12/8 Time Signature - Confused

[Mr Fixit eh]

I'm working on a song in 12/8 time. I have the fingerstyle down and it sounds Ok. Problem is that I want to throw in a verse or two of strumming, and I'm having a really hard time. The song feels like it wants the strumming to be in 4/4 time. How could this be???

The song goes like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k29JxVCKBBM (Of course, I'm only a fraction as good as Kate.

You can check out the sheet music here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/55974482/hallelujah_score.pdf

The only thing I can think of is that 3 x 1/8 notes sound like 1 beat.

I'm horribly confused, but I'm sure the theory gurus will help me

Steve

[HHP]

Think of 12/8 as 4/4 where each beat is a triplet. Like...

DA,,da,,da,,DA,,da,,da..DA...da..da,,DA,,da,,,da

1...............2..............3................4

[mr. beaumont]

Originally Posted by Mr Fixit eh

The only thing I can think of is that 3 x 1/8 notes sound like 1 beat.

I'm horribly confused,

Actually, you've got it!

[Kerbie]

How interesting. I just played this very same song a couple days ago with a friend of mine. Sounds like you have the right idea based on what you said about the 1/8 notes. I agree with HHP. You can think of 12/8 as 4/4 time where everything is a triplet. I count it as... 1-2-3, 2-2-3, 3-2-3, 4-2-3...

Cohen wrote some classic songs.

[Kerbie]

Fix it,

If it helps at all... "The House Of the Rising Sun" was actually written in 4/4, but I always thought it had a perfect 12/8 feel to it. To count it correctly, you have to count triplets, so it could just as easily been written in 12/8. Cats' "Memory" is another well-known 12/8 tune. I'm sure you could google it and find more. There are a number of well-known classical pieces in 12/8. Good luck.

Chicago's "Colour My World" and The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" were both great 12/8 pieces.

[mr. beaumont]

It's a classic "blues shuffle" feel...you can "feel" it in 4, but you'll hear the 12 8th notes on the high hat.

This is swing, quantified...swing is that triplet feel over four beats...if you count TRIP pl et TRIP pl et TRIP pl et TRIP pl et you feel it...

[mchalebk]

Lots of good replies so far. Let me add my $0.02…

Time signatures such as 3/8, 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 are referred to as Compound Meter. They indicate the proper number of beats in a measure (3, 6, 9 or 12 eighth notes), but they are usually counted by how many groups of three eighth notes there are per measure (1, 2, 3 or 4).

In reality, all of these could be notated as 3/8. There is no real difference between one measure of 12/8, two measures of 6/8 or 4 measures of 3/8. However, a musical piece will often have a feel to it that makes it obvious that more than one set of triplets should be grouped together. Someone already mentioned Norwegian Wood as being 12/8. While I suppose that’s possible, to me it always felt like 6/8.

As far as counting goes, you usually do count 12/8 as four beats. If you want to break down the beats to the eighth note level, I usually count it as: ONE-and-uh-TWO-and-uh-THREE-and-uh-FOUR-and-uh.

I find it interesting timing (no pun intended) that this topic came up. I recently wrote a piece of church music in 6/8 time. I sent it to my choir director for his input. He gave me some feedback that resulted in several measures getting an extra triplet added. At first, I found myself alternating between 6/8 and 9/8, before realizing I should simply use 15/8. Now, each verse and refrain consists of 3 measures of 15/8 followed by two measures of 6/8. It might seem like it would be weird, but it works.

Hope some of this was helpful.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Mr Fixit eh

You can check out the sheet music here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/55974482/hallelujah_score.pdf

IMO, Hallelujah should be in 6/8.
There's no serious distinction, but 6/8 is a little easier to read, and the harmonic rhythm (rate of chord change) suits 6/8 better.
12/8 is counted "1-and-a-2-and-a-3-and-a-4-and-a", 6/8 is just half that: "|1-and-a-2-and-a-|1-and-a-2-and-a-|".

Originally Posted by Mr Fixit eh

The only thing I can think of is that 3 x 1/8 notes sound like 1 beat.

