In the next staff, 2 bars of a little musical line are written out. Let me give an example of 4 quarter time music. One bar can have 8 eighth notes, or 4 eighth notes and 2 quarter notes, etcetera, as long as the total duration is that of 4 beats. For example, 1 bar can consist of one whole note, or 2 half notes, or a half note with 2 quarter notes. It means that all the note durations of the notes in one bar added together make 4 beats. Now, 4 quarter notes per bar doesn’t mean that you can only have quarter notes. Since 4 quarter is the most common time signature, it’s also very often written as follows: In sheet music, in the beginning of a piece, we write this as follows (after the treble or bass clef): Or, you can also say: the time signature is 4 quarter. A piece of music that has 4 quarter notes per measure is called a piece in 4 quarter time. So that means that instead of saying 4 beats per measure, you could also say: 4 quarter notes per measure. You remember probably that a quarter note has a duration of exactly one beat. Let’s again have a look at songs that have 4 beats in a measure.
Those two types (4 beats in a bar and 3 beats in a bar) are most common, but other numbers of beats in a bar are also possible. A waltz is an example of a piece with 3 beats per measure. You can count 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – … during the whole song (when the time signature doesn’t change during the song).Īnother common type of songs has 3 beats in a measure. What they are counting, are actually the beats in a measure.
You can often hear musicians that play together count 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 before the song starts. How many beats in a bar there are? Well, that depends on the time signature, as we will see soon. Musical notes on a staff are grouped in measures, or also called bars (I will use both terms in this lesson).
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