Examples of Songs in Different Time Signatures

As part of a module I’m teaching at the moment I’m compiling Spotify playlists for a range of different time signatures. As the vast majority of popular music including dance/EDM, hip hop, rock, pop, soul, country etc is in 4/4 time, it can often be tricky for people to compile examples of a range of different time signatures. Additionally there can be specific examples of harder to hear time signatures (for example the difference between 3/4 and 6/8). The article will serve as a one stop shop for revising all the time signatures and their common application. Where possible I’m trying to keep the examples contemporary, but that can be harder with certain time signatures (2/4 and 9/8, I’m looking at you!).

How do we read time signatures?

Time signatures are compiled of two numbers, a top number and a bottom number. Put simply the top number determines how many beats there are in a bar and the bottom number determines weather or not the meter is simple or compound, i.e how the beats are divided. In each example you’ll no doubt be able to find counter examples where the grouping is non-standard, but as a broad rule of thumb we can divide time signatures up in several ways:

Regular or irregular?

The first consideration is weather or not the number of beats is regular or irregular. Regular covers things like 2, 3, 4, 6, 9 and 12. These are numbers that are multiples of 2 and 3. I’d hesitate to add 15 to this list, even though we could hear 15 as five groups of three, simply because it’s not all that common. Regular time signatures make up the vast majority of the examples we’ll look at today. We could call the grouping of the beats here isochronal, meaning the pulses are grouped regularly (although we will look at at least one example in 9/8 where this is not the case).

Irregular time signatures would be any prime number larger than 4, so your 5/4s, 7/4s, 11/8s, 13/8 and so on. Of course mathematicians would argue 2 and 3 are prime numbers, but from a practical point, musical time is built up on 2s and 3s. In-fact our western programmed brains are really good at counting to two and three, possibly why even with a time signature like 7/4 we maybe subdivide that into groups of 2s and 3s. Irregular time signatures are inherently non-isochronal, as they cannot be divided into equal beat groupings.

Simple or compound?

Sticking with our regular time signatures for now, we might look at the bottom number in a time signature to determine if the beats are subdivided into two or three (a quarter note or a dotted quarter note).

Simple time signatures typically have a bottom number of “4” and can be counter “one-and two-and” etc. Simple time signatures include 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4.

Compound time signatures typically have a bottom number of 8 and can be counted “one-and-a two-and-a” etc. Compound time signatures include 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8.

Duple, triple or quadruple?

The top number in a time signature is the number of beats in the bar. This is a little more self explanatory for some examples (2/4, 3/4 and 4/4) but perhaps less so for the compound ones. Duple compound time would be two beats subdivided by three (6/8). Triple compound would be three beats of three (9/8) and lastly quadruple compound would be would four beats of three (12/8). In the diagram below you can see how duple, triple and compound time signatures overlap with simple and compound counting.

Simple Duple

2/4 was one of the examples where it was harder to find quality audio examples without resorting to lots of classical music. Things that came up over and over again were nursery rhymes (Grand Old Duke of York), folk, sea shanty’s and traditional music from across Europe.

One thing that helped solidly the point of 2/4, or rather how to distinguish them from 4/4 time is in the context of a march. The “left, right, left, right” quality of marches seems to most easily distinguish how the time is felt compared to 4/4. Perhaps an example of a 2/4 more solidified in collective conscious of western media is Zorba’s Dance, which amongst other places can be heard on the Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels soundtrack:

The two vaguely modern examples I could find Simon & Garfunkel and Led Zeppelin, both songs have a distinctly folky or country feel to them. Here’s a short drum loop at 90 bpm. This would be very easily confused with 4/4, and for good reason.

Compound Duple

6/8 is one of those time signatures students are often confusing, mostly with 3/4. There is a technical difference between the two, and a more practical, anecdotal difference. In a great deal of modern music, 6/8 is far more common than 3/4. At the heart of it, 6/8 is two beat cycle; one-two, one-two, which is easy to imagine a kick and snare accenting. The hi-hats might spell out the subdivisions: one-and-a, two-and-a etc. Another way to imagine the difference is that 6/8 is really 3+3, where as 3/4 is 2+2+2. We’ll discuss more specifics of 3/4 next.

A great example of this paradigm is Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman:

Although in a slower tempo that could be confused for 3/4 time, the song “Dangerous Woman” is performed in 6/8 time. The big differentiation between this performance and typical 3/4 time is that there is a drum accent (on the snare drum rim) on beat 4 (of 6) in each measure of this song, making it a good example of telling the aural difference between 3/4 and 6/8 time.

Rebel Music Teacher

6/8 appears a lot in rock and pop ballads. This could be a result of the idiomatic quality of the guitar, having six strings it can lend itself to ascending and descending arpeggiated patterns (think Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters, or House of the Rising Sun by The Animals).