Exactly right, like mr beaumont said.
The question is whether you feel there's two of those beats in each bar, or four - which could be a personal preference thing.

Here's a tune I would notate as 12/8:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijZRCIrTgQc
- same triplet arpeggio idea, but notice the slower harmonic rhythm: chords change every 4 beats.

And here's a classic pop 6/8:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9SosWvGx64&ob=av2n
- chord change every 2 beats.

Even so, either one could be written the other way, without any serious objection IMO.


BTW, this is quite different from blues shuffle or jazz swing. These would never be notated in 12/8 or 6/8, but in 4/4 with a "shuffle" or "swing" indication.
Eg, this track is a standard blues shuffle, with each beat in triplets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vo23H9J8o8
But it would (or should IMO) be written in 4/4. Whenever triplets occur in the notation (as in some of the lead guitar) they'd be bracketed with a "3" above. Writing it in 12/8 would be accurate, but would look far too fussy.

A slow blues, however, might well make sense in 12/8:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy6SFqe7XTs
- even so, it wouldn't be wrong to write in 4/4, with the "shuffle" indication (two 8ths = quarter + 8th).
The difference with "true" 12/8 is that the triplet division of each beat is generally much less marked (except for that intro).

For contrast here's a jazz 12/8 (based on an Afro-Cuban rhythm):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdlvzIEz-g
Notice how the 12 8ths are much more precisely marked. Although they still fall into 4 beats, this is not swing at all, nor is it a shuffle.
(In fact Silver himself once introduced this as being in 6/8 time, but IMO that 4-beat riff defines it, and in 6/8 it would need to be split over two bars. Making it 12/8 also makes it a 12-bar blues, structurally. But then the Afro-Cuban rhythm it derives from would normally be written as 6/8.)


And lest we forget - taking nothing away from Ms Voegele - let's remind ourselves of the definitive versions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIF4_Sm-rgQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTiXoMCppw
Ol' Len is the man for me. His version is a little over-produced, maybe - Buckley's is beautifully poised, more atmospheric - but at least Lenny sings all the words...

[Kerbie]

"Someone already mentioned Norwegian Wood as being 12/8. While I suppose that’s possible, to me it always felt like 6/8."

I could hear the piece either way, but the copyrighted sheet music is in 12/8.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by kerbie

"Someone already mentioned Norwegian Wood as being 12/8. While I suppose that’s possible, to me it always felt like 6/8."

I could hear the piece either way, but the copyrighted sheet music is in 12/8.

Yes, I think that can be either way.
It could also be 3/4 (IMO) - I was writing it out just the other day, and notated it that way without thinking. Or, I guess, I thought of 6/8 and dismissed it, intuitively.
I don't get much sense of the alternating down and upbeats that would make it clearly a compound meter like 6/8 or 12/8.
OTOH, the slow harmonic rhythm might suggest 12/8.

I just checked my old Beatles songbook (which I didn't bother to do when transcribing it because I know the keys are all wrong and often the chords are), and it has it in 3/4. (And that's also "copyrighted sheet music" of course .)
Alan Pollack (a more reputable source) also describes it as 3/4, although he does say it's "very un-waltz-like".
(Maybe I just subliminally remembered these sources when I did my transcription.)

Considering all the possibilities, I think 3/4 communicates the feel better. 6/8 and 12/8 suggest emphases that aren't really there, IMO.

[patrickgm60]

"Someone already mentioned Norwegian Wood as being 12/8. While I suppose that’s possible, to me it always felt like 6/8."

I could hear the piece either way, but the copyrighted sheet music is in 12/8.

Well, that blows my understanding of 12/8 time, then.

I suppose composers and publishers are not always correct with their own compositions. (I wonder whether McCartney and/or Lennon made those distinctions.) The phrasing, feel, and bass parts for NW are very clearly in 6/8.

[stanron]

I suppose composers and publishers are not always correct with their own compositions. (I wonder whether McCartney and/or Lennon made those distinctions.) The phrasing, feel, and bass parts for NW are very clearly in 6/8.

