- Hi.
I've got a short extract
of music on the board here,
and as you look at it, hopefully,
you're slightly troubled by what you see.
Why should you be
troubled by what you see?
Because, actually, the
notes all look sensible,
and if you sing that tune,
it sort of makes sense, doesn't it?
All makes sense.
It would make even more sense
if I just made one
alteration to this note.
There we go.
But the notes sound all right.
The rhythms all seem to make sense.
6/8 is telling us, isn't it, something.
Time signatures, remember, tell us,
the top number's saying
what we've got in the bar,
what have we got, six
of something in the bar.
The bottom number's telling
us what those somethings are.
So, eight at the bottom, if
you know your time signatures,
is telling us that the units
that we're counting here
are quavers, so six quavers in a bar.
So, what's wrong with it?
Actually, what's wrong with it is the way
the notes are beamed together,
in other words, how we
join things together.
That's where that looks
rather bizarre in 6/8.
Why am I talking about this?
Well, there are plenty of people out there
asking for help in this area, because
there are exams in music
theory around the world
where you're given
these kind of exercises,
where you're given a
piece of music like that
and somebody says,
"Beam the notes as they
should be organised,"
so kind of grouping things together
in the way that is the
standard arrangement.
Other people are maybe
writing their own music
and then just sort of
not being entirely sure
how these notes do beam together,
so there's a little bit
of a query about that.
Other people are putting music
into all sorts of bits
of musical software,
some of which is rather better at sorting
this stuff out for you than other bits.
But in my experience, even the best
musical software sometimes does something
rather strange with the beaming of notes.
So we're just going to spend a few moments
looking at this example and working out
how the beaming should be organised.
Well, the first thing
is, you need to be sure
you understand your time signatures.
And of course, we've got this
thing called simple time,
and we've got this other
thing called compound time.
If you need to know more about
that, we've got resources
at Music Matters to help explain all that,
so have a look at simple and compound time
on the Music Matters material,
and that will be explained to you.
Basically, it works like this.
If you've got two, three, or four
as your upper number,
you're in simple time.
If you've got six, nine, or twelve as your
upper number, then
you're in compound time.
So, there's a bit more to it than that,
but as soon as you see that six,
you're thinking, "Ah,
I'm in compound time."
What does compound time mean?
Well, it means we start with
what it says on the tin.
So we've got six quavers in each bar,
or eighth notes, if you're
using the American system.
Well, we have got six
eighth notes or six quavers
in each bar, so what's the problem?
Well, the problem is this.
When we're in compound time,
one of these time signatures
with six, nine, or twelve at the top,
it's telling us to group
things together in threes.
So if I've got six of
something in the bar,
it means I've got two lots of three.
So, what are these lots?
They're quavers, or these eighth notes.
So I'm trying to organise each bar
so I can put a group of
three quavers together,
three eighth notes
together, and therefore,
it's going to flag up two beats.
So when I'm in 6/8 time, there's the 6/8,
so it's telling me that I've got
one, two, three, four, five, six,
but because it's a compound time,
it says, "Organise life
into two groups of three."
What does that then look like?
Because if I beam those together
in these groups of three,
what I've started with now becomes this.
And then I can take one step further,
because I can then say,
"Well, if I'm in 6/8 time,
"here are my two groups of three,
"so what does each group
of three amount to?"
Well, the total value of
that group of three is this.
So I end up with two beats in a bar.
Because when you see six, you think,
"Well, how can that mean
there are two beats in a bar?"
But when you see this, you
can see how we get there.
So, by organising them
into two groups of three,
there are still six quavers in the bar,
so 6/8 is perfectly true,
but because it's compound time,
one of those things with six,
nine, or twelve at the top,
you always organise what you've
got into groups of three,
which is what we've done
here, and then you say,
"What's each group of three worth?"
Well, it's worth one of these, isn't it?
So I've got two of these
dotted crotchet beats,
or dotted quarter note beats.
Therefore, the beaming, joining together
of notes and everything,
should reflect this.
So, if I want to know how
to beam the notes properly,
what I really need to do is to organise
this melody into these beats.
In other words, like this.
You can see that this
amounts to the first beat,
and then this amounts to the second beat.
So I've got the equivalent
of these six quavers,
six eighth notes, but I've got these two
dotted crotchet beats.
Okay, if I carry on, well, let's do
the first three quavers, or eighth notes,
one, two, three.
So these all belong together, look.
And then, in the second half of that bar,
I've got one, two, three,
or quavers four, five, six,
so they're going to go together.
