Time Signatures: Normal and Weird

October 21, 2022 6:41 PM

My child would like to understand musical time signatures, both normal and weird. Do you have a good explainer YouTube video? We'd like to watch it!
posted by Eyebrows McGee to Media & Arts (13 answers total)

Perhaps a bit of a slog for a young child, but some of this is covered in the rhythm episode of How Music Works with Howard Goodall.
posted by caek at 7:32 PM on October 21, 2022

This video by Rick Beato goes through a bunch of popular songs that have various time signatures. It's not really an explainer video, but he counts along and there are on-screen numbers counting out the time signatures along with the music, so it should hopefully be easy to follow along and see/hear what's happening.
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:50 PM on October 21, 2022

Leonard Bernstein's The Joy of Music deals with this and more. Mini-McGee will learn how to conduct with visible down-beat! And they'll be able to identify "in two", "in six", etc. And if that becomes common-place, expose them to Take Five and videos that include dance with the music.

Bernstein in action.
posted by gregoreo at 8:04 PM on October 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

Visual Musical Minds has a rhythm reading video series that I love!
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:10 PM on October 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

I found this video helpful to distinguish between 3/4 and 6/8.
posted by kevinbelt at 8:13 PM on October 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

I teach music theory for my job. Here's a video on rhythm and time signatures I made for a pandemic online class, if you're interested.
posted by daisystomper at 9:55 PM on October 21, 2022 [6 favorites]

Would recommend the CD Tuplets for Toddlers- which features well known songs arranged in odd time signatures by an array of YouTube music figures- and then more importantly Adam Neely’s video about the making of.
posted by rongorongo at 2:07 AM on October 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Less of an explainer but a fun video demonstration of a bunch of different time signatures on drums.
posted by hankscorpio83 at 7:16 AM on October 22, 2022

I like how DJ Bonebrake demonstrates the different times with his left foot, left hand, and right hand here.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:35 AM on October 22, 2022

These are amazing suggestions on the theory side above. If you wanted experientially to get "this 5/4 (or 9/4) thing is clearly music, even though 3/4 and 4/4 are the things I'm used to interpreting as music" then you can't do much better than Dave Brubeck. 5/4 is obvs Take Five, 9/4 is Blue Rondo a la Turk. Supposedly touring with the US Army exposed him to tons of "non-standard" time signatures (at least to some def'ns of "standard"). Scientific American touched on some of this 10 years back here. (Not what you asked, I know, but once somebody pointed you to Rick Beato and others, I can't top the music theory skills. But Take Five is the thing that made me understand that it didn't have to be blues in 4/4 to really, really move.)
posted by adekllny at 7:42 AM on October 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is not a good explainer, but perhaps a good demonstrator. Every year a group of "seasoned" Mario Maker level creators get together and make a variety of "anniversary" levels. In 2020, one of the fourth anniversary (4YMM) levels was "Master of the Rhythms".

It's not without flaws, for example the background music detracts, but it's a puzzle level that requires the player to understand changing rhythmic signatures to unlock new rooms.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 2:37 PM on October 22, 2022

9/4 is Blue Rondo a la Turk.

9/8 actually, though that doesn't invalidate your point.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:24 PM on October 22, 2022

Here is a video I love that explains this in a way that my brain can follow it. This is Mike Portnoy from the band Dream Theatre (along with is glorious hair.) I've watched this video many times because it's just so much fun to watch him add more and more complexity.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 5:59 PM on October 23, 2022