It is rarely the composer who writes the dots for a popular song. It was typical in the 60s that the sheet music for guitar stuff was written by piano players/ arrangers for keyboard interpretations of the song and not for accuracy. The composers, and this included the Beatles, often couldn't write notation themselves and were probably unaware of how bad some of that stuff was.

[AirWolf]

I've always had a distaste for those kinds of time signatures. We all feel them in 2/4, or 3/4 or 4/4 anyway.

The idea of 9/8 is particularly annoying because it implies that everything in 9/8 time is compound (grouped as "3 + 3 + 3"). That worked 150 years ago but not anymore.

[bishopdm]

Here's the accepted explanation, based on hundreds of years of practice: A beat is either equally divisible by two (simple meters) or equally divisible by three (compound meters). It's that simple.

How to indicate this with a time signature is not so simple, I'm afraid, and this is where people get confused, most likely because some elementary school teacher (or somebody's website) didn't know any better and taught them that in all time signatures, the top number always refers to number of beats and the bottom number always refers to the note that gets the beat. That may be the easy way, but it's not the Cowboy Way (sorry, I'm channeling Ranger Doug Green and compadres). What I mean to say is, "it's not correct."

In simple meters, the upper number in the time signature "fraction" indicates the number of beats in the measure and the lower number indicates the note value that gets the beat. The tricky part is that time signatures do not lend themselves to directly showing beats that consist of an uneven number. Otherwise we would expect to see strange time signatures such as 4/4.5 (four beats to the measure, dotted quarter gets the beat). Therefore, in compound meters, the only way to retain whole numbers in the "fraction" is as follows: the upper number in the time signature "fraction" indicates the total number of DIVISIONS in the measure and the lower number indicates the note value that gets the DIVISION of the beat.

Any of the simple meters will have a 2, 3, or 4 as the top number. Any of the compound time signatures will have a 6, 9, or 12 as the top number. You just have to memorize that these top numbers indicate beats equally divisible by three, and to get the number of beats in the measure, divide this number by three: 6 = two beats, 9 = three beats, 12 = four beats. The bottom number will tell you the note value necessary to divide each beat equally by three.

Simple: 4/4 = four beats to the measure, a quarter note gets the beat, with each beat divisible by two equal eighths.

Compound: 12/8 = four beats to the measure, a dotted quarter gets the beat, and each beat is divisible by three equal eighths.

These are all time signatures for simple meters: 2/8, 3/8, 4/8, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 2/2, 3/2, 4/2

These are all time signatures for compound meters: 6/16, 9/16, 12/16, 6/8, 9/8, 12/8, 6/4, 9/4, 12/4

How these are compound meters are PERCEIVED, though, is another matter entirely. For example, if a tempo is slow enough, a written compound meter may very well sound like a simple meter with three beats.

So keep in mind that what a time signature means and how it is perceived are two different issues.

[Laird_Williams]

Originally Posted by JonPR

BTW, this is quite different from blues shuffle or jazz swing. These would never be notated in 12/8 or 6/8, but in 4/4 with a "shuffle" or "swing" indication.

Amen to that. Transcribing a typical 4/4 blues in 12/8 would be pretty easy on the transcriber, but painfully obfuscated for the reader. The problem with annotating a shuffle in 12/8 is that you are leaving out most of the "pl"s of "TRIP pl et". You really ARE subdividing most of the beats in 2, not 3 - it is just that you aren't subdividing the beats "evenly". As a guitarist, we even move our right hands differently when strumming a 4/4 shuffle vs. a "legit" 12/8 piece. That ought to be a clue right there, given the right-hand's job as an anatomical metronome.

As with key signatures, I think a lot of folks here are expecting "too much" from time signatures. They expect them to be a perfect reflection of how to interpret a piece of music (or a section of it) rhythmically. For simpler, rhythmically-uniform pieces this expectation can jive with reality and there is no problem. But stray into just a little complexity or room for interpretation and they become merely a starting point.