You can treat the click as whatever you want. If you wanted it to click eighth notes in 6/8 at 180 bpm then you'd set it to 180. If you wanted to hear dotted quarters (as is often handy in 6/8) you'd set it to 60. You just have it click on whatever beats you feel you need to hear. Usually it's most helpful not to make it click on every beat so you can learn to play in time without its help, only using the metronome to keep you at the right speed.
When you have weird time signatures like 13/8 it's hard to guess how to count it. Only common divisions like 2, 3, 4, and their multiples have set accent patterns. Usually when someone uses an odd time signature they have a specific pattern of accents in mind and they make it explicit.
You've got a few basic types of time signatures.... the first categorization is how the accents fall. You've got:
Duple meters - an accent every other beat (2/4, 4/4)
Triple meters - an accent every third beat (3/4, 6/8 )
Odd meters - a combination of duple and triple meter (5/4, 13/8 )
You've also got a categorization for how the beats divide...
Simple meters - beats divide into two parts (2/4, 4/4)
Compound meters - beats divide into three parts (9/8, 12/8 )
In general, if the top number of a signature is 9, 12, or 15, it's a compound meter - the unit of the beat is actually a dotted note. If the top number is 6, it'll go either way... but compound is most common.
So in 6/8, it's triple-simple if you accent 1, 3, and 5... and duple-compound if you accent 1 and 4. 9/8 is triple-compound (accent 1, 4, 7 - one beat is a dotted quarter note). 12/8 is a quadruple-compound (accent 1,4,7,10).
You usually set the metronome to the unit of the beat... so that's a quarter note in 4/4, but a dotted quarter in 12/8.
Odd meters are always assumed to be simple time - it's a devil to count them if the beats don't divide evenly. If you have a piece that changes from 12/8 to 13/8, I'd set the metronome at the eighth note - it'll actually be counting the beat division during the 12/8 part.
The tricky thing about odd meters is figuring out where the accents fall. Every odd meter (in Western music, anyway) divides into units of two or three beats, with the first beat in a set getting an accent. Since there's an odd number of beats - not evenly divisible by two or three - the accents will 'shift'... and there's a lot of ways to play them. There's usually accent marks in odd meters to show you where they fall. Your choices for 13/8 are:
Five duple, one triple (six choices)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Two duple, three triple (nine choices)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
With fifteen different ways to play it, you'll need to know where the accents are supposed to go.
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
Awesome answers. 8)
I hope you don't mind NoteBoat, but I've printed all that out for perusal over dinner tonight.
And if it's still there, and anybody wonders what 6/8) time is it's what happens when there is no space put between the 8 and the bracket.
8 ) with no gap gives the smilie 8)
Cheers, Chris
Thanks for pointing that out, Chris - I got rid of the little sunglass dudes.
I'd actually previewed it before I posted, but I only looked to make sure I didn't have problems with all the bold number for accents :)
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
Thanks for pointing that out, Chris - I got rid of the little sunglass dudes.
I had a moment of elation there. I thought for a moment that I might have a priceless document on my hands. The only known original copy of the post with sunglass dudes. Something like a valuable sheet of stamps with a misprint.
I could see myself at Sotheby's with the auctioneer intoning "Before Tom Serb became international renowned for his many mega-selling albums he posted an explanation of time signatures at GuitarNoise. This manuscript is the only surviving copy with the original smilies, which were later removed..... Do I hear half a million at the back there??..."
Alas, I'd copied it into Word to print out, and the little dudes disappeared in transit. :cry:
Still a valuable document to keep and read though. :)
Cheers, Chris
I've also seen odd meters written, for instance, instead of 13/8, it's 3+3+3+2+2 / 8. I think of them that way, like NoteBoat discusses and shows, it's broken up into smaller, more managable 2s or 3s, and the first beat in each subgroup gets the accent.
And there's lots of ways to put it together, as NB's example shows, but to me at least, they're not all usable. I like to have them arranged so, for instance, the measure or riff doesn't start with the same thing as it ends with - just to make it easier to hear where the measure starts and ends. Like for me, it's easier to hear if I have, as in the 3+3+3+2+2 example, a '3' to start and a '2' to end instead of say, 2+3+3+3+2. I like to have either a '3' or a '2' to begin or end with. Just makes it easier to feel.
Here's an example in 13/8, called Rescue Me:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=89653
Here's one in 14, called Surfing On Saturn, the 4th one down:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=144804
But you can do any group of patterns, just as long as the whole band can get into the groove of the thing - which is when you really know when you've got it - even odd meters can 'swing' and 'groove.' The 13/8 one is sort of a 'space shuffle' almost, based 'very loosely' on a blues pattern.
You can even find the groove with a drum machine sometimes :)
Doing it with a metronome's a little hard though.
I've also seen odd meters written, for instance, instead of 13/8, it's 3+3+3+2+2 / 8.
Those are called additive meters. They're often used to note non-Western music, like Indian tabla rhythms, or meters that would otherwise be confusing - on the Genesis album 'Foxtrot' there's a piece called 'Supper's Ready' that contains a section called 'Apocalypse in 9/8'. The music isn't written in 9/8 though - it's in 3+2+4/8 - because it's not in triple compound meter, which is what 9/8 would indicate.
Don't confuse them with mixed meters, where there's more than one time signature in the beginning - if it said 3/8 2/8 4/8 the rhythm would be similar to the Genesis piece, but with a subtle difference - in the mixed meter there are three downbeats for every 8 eighth notes, but in the Genesis piece there's only one downbeat, plus two stressed beats - the secondary stresses, a bit less than the downbeat.
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
Hey great - now I at least know what to call it! That Genesis tune; I don't remember how it goes off-hand but I think I know what you mean about the stressed beats and the downbeats on that. That 4/8 bit though, do they count it like a 4 with the stressed and less-stressed beats? Probably easier to just go and listen to it. For me I'd still probably wind up (if I had to actually play it) thinking of it as 3+2+2+2.
Out of habit I guess :)
Best regards.
