#6 8 music notes how to

A dotted quarter note = 3 - 8th beats.

It's harder to find the beats that you need to group together for your four sets of three 8th beats.įigure out how many 8th beats are in each note, or pair the notes together so that their values together equal three 8th beats. So.we know that we have twelve 8th beats in the measure if we're counting each individual 8th beat.īut instead of having the individual beats written out, we have to find them within the note values on the page. This example is based on a 12/8 time signature.

#6 8 music notes how to

Now let's look at the 9/8 time signature.you'll find it easy to count if you're clear on how to count 6/8. When we play this together in the piano you'll see how I play these accents and how they help to divide the measure into different parts. Lastly, change what you say to '1, 2, 3 - 2, 2, 3' or 'ONE, two three, TWO, two three,' to get used to thinking in terms of 2 counts/beats per measure instead of 8. Like this: 'ONE, two three, FOUR, five six.' The accent on beat four will be a little less than the one for beat one. Next, say the first 3 beats as a group by putting more emphasis on '1'.then do the same with the last 3 beats and the emphasis this time will be on '4'. Those accented beats are important in compound time signatures. You want to put more emphasis on the very first note - almost like you were playing an accent on that note on the piano. Slower tempos work better when you want to count each beat individually. Try saying each beat 1-6 yourself, but say the beats slowly.(Which one you ultimately use will depend on the type of piece that you're playing and what tempo it is).įirst, if we count every single 8th beat, we will count out each separate note with the corresponding verbal number. If you remember, we can count 6/8 one of two different ways, and both will be correct.

Once you understand how to count 6/8 either by single 8th beats or as 2 groups of 3 notes together, you'll be able to apply the same principle to the other remaining compound time signatures.Ī 6/8 time signature is usually the first compound one that we learn and it's the most used in our music. Let's see how this works for each different time signature. Either way you end up counting this measure will be correct. In the 3rd image, I've drawn out the numbers for each separate note as well as drawing brackets over the 2 groups of 3 notes. We can either count the exact number of 8th beats for each measure as noted, or we can group the 8th beats together in sets of 3, and then count only 2, 3, or 4 quarter beats for each measure, depending on what our top number is. There's one more thing that is interesting about Compound Time signatures, and that is that we can count them more than one way. We either count 6, 9, or 12 8th beats as indicated. This simply means that we're counting a different number of 8th beats for each measure in the music. However, if you see in the 3 examples in the 1st image, the top numbers are all different. Remember that a Time Signature tells us how many beats are in each measure and what kind of note is going to get the beat that we're counting.Ĭompound time signatures share the same bottom number so that means we're counting 8th beats instead of quarter beats like we do when there's a 4 <-representing a quarter note - as the bottom number.

Anytime you see a time signature with an '8' as the bottom number, you have a compound time signature. Compound Time signatures are often found in our music.