Here’s four bars of drums at 90 bpm in 6/8. I’ve kept the tempo the same as the 2/4 example, so flick between these and listen out for the snare, which sign posts the beats, and the hi-hats which outline the subdivision:

Simple Triple

As I mentioned above, this can be tricky for some to distinguish from 6/8. Where bands, singers and drum kits are involved, 6/8 tends to be far more common. One of the most common associations with 3/4 time is a waltz, which is a European ballroom dance, the word means “to roll or revolve”.

Remember the key distinction is how the beats are felt. In 6/8 we very much feel the pattern as two groups of three, ONE-two-three-TWO-two-three, or one-and-a-two-and-a. 3/4 is three groups of two, ONE-and-TWO-and-THREE- etc.

Here’s a four bar loop of 3/4 at 165 bpm. This is similar to a walz or oom pah pah style of drums/percussion. The snare here is outlining beats 2 and 3, which are felt as weaker beats than beat 1.

I’ve rather cheekily included John William’s Hedwig’s Theme from the Harry Potter films here, as this is in most scores denotes as 3/8, but simplified versions of the score can be understood as 3/4 with different note subdivisions. The reason I’ve included this is because it’s almost a film composition trope that 3/4 has a whimsical, mystical or fantasy quality to it (listen to anything by Danny Elffman and you’ll hear bars or passages of 3/4 littered trough-out it).

Compound Triple

This is one of the trickier regular time signatures to absorb. In-fact you’d be forgiven for confusing this with irregular time signatures as nine feels like a scary number. There are a number of instances 9/8 comes up. Firstly there are jazz waltz, i.e a song in 3/4 but with a triplet feel (one-and-a, two-and-a, three-and-a), a slip-jig (a type of Celtic dance with accents of beats 5 and 9) and in types of Balkan and ex-Ottoman dances (here’s a great list).

As for modern examples, there’s a few and far between. The Crunge by Led Zeppelin comes up from time to time but I feel the drum groove quite awkward, at least in terms of feeling a more traditional 9/8 feel.

Probably my favourite example of 9/8 is one that’s not isochronal. Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo à la Turk is not grouped in three groups of three, but rather one-two, one-two, one-two, one-two-three for the first three bars then bar four is a more traditional one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. Below is the right hand part, which outlines the rhythmic grouping most clearly.

Here’s the right and left hand parts together:

…and here it is with a click track:

Here’s a drum beat mocked up in 9/8. Again, I’ve kept the tempo the same as 3/4 for easier comparison (165 bpm). Listen to how the hi-hats spell out the subdivision while the kicks and snare outline the beats:

Adam Neely has made a good and comprehensive video looking at 9/8 and why some people find it alien to count.

Simple Quadruple

By far the most common and popular way of dividing beats up in western modern music and the time signature we are most familiar with is 4/4. Felt either as a strong beat one and three or perhaps even more commonly and two and four (a backbeat, more on this in a bit), 4/4 would account the vast majority of popular music from the last 100+ years dating back to early 20th C jazz, folk through to RnB and rock’n’roll, disco, classic rock, hip hop, house, techno, drum’n’bass, you name it.

While there are innumerable styles of drum beats in 4/4 perhaps the most prevailing in 20th century western music is the backbeat, a style of drumming that evolved out of RnB drumming in early 50s. The pattern has heavy emphasis on beats 2 and 4. This example is at 120 bpm.

The above beat is an example of what some people call a backbeat or other might informally call “the money beat”. Here’s a great video I show to students all the time demonstrating how wide spread this groove is:

I’ve tried to make the playlist of 4/4 as reflective of different styles as possible. In there there’s jazz, funk, electronic music of various styles (from heavily syncopated jungle and UKG for more predictable hypnotic house and techno). This playlist could have been 1000 times larger and still not touched the sides of the wealth of examples we have in this time signature.

Compound Quadruple

Last of the regular time signatures is 12/8, perhaps better understood as a shuffle. This is four beats to the bar but rather than one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and (like we have with 4/4), it’s one-and-a-two-and-a-three-and-a-four-and-a. This is heard a lot in blues music.

The similarity with 4/4 is the kick and snare pattern, where we could happily accent two and four like with our backbeat, the difference is the feel of 12/8 is inherently compound, or like being in 4/4 with constant eighth note triplets. Perhaps the clearest demonstration of the groove in the commonly accepted cannon is Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel:

Below is a 12/8 style drum beat at the same tempo as our 4/4 example (120 bpm). Again follow the hi-hats for the feel of the groove.

