What is the difference between 3/4 and 6/8

Log in. Install the app. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. Thread starter Dreaux Start date Apr 16, Dreaux Junior Member. Hi everyone. I've been lingering here for quite some time and finally decieded to join. I have been playing drums for quite a while in my teens and twenties.

I have been at it again for several months now after a few years of not playing. This is irrelevant mostly, just posting a bit about myself. Does this sound right? Or am I wrong? Fuo Platinum Member. Anthony Amodeo Guest. Mad About Drums Pollyanna's Agent.

Dreaux said:. Click to expand Fuo said:. Mad About Drums said:. That's what I mean. In addition, the strength of the beats is laid out as: strongest, weak, strong, weakest. As we just learned, simple meters are meters whose beats subdivide naturally into two equal parts or we can say, two halves. In this case, the beats are half notes and they can each subdivide naturally into two quarter notes:.

Having said that, the difference between these two meters is sometimes vague. There are plenty of examples where music can be rewritten into the other meter without affecting it at all. Keep in mind that time signatures are meant to help us write music down on paper and to make reading music easier. The pattern is still clearly there with all its nuances and beautiful ups and downs.

It is duple because it consists of 2 beats in every bar and it is simple because each of those two beats divide naturally into two halves:.

It consists of two half note beats per bar and that makes it another simple duple meter! Very often, the difference between them is just a matter of making the notation easier to read. The secret to recognizing a basic time signature is two-fold: First, figure out whether it is simple or compound. Second, ask whether it is duple, triple or quadruple. Remember that musical notation is a system of communicating through symbols and so the process of making music is smoother if those symbols are clear to understand.

Can you have more than 4 beats in every bar? Yes, of course. And means six eighth notes in a measure. So why have two different meter signatures for the same number of notes in a measure? By our definition of meter signatures, we know that one of these meter signatures suggest grouping eighth notes by three, namely The measure with eighth notes group by twos is best shown with a meter signature of We feel different meter beats in and In we're likely to feel one, two, three, four, five, six.

In other words each beat contains three eighth notes, which equals a dotted quarter note. So to complete our definition, means there are six eighth notes in every measure. The eighth notes are grouped by threes, and the meter beat, the beat we tap along with, is likely to be the dotted quarter note.

The traditional definition of , six beats in a measure and the eighth note gets the beat, is mostly not correct. It's not impossible, but it would mean that was being played unnaturally slowly. If they were the same then it would just be a matter of preference for the writer but it's obviously a bit more than that. The timing of music is what creates a lot of the feel. Therefore, it takes the same amount of time to play two 8th notes as it does to play one quarter note.

That's all looking at the notes on a more individual basis. There are more to the notes that are played than just how long they carry out: sometimes they are accented, sometimes they're barely heard at all, there's staccato and everything else that adds character to the individual notes in relation to the other notes that are being played around it or along with it or whatever.

This means, roughly, that you should be playing three 8th notes in the same amount of time as it takes to play one quarter note instead of just two. That would be a 4 beat count per measure It is hard to put all this in words really but I hope this helps to get an idea in your mind. I ought to shoot a video demonstrating the different signatures and post it on Youtube The fractional music notation is a bit misleading.

We could write it like this:. We may count it like "1 la li 2 la li", where the "la"s and the "li"s are the eighth notes in between. Seeing them written like this, you may instead wonder why anybody may think they're the same in the first place!

In a way six eighth beats equals three quarter beats at the same tempo one measure in each time signature would take the same amount of time to play , but you must ask why a composer would choose one time signature over the other. It really depends on the composition of the measures. It really depends. This same logic can be applied to other groups of time signatures with mathematically equivalent beats, namely:. There really isn't a difference.