Music Math: Time Signature and Note Values

There is a little math in music. It involves the use of time signature and music notes value to determine the time value of a song. That is, it's beats and the rate (speed) at which a song should be sung. And that is what we are briefly gonna look at here.

Notes Values

The first thing you probably need to know is the value assigned to the different notes forms used in music. The photo below gives a quick summary of the notes forms and values

From the photo above, you can see that we have the following notes:

• 1 - whole note (semibreve);
• 1/2 - half note (minim);
• 1/4 - quarter note (crotchet);
• 1/8 - eighth note (quaver);
• 1/16 - sixteenth note (semiquaver).

Smaller still are the;

• 1/32 - thirty-second note (demisemiquaver),
• 1/64 - sixty-fourth note (hemidemisemiquaver), and
• 1/128 - hundred twenty-eighth note (semihemidemisemiquaver).

Time Signature

A Time Signature is two numbers one written above the other, found at the beginning of a piece of music.

They tell the musician how many beats are written per measure.

The top number is the number which tells us how many beats are needed for each measure. The measures are divided by vertical lines (called Bar Lines) written through the Staff / Stave.

When you have a number 2 as the top number, it means there are two beats in each measure, three beats for 3, four beats for 4, six beats for 6, etc.

The lower number indicates the note value that represents one beat (count). E.g. 4 means the 1/4 note is one beat (count), 8 means the 1/8 note is one beat (count). The better way to do this and assign beats (counts) to each notes on the music sheet is to multiply the value of that note with the lower number.

i.e Count/beat of note A = note value of A x lower number

E.g. for a 4/4 signature, a crotchet will have 1/4 x 4 = 1 beat/count while a whole note will have 1 x 4 = 4 beat/counts.

Counting Beats

When you are on a note, you are expected to remain in it till its count is exhausted before moving onto the next note. You can assign count for each each note by tapping your feet silently or on the cover of your hymn, body or chair with one finger, or by counting each of your finger, or the usual 1,2,3,4 used in dance practices, or waving the palm as done by choirleaders, etc. Each tap, wave or finger, etc represents one count.

So if I'm singing a 4/4 song and come across a crotchet "Re", I should say "Re" making 2 counts before moving to the next note.

Song Speed

A song becomes faster when you come across notes with half, quarter, or even lesser beats/counts. This is because you can't really count below one. In the case of two successive half beats (e.g 2 quavers in a song with 2/4 time signature), you are expected to sing/pronounce both in one count.

Thus for 4 successive semiquaver of such a song will be sung in one count, which will be very fast.
So this really determines if a song is slow, fast or very fast, and not neccessarily the time signature as some think. So a 6/8 song having the semiquavers and demisemiquavers used frequently would be faster than a 2/4 song having the whole notes and crotchets used frequently.

However, when learning a new song, you should retain your beats but reduce the pace (count slowly) to easily get the tune of the song before applying the normal speed.

Exercise

Now, take a look at the image below.

1. How many bar measures are there?
2. How many beats are expected per bar measure?
3. How many beats is expected for a whole note?
4. Can you assign beats (counts) to each notes per measure?
5. Make an attempt in singing the notes.