Time signatures

has anyone done a lesson on time signatures and how they work? i really have problems with them, like i make a riff on my guitar but then i try to put it into guitar pro i cant get it to fit into the bars properly. is this a big problem? its just much easier if it looks like it all fits nicely

That would be a really helpful lesson.

Good Idea.

Yeah, I could do one at some point if I get time.

@BBT, is it the time signatures you're having trouble with or the note lengths?

its the time signatures this time. i often get incomplete bars. its kinda annoying

The incomplete bars could be from either messing up the length of each note, or from messing up the length of each bar.

What time signature are you trying to use? There's a counter in the bottom left of the GP window which tells you how many beats in the bar are taken up by notes or rests.

hmm it seems i overwrote the song i was having trouble with. stupid me

well when i play it on GP and play along with my guitar its all right, so i know the notes are the right length. im sure its just my un-understanding on how bars and time signatures work, cuz right now im just doing it by ear and trial&error. ill try to do it up again and maybe post a screenshot of whats happening

Ok, that would help.

Do you guys get the concept of the two numbers? The bottom number is the type of note that the beats are being counted in (quarter, eighth, etc) and the top number is the number of those beats per bar. Therefore, 4/4 is four quarter note beats per bar, 7/8 is 7 8th note beats per bar. When you get to the end, you jump right back to the first beat of the next bar, so in 7/8, there isn't a rest or anything where the final eighth note would be - it jumps to the first beat of the next bar, beginning the cycle over all.

To be honest, once you've got that then there isn't much more one could put in a lesson, except maybe for examples.

You could also read this thread.

i finally got around to re doing it, i looked at that thread and it helped a little.



okay as you can see ive got some funky time signatures for this to all work out right. is there any way to make this fit but with just the same time sig?
you can see how it generally goes 1,2,3 1,2,3 1,2,3 right? but sometimes it goes 1,2,3 1,2,3 1,2,3,4. thats where it confuses me you know what im sayin?

Umm from just rough counting it looks like 14 4 for the last 5 bars..
16 4 for the firts bar..
And eh 13 4 fr the second, then 14 4 again.
If you put different notes into different bars you could fit it all into a few 8 4 bars tho, youll get it thru trial and error ya kinda learn yourself..

You're just making it really complicated when you write it like that, to save anyone such torture, you need to abbreviate it. From what you've explained your piece is just progressive, meaning there's more than one time signature.

There's signatures like 2/2, 2/4, 3/4, 3/8, 4/2, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8, 9/8, 12/8 (an awesome signature).

I'm writing a lesson on this now, it'll also be with the rest of the info on how to read notation.

But to explain briefly, each number that's at the bottom defines a note from notation.

/2 defines the minim,
/4 defines the crotchet,
/8 defines the quaver,
Anything else in modern time is just over complicating it, when you can easily simplify it into these time signatures. Anyway if you don't mind waiting, I'm writing a lesson on this right now and have been for a while since you posted it, but it should be up soon.

hmm okay