GUITAR
CHANGING TIME SIGNATURES MID-SONG | David Harsh
Are you the kind of guitar player who can sense when the time signature changes in a song ? Do you know specifically what ’ s happening in that moment ? If you ’ re not sure , grab a few minutes with me to widen your gaze a bit .
This article will be super helpful for understanding what I ’ m about to offer you , but I definitely encourage you to watch the accompanying video , while it ’ s available . You can find it right here : www . GuitarSuccess4U . com / TimeSigs
It ’ s happened to a lot of us . We ’ re getting to know a song , and partway through , our ears perk up as we hear the time signature change . What specifically is going on ?
I ’ d like to suggest a strategy for figuring this out . And it involves raising our game with musical literacy .
As you may know , the time signature for a piece of music consists of two numbers which , for teaching purposes I ’ ll call the numerator and the denominator . The numerator indicates the number of beats . The denominator provides a clue as to what the signature note value is that gets a beat .
Let ’ s apply this to the common time signature of 4 / 4 . The numerator indicates that there are 4 beats in a measure . Here ’ s what I do to find the signature note value . I take the denominator and place a “ 1 ” over it . So , if I put 1 over 4 , I have 1 / 4 , or “ one quarter ,” which gives me the note value that gets the signature beat – a quarter note . So … in 4 / 4 time , there are 4 beats in a measure , with a quarter note getting a beat .
It follows then that in 2 / 4 time , there would be
2 beats in a measure , still with a quarter note getting a beat . And even in 3 / 4 time , we ’ ll have 3 beats in a measure , but the quarter note will still provide the signature beat .
With this cursory discussion of these time signatures firmly in our grasp , let ’ s press on to see how they can alternate .
To honor the copyrights of my fellow songwriters , I ’ ve created two fun musical examples of my own that will illustrate what happens when the time signature momentarily changes . These examples have vocal melodies ( which will make this process even clearer ), they ’ re in G Major ( arguably the friendliest key for guitar ), and they each start in 4 / 4 Time . My first example [ 1 ] intersperses 4 / 4 and 2 / 4 time . For the 2 / 4 bar , I just strum down twice , once on each beat ( feel free to play along with the video .)
Notice that we are moving from 4 / 4 to 2 / 4 time – and back – a total of four times , if we observe
[ 1 ]
[ 2 ]