notes:
1 2 3
1 2 3
1 2

or as
3-3-2 for a total of 8 eight notes in 4/4

That might make it actually be more 8/8 than 4/4 but wouldn’t be a typical way to look at it.

thanks for the help bubbagump

im still having problems scoring this up tho… 4/4 works, but when i play it on acoustic guitar, i naturally count like so: 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2, 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2

cos that is where the rhythm seems to fall…is this triplets or something?? if i was going to input that rhythm in score in a 4/4 bar, what would the note lengths be??

sorry for my ignorance on time signatures, they go completely over my head…if anyone can help i would appreciate it loads and loads and loads

thanks phoo! so i just use 8 quavers in the bar with stress on 1st, 4th and 7th to make the rhythm up?.. i think im gettin this now…

collen

The “proper” way to count in 4/4 when counting 1/8s is 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & So you really want to count it

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

Perhaps that makes it a bit easier? You are just getting tripped up on syncopation which is essentially putting the accent on notes that are not on the beat. The way you are counting would create a hemiola, but that isn’t what the music is doing. It is definately a solid 4/4 meter. If you are really interested, it might be worth a month or two of lessons or getting a basic music theory book.