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An interesting clip on time signatures


ubit
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Sorry, but he is not entirely right. I have performed music with 4/1 time signatures (polychoral music by Heinrich Schutz for example). 2/2 is not the same as 4/4. The symbol for 2/2 which looks like a C with a line through it and is often mistakenly referred to as 'cut common' (because the symbol used for 4/4 looks like a C). It's not a C it is in fact a circle with a gap in it. It is a remnant of a previous way of denoting time signatures and was part of 'mensural notation' which uses a tempus and a prolation. To avoid me writing reams the wiki below provides a detailed explanation.

 

In case you're wondering, mensural notation was the method used from about 1200 to 1600. It's advantage is it separates 'how many beats' from 'how is the beat divided' removing our messy notation of compound time signatures such as 12/8 etc.  

 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensural_notation     

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35 minutes ago, Nail Soup said:

I posted this clip a while back and got a lot of comments which disagreed with his take on time signatures.

And a few who didn’t like his hat.

 

 

Apologies, I never saw your post.

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