And then I've got some more
complicated looking rhythm,
but if you do the maths here,
you'll see that this lot belongs together,
and you'll see that this
lot belongs together.
And we've also got the
first bit of the next bar,
or the next measure, and so this adds up
to the first beat of the next bar.
Okay, so, having done
that, how do I notate it?
You might want to pause at this moment
and have a go at doing it for yourself
if you want to see where
you're at with all of this,
and then you could come back to me
and see what the answer is.
But it should look like this.
Because those three
quavers or eighth notes
are there inside the first beat, well,
they should all be beamed together.
Then I can see that those three notes
belong to this first beat.
When I come to this one,
this is an interesting one,
because you could say,
"Well, there's nothing wrong
"with that, because that's all
"comfortably sitting
inside the second beat."
But actually, here's
something to think about,
never use a tie when you could use a dot.
Now, that's not the same
as saying never use a tie.
Sometimes you need to use a tie
to connect from one beat to the next,
or to tie a note across a bar line.
But if you're inside a
beat and you could use
a dot instead of a tie,
always worth considering.
So the second beat of the first bar
should actually look like this.
And you see, as soon as
you look at that first bar,
or that first measure, you
can much more clearly see
this first beat and this second beat.
Why do we divide these things into three?
It's the nature of compound time.
What we say as a definition
of simple and compound time
is that in simple time, beats
naturally divide into two.
So if you've got a crotchet
or a quarter note beat,
it naturally divides into two
quavers, or two eighth notes.
But when you're in compound time,
the beats naturally divide into three.
So you can see, if these are the beats,
they're naturally dividing into three.
But you have to sort of do it
the other way round to work it out.
You have to start by
saying, "Well, there's 6/8,
"what does that mean?
"It means this.
"Let's organise them into groups of three,
"and then I can see what the beats are."
But now you've got the beats, you can see
that these beats are dividing
into groups of three.
Not three notes, but the
equivalent of three quavers,
or three of those eighth notes.
Okay, now, going into the second bar,
the second measure, we can see that all
of this lot really belongs
together, doesn't it?
So it sort of starts off all right,
but there's no reason on earth
why this couldn't all be connected.
You see why?
Because it's all sitting inside
that first beat of that measure.
And then when I look at the
second half of that measure,
well, is there any reason not to connect
those three quavers,
or three eighth notes?
No, there isn't.
So let's stick them together.
There we are.
And then we can have a bar line.
Well, we're definitely going
to need this tie, aren't we?
I mean, we can't sort of
substitute a dot there,
because we're going across a bar line,
so there's nothing we
can do about the tie,
so we need the tie.
And then, as I go into the
next bar, the next measure,
I can see that this is making up
the first of these beats,
so let's have a tie,
and then, let's copy this rhythm,
but let's beam all this together.
So we'll have that and that.
Okay, then, this lot really all
belongs together as well, doesn't it?
So there we are.
That lot all together
is going to constitute
this second beat.
So there we are with that one.
And even at the end, when I'm
looking at this last note,
I'm thinking, "Do I need to have that tie,
"or is there a note value that equates
"to one of these beats?"
Well, obviously, there is.
It's going to be a dotted crotchet,
or a dotted quarter note.
Now, when you look at
this, you immediately see
that this is actually much
easier to read than this.
That's not horrible to read.
In fact, it's a bit easier to read now
I've put the circles in.
But what you want to
be able to do is to see
where these beats come.
Now, the way that the
beaming is organised,
you can see, there's the
first beat of that measure,
there's the second beat.
Here's the first beat.
Here's the second beat.
And here's the first beat of the measure,
or the bar, that follows.
So, in this short little
time we have together here,
we haven't exhausted this whole agenda.
It's quite a big one, really,
if you wanted to look at every single
time signature and work
out what you have to do.
What I've tried to do, however,
is to extol the principles
of what you have to do,
and to do that in
relation to compound time,
which is usually a bit more of a bother
to people than working in simple time.
So, I hope that makes sense,
and see how you got on
with your working of it
compared to this, and
see where you were right.
And if you were totally
right, well done to you.
And if there was something
you missed there,
well, here's a chance just to
see what you should've done.
It's very helpful, this.
You know, if you're going to compose,
write, arrange, whatever, you need to have
the beaming right for the time signature.
Otherwise, people get in a
pickle when they play it,
and things don't always make sense.
If you're performing and reading music,
it's helpful to know exactly
how this beaming works,
because it helps you to see beats
and to keep your rhythm on track.
So there we are, a few minutes
on the topic of beaming.
