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Lesson 4b - Compound Meters

Today’s topic is the second classification of regular meters: compound meters.

As a quick review, there are a few critical terms necessary for discussing these meters. Meter is the manner in which we organize strong and weak pulses in music over time, and it is from this grouping that we determine the length of each measure. At its most basic, meter tells us two things:

  • how we divide the meter into regular or irregular pulses called beats
  • how many of these beats are in the measure

If we imagine meter as a hierarchy, beats are the highest level. Beats are then divided into divisions, and divisions can be further divided into subdivisions. A regular meter is one in which every beat is the same length.

Finally, do remember that meter is somewhat subjective and can be greatly altered by many factors, especially tempo. We will discuss this in the next topic, but where one listener might listen to a piece with four quarter-notes per measure and feel that the quarter notes are the beat, another listener may listen to the same piece and hear the beat in a slow two with the half-note as the beat.

Goals for this topic

Using the following examples, determine:

  • the defining characteristic of all compound meters
  • what the top and bottom numbers mean in a compound time signature
  • what duple, triple, and quadruple mean when describing a compound meter
  • “theoretically ideal” beaming in compound meters
  • a list of common meters in compound duple, compound triple, and compound quadruple
  • the common beat-counting system that we’ll be using in this course (written in the “Compound Quadruple” example)
  • how to decide whether 3/4 (or 3/8, 3/16, etc.) is a simple or compound meter

The problem with 3

Use the MIDI player to listen to the following two examples. Even though they are identical excerpts, one thing has been altered in the second example. What was altered, and does it change your perception of whether the tune is simple or compound? Provide your final classifications for both examples.

Conclusions

The common characteristic of compound meters is easy to find after having discussed simple meters.

Compound meter is a regular meter in which the beat is divided into three equal parts.

Differentiating regular and irregular meters may be a new concept, but you needn’t worry about this too much right now because we will not be covering irregular meters until later in the course. For now, know that the subjective nature of meters will be discussed in the next topic, 4c - Metric Perception. After that discussion, we will see if this concept makes more sense.

Describing compound time signatures

For a compound time signature:

  • the top number is how many divisions are in the meter.
  • the bottom number is the rhythmic value of the division.

These definitions may take quite a few tries for you to reach on your own, because students often focus on making compound time signatures fit the same mold as simple time signatures. It is easy to be careless with your use of the terms beat, division, and subdivision, but these three terms are the keys to separating compound from simple meters and their time signatures. In a simple meter, the top number is the number of beats in the measure, and the bottom number is the note value of the beat. Contrast that with compound meter time signatures. The top and bottom numbers represent entirely different concepts, and for compound meters, this requires a slight bit of math to find the actual number of beats.

  • To find the number of beats in a compound time signature, divide the top number by 3.

Of course, this highlights the primary problem with our time signature system. It requires the user to already understand the system by being able to differentiate between simple and compound meters, because the system is not uniform across all meters. This is why the pedagogical method of grouping meters by simple vs compound and then attaching a word to denote the number of beats (i.e. single, duple, triple, quadruple, etc.) is useful.

Duple, Triple, and Quadruple:

The terms duple, triple, and quadruple refer to the number of beats in the measure. In compound time:

  • duple has 2 strong beats with 3 eighth notes per beat.
    • ex: 6/8
  • triple has 3 strong beats with 3 eighth notes per beat.
    • ex: 9/8
  • quadruple has 4 strong beats with 3 eighth notes per beat.
    • ex: 12/8

Within a given meter classification, there are many different time signatures. For example, in compound duple, there is 6/8, 6/16, 6/4, and many others.

Differentiating between compound and simple meters

The simplest method to differentiating is to memorize the standard groupings of all meters. That being said it is fairly easy to remember that if the top number of the time signature is a multiple of three, then that is a compound meter, assuming that the tempo does not become too slow or too fast.

“Theoretically ideal” beaming in compound time

Like simple time, theoretically ideal beaming in compound time does not obscure beats. Unlike simple time, compound time is written this way in common practice with few exceptions and only one that is notable. Occasionally a compound meter will create hemiola – a feel of two against three – by having three consecutive groups of two divisions over two compound beats. The most common notation of this occurs in 6/8 when three quarter notes are placed in a row. If written using quarter notes rather than tying two eighth notes together, this will obscure the second beat. The tune “America” from West Side Story highlights this rhythm as its primary melodic motif.

Beat counting

As with simple meters, there are various systems for counting beats and their divisions. One of the most common systems condenses the method for counting beats in simple time to 1-&-a. The other most common counting method uses 1-la-li. For this course, we will use the -la-li method to help differentiate the counting from a simple meter.

The problem with both of these systems is that there is not a unique syllable for each subdivsion. Generally speaking, students are asked to insert “ta” between each of the division syllables creating 1-ta-la-ta-li-ta. This is adequate for practice aloud, but it is poor for specificity because there are three ‘ta’ syllables in each beat. For our class, we are going to try using: 1-to-la-ta-li-ti

Meters that have a ‘3’ as the top number of the time signature

After listening the two examples in 3/4, it is easy to identify that the two examples were identical except for the tempo. In the slower example, you will likely hear it in a simple triple meter with the quarter note as the beat. For the faster example, most instead hear this as a fast compound single meter with the dotted half note as the beat. Meters such as 3/8, 3/4, and 3/2 are all dependent on tempo as to whether they are a compound or simple meter. While a good rule of thumb is to consider these meters as simple until you have listened to the piece at tempo, 3/8 meters are commonly fast and conducted in one. Make sure to look at the tempo if determining a meter’s classification when only looking at the score.