In the playlist below we have a good mix of contemporary music from HAIM to TOTO, Mozart to Leonard Cohen and James Brown to Tears for Fears:

Irregular: 5/4 and 5/8

Moving on to some irregular examples. Really I shouldn’t group 5/4 and 5/8 together as one is an example of quintuple simple time (5/4) and the other quintuple compound (5/8) but I’ve found that I don’t want to list too many examples here so it was better to group them together.

Perhaps the two most common examples of 5/4 are Dave Brubeck’s Take Five and the Mission Impossible theme. Both examples I’ve bounced with Logic’s click:

While our brain is perfectly capable of counting to five we hear this rhythm as 3+2: ONE-two-three-ONE-two-ONE-two-three-ONE-two etc. This is very common with irregular time signatures, splitting the number of beats into smaller groups of twos and threes (you can hear a similar 3+2 pattern in the Neue Grafik song I Miss Something).

Mission Impossible uses what’s informally known as a 5/4 clave. The second note in the rhythm is syncopated, falling on the offbeat between 2 and 3, like a more traditional clave.

Interesting, some clever person has done a fantastic mashup of Take Five and Radiohead’s 15 Step:

Irregular: 7/4 and 7/8

Similarly to 5/4 and 5/8 there’s a good argument to split 7/4 (simple) and 7/8 (compound, mostly…) up into separate subsections, but I don’t want to this turn into a massive study on irregular time signatures.

7/8 is interesting: a lot of rock musicians almost learn this one like a normal bar with an eighth note lobbed-off the end of it, but much like other irregular time signatures it’s easier to feel it as combinations of twos and threes.

Money by Pink Floyd is one of the more iconic grooves in this playlist, and probably the most famous example I can muster up for 7/4. As with many simple time signatures it’s easier to groove on 7/4, while 7/8 naturally feels more frantic and chaotic, perhaps why I could find fewer examples of this. However it’s the theme from Ant-Man (by Cristophe Beck) I want to take a quick look at. Let’s look at just the first two measures. I’ve transposed the lower voice up one octave for neatness.

Rather than hearing this as some combination of threes and fours I hear it as two groups of ONE-and-TWO-and-THREE-AND-four, or 2+2+1+2. It would be perfectly acceptable to notate this phrase in 7/8, the 7/4 comes from later in the piece where slower harmonies indicate the pulse (I’ve even seen some score notate it as a bar of 4 followed by a bar of 3).

Irregular: 11s, 13s and multiple meter

And now we come to the lost property box of time signatures. There are some fantastic odd-balls in here, three I want to look at more closely. First off I’ll link to a deconstruction I’ve already done of Everything in it’s Right Place by Radiohead, as I’ve done the work elsewhere. This has a regular pulse underpinning it but the chord groups oscillate between 4 and 6 with occasional bars of 5 in the chorus.

The other two songs are Thirteen by Frank Zappa and Golden Brown by the Stranglers, both interesting for different reasons. Let’s start with Zappa.

This song is in 13/8, unsurprisingly from the title. What’s useful about this is during the recording (which is live), Frank explains hows the subdivision work, it’s basically 5/8+4/4 “ONE-two-ONE-two-three-ONE–two–three–four”. I’ve added an accent of beat “3” of the four but that isn’t necessarily implied by the rhythm, it just seems natural to me.

This is another great example of how subdividing large prime number into smaller more manageable composite rhythms can help us navigate something that would otherwise be quite challenging. The 5/8 is split into 2+3 and then the four is counted we would count an ordinary bar of 4/4.

The final example in this section is The Strangers’ Golden Brown. I’ve seen some wild transcriptions across the internet but I always felt this as three bars of 3/4 followed by a bar of 4/4 “One-two-three, One-two-three, One-two-three, One-two-three-four”.

I’ve transcribed this in the simpler Bm as opposed to the Bbm it’s recorded in. I’ve also transposed the lowest voice up an octave to avoid ledger lines:

The verse in this song is a standard 3/4 “Golden Brown, texture like sun, Lays me down, through my mind she runs”. The real clue as to why it feels like 3/4 and not 6/8 is when the drums enter around 1.13. For this reason I hear the chorus as 3+3+3+4 as opposed to some transcriptions saying 6/8 + 7/8 or some combination of the two. It’s not exactly scientific but a pop song having a harpsichord in it just makes me want it to be a waltz too.

Songs in 6/4

To be completely honest, 6/4 is not a time signature I see come up often, but in researching these playlists I found a number of songs that did not fit into one of the above regular categories, but were also not irregular. 6/4 never came up in any of my music theory exams so I never solidified an understanding of it like I did with other time signatures in this list. Still, Electric Feel is a great track!

I’ll leave you with an example in 6/4 of a piece called System by Brotherly, which was introduced to me just recently: