Post #234,915
11/18/05 4:15:19 PM
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IMNAM
I am not a musician.
I know what a note is.
I know what a chord is.
But, in simple terms, what a bar?
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail ... but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn...that was fun!"
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Post #234,917
11/18/05 4:18:15 PM
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IWAM
I was a musician.
A "bar" is, in "common" time (4/4 time), 4 beats.
-YendorMike
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvani
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Post #234,919
11/18/05 4:21:48 PM
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AKA a Measure.
At dictionary.reference.com the entry for [link|http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bar|bar] says measure. For [link|http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=measure|measure], it says bar.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion...
HTH! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who figures a bar is 4 notes in the case of 4/4 time and 16 notes in 16/16 time. Or something like that.)
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Post #234,922
11/18/05 4:42:08 PM
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So then using 4 notes to the bar
I could write a song using all possible combinations and shut down the music industry. Running the scale 3 octaves produces 12 notes. 21 ** 4 = 194,481 combinations.
There's got to be something more involved than this.
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail ... but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn...that was fun!"
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Post #234,932
11/18/05 5:10:39 PM
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Yeah. Lawyers.
[link|http://www.runningworks.com|
] Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
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Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
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Post #234,933
11/18/05 5:11:18 PM
8/21/07 6:15:53 AM
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4 beats - not notes
The most common note is a quarter note, this is true, however half notes take 2 beats, whole notes 4 beats, dotted notes take 1.2 times whatever time period they would normally occupy (IIRC - its been a long time since I was a competent dot follower) etc.
So going to back to the riff for Satisfaction in tablature:
E-|-----------------------------------------------------------|
B-|-----------------------------------------------------------|
G-|-----------------------------------------------------------|
D-|-----------------------------------------------------------|
A-|-2--2----2--4--5----5--5--4--2--2--------------------------|
E-|-----------------------------------------------------------|
it is quarter half quarter quarter half quarter quarter quarter quarter quarter
Timing of notes is just as important as pitch in determining recognizability/melody.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #235,248
11/20/05 9:28:04 PM
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A small division within the music of a useful size.
It's semi-arbitrary. In a song where the chords change regularly and evenly, they often correspond with a bar, a bit less often two bars or half a bar. Is usually makes up 4 notes of the "normal" length for that piece, but this is not adhered to as time signatures can be any size. But 4 is typical. A march is 4/4 (literally, four quarter notes per bar). A waltz is 3/4 (three quarter notes).
The "normal" note length depends on how the melody is written. Something like Beethoven's fifth has an overwhelmingly majority of notes all the same length (a quarter note). Something from Madonna will have a much wider variation of note lengths.
Bars are often grouped, though there's no notation for that. A song phrase (e.g. a single 'line') will often be 4 or 8 bars. A song section, say, a verse or a chorus, will often have a multiple of four bars - e.g. 12, 16, 20, etc. A 'long' note or a pause at the end of a chorus, for example, is likely to be an extra bar. You can sometimes feel the rhythm of the song take a double-step when that happens.
It's quite tricky to explain if you don't read music. :-)
Wade, who is a muso, if you hadn't realized.
"Insert crowbar. Apply force."
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Post #235,255
11/20/05 10:48:07 PM
11/20/05 10:54:34 PM
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But not entirely arbitrary
Traditionally the strongest beat is the first in a bar. Arranged from strongest to weakest, in normal 4/4 time the peaks are at notes 1, 3, 2 and 4. In 3/4 time the peaks are 1, 2, and 3, with 2 and 3 about the same strength. Think "waltz". In 2/2 time those strong peaks from 4/4 time are even. In 8/8 time every 8'th peak is stronger. And so on.
People don't, of course, religiously stick to that. But that's the trend, so an experienced musician can hear the difference between 2/2, 4/4 and 8/8 even though they are theoretically different ways of writing the same thing.
Note that I said "traditionally". One common trend for new genres of music is to deliberately turn previously established conventions on their head. For instance in jazz there are a lot of syncopated rhythms. All that syncopated means is that the emphasis is where you don't expect it to be. So 4/4 in jazz is likely to see peaks at 2, 4, 1 and then 3. So the beat is off from where you'd expect it.
So who would notice? It turns out that virtually everyone does! It may take a musician to tell you what's different, but you know that something is as soon as you hear it. (Note, even though the emphasis is wrong, you can still locate the chords because that's where words tend to start, instruments come in, etc. A lot of boundaries in the music line up along chord boundaries, so you get lots of audible reminders that you're "off".)
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Edited by ben_tilly
Nov. 20, 2005, 10:52:57 PM EST
Edited by ben_tilly
Nov. 20, 2005, 10:54:34 PM EST
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