https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/passing-notes/bored-of-44-other-time-signatures-in- dance-music Bored of 4/4: Other Time Signatures in Dance Music The overwhelming majority of dance music is written in 4/4 time; a very large proportion also sticks rigidly to a four-to-the-floor kick drum pattern. Those conventions are informed by decades of western musical traditions and the stylistic tropes of countless 20th- century popular music genres – from blues to rock’n’roll, disco to soul. The net result is that writing music in 4/4 is a default choice for virtually all contemporary dance music genres. Breaking away to an ‘alternative’ time signature – anything other than 4/4 – might seem like a risky choice. There are, of course, a number of very good reasons why 4/4 is still the ‘safest’ time signature for anyone writing club music. Firstly, dancers in most club environments are likely to respond favourably to familiar 4/4 grooves. However, don’t underestimate listeners’ receptiveness to different grooves. It’s much easier to nod your head to a non-4/4 beat than it is to sit and analyse it. Dancers probably aren’t counting the notes; if the groove’s good, they’ll dance to it whether it’s 4/4, 7/8 or pretty much anything else. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, DJs are far more likely to play tracks that mix easily with other music. If your tracks are in 5/4, it’s going to take a lot of effort to work them into a set – there’s a good chance most DJs will just leave your records out of their box rather than jumping through hoops to try and fit them into a mix. But while DJ friendliness is obviously important, it shouldn’t necessarily be the overriding factor when making creative decisions. Dance music would soon become highly derivative if all producers stuck rigidly to a series of club-focused conventions and de facto rules. In this instalment of Passing Notes, we’ll take a closer look at a number of tracks which use alternative time signatures. We can only scratch the surface of the infinite possibilities in terms of time signatures, but by examining a handful of the most common options we can explain how and why breaking away from 4/4 can be a highly rewarding creative challenge. WHAT ARE TIME SIGNATURES? In conventional notation, time signatures are represented using two numbers, one on top of the other: https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/passing-notes/bored-of-44-other-time-signatures-in- dance-music The image above shows a 6/8 time signature. The top number tells us that there are six beats in the bar. The bottom number tells us that these beats are eighth notes (or ‘quavers’). Hence, there are six quavers to a bar. A question that immediately arises when looking at this signature, is how is that different from a 3/4 signature. Surely, six eighth notes is the same as three quarter notes? However, while it is true that a bar of each of the two signatures at the same tempo will last the same length of time, the two time signatures are different. 6/8 differs 3/4 due to the accent or emphasis of the beat. In a 6/8 signature, the natural accent is on the first and fourth quavers: 1-2-3-4-5-6 whereas if we played quavers in a 3/4 signature, the emphasis would occur on the first, third and fifth: 1-2-3-4-5-6 Some people find it easier to count those 3/4 quavers in a slightly different way: 1-and-2-and-3-and We can see and hear the difference in the example below. The first two bars are in a 3/4 time signature, while the second two are in 6/8: Note how the placement of the snare drums and the emphasis of the hi-hats creates a small but noticeable shift in feel from one time signature to the other. Other times signatures are defined in similar ways. To get a feel for counting the beat, a classic example is The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s 1959 track ‘Take Five’, which takes its name from its 5/4 time signature. By counting along “ 1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5…”, you should be able to follow the time signature of the track. If you have trouble catching the timing, focus on Brubeck’s piano vamp, which is one bar long and repeats throughout most of the track. With the basics explained, let’s take a look at how those principles apply in dance music… EMMA’S ‘DREAM PHONE’ – 3/4 As a starting point for examining alternative time signatures in dance music, let’s begin with E.m.m.a’s 2012 track ‘Dream Phone’, which is in 3/4 time. It’s a great example of a 3/4 beat as it’s an easy track to count along to, following the beat as “ 1-2-3-1-2-3″ rather than the “ 1-2-3-4-1- 2-3-4″ count you’d use for a 4/4 track. https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/passing-notes/bored-of-44-other-time-signatures-in- dance-music In an interview with Dummy last year , E.m.m.a explained that the track was her attempt to “change the world with a 3/4 tune shoehorned in a kind of post-dubstep [style]”, tripping up a few DJs in the process. Although the track was written in 3/4, it’s worth noting that there are a number of sections from around the 0:50 mark onwards where the timing would more easily be understood as 6/8. 3/4 and 6/8 are closely related, so the distinction is quite subtle, but this is pertinent for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s a reminder that time signature isn’t just defined by the setting in your DAW or sequencer, but the timing of the notes you play; just because your project’s set to 3/4 (or 4/4, or anything else) doesn’t mean you can’t play melodies in other time signatures. Secondly, timing is about the listener’s perception just as much as it’s about the writer’s intention (in fact, you could argue that the writer’s intention doesn’t actually matter in most contexts, but the listener’s perception is always critical). Part of the reason ‘Dream Phone’ works so well as a twist on the familiar devices and motifs of dubstep and grime is that it doesn’t sound completely alien, despite its uncommon time signature. You can still follow the groove easily without worrying about counting beats or figuring out time signatures. The first time Keysound’s Dusk and Blackdown played it on Rinse FM, they didn’t realise it was in 3/4 until they had trouble mixing out of it. Thirdly, as we discussed in our previous Passing Notes feature on polyrhythms , using multiple time signatures for different elements of a track can also work very effectively for creating unique grooves and rhythms. In the case of 3/4 and 6/8 it’s a very small difference, but it’s also possible to mix and match very different time signatures for more complex polyrhythms. (For a further example of a related idea, take a look at our recent Breakdown feature on Lukid’s ‘USSR’ , in which the synth line implies 3/4 before resolving back into 4/4.) We’ll come back to a second example of this kind of ambiguity later in an Actress track, but first let’s consider some more examples of non-4/4 time signatures. KENTON SLASH DEMON’S ‘ORE’ – 6/8 As we noted earlier, 6/8 time is very closely related to 3/4 but with a slightly different feel. We can hear a great example of a 6/8 time signature in ‘Ore’ by Kenton Slash Demon. The part starting at 0:21 is a perfect example of a 6/8 beat, with the bassline (in yellow in the piano roll below) landing on the quavers and the kick (red) and snare (blue) emphasising every first and fourth quaver: Here’s a simplified version of that section: The subsequent change to 4/4 timing at 1:10 also makes the impact of this section all the more powerful. https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/passing-notes/bored-of-44-other-time-signatures-in- dance-music ACTRESS’S ‘LOST’ – 6/4 ‘Lost’, from Actress’s 2010 album Splazsh , is an interesting example of a track which sounds quite simple at first but reveals hidden complexity. The time signature is best defined as 6/4. This is clearest at the beginning, where the bassline repeats every six beats: However, things get more complex with the introduction of the loose triplets at 0:29, and then even more so at the end, where the introduction of the snare means the beat could be interpreted as a 4/4 pattern repeated every one and a half bars. This is another great example of the ambiguity we discussed back in the ‘Dream Phone’ example. There’s a chance Darren Cunningham wrote ‘Lost’ with his project’s time signature set to 4/4, then included a 1.5-bar bassline loop, giving this unusual sense of timing to the track. It could be argued that the unconventional and unpredictable timing is a large part of what makes ‘Lost’ such a great track – it’s close enough to conventional 4/4 house tropes to sound familiar, but also different enough to sound original.