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Why is the 9/8 time signature so confusing?

Signals Music Studio

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This is a giant exploration of rhythmic concepts for songwriters, and the confusion surrounding the 9/8 time signature as well as all other compound meters. There is a good solid rant in here that gets to the heart of a topic I’d like to explore more, which is the outdated and relic teaching methods still used by modern music educators in professional academic settings.

Liked this video? You’ll probably enjoy these other rhythmically related videos:
Polymeter- https://signalsmusic.studio/lessons/p...
3:4 Polyrhythms- https://signalsmusic.studio/lessons/m...
Sextuplets- SEXTUPLETS- How to Play, Count, and Write ...
Truncated Polymeter- Writing Complex Prog / Djent Rhythms that ...

A few things to mention- when converting 9/8 to 3/4 with triplets, it’s important to remember that the tempo markings must indicate the correct beat. If I’m doing 3/4 with triplets, my quarter note pulse is the one I’d be using for my metronome, while in compound triple meter, I’d write my tempo marker as a dotted quarter note.
Also, the graphics during one part of the animation show the wrong beaming of 8th notes. Minor detail but still, it should represent the underlying pulse (as I specifically state!).

Here’s the songs I mentioned:
Francisco Tarrega Etude in Em NOT CARCASSI! tab):https://www.classtab.org/tarrega_etud...
Twista – Get Me Twista - Get Me
Dream Theater- Voices Voices- Dream Theater

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Table of Contents
00:00 Intro
00:42 Demonstrating Basic 9/8
02:30 Making a 9/8 Groove
07:14 The Traditional Approach
09:04 An Example from Francisco Tarrega
11:14 rant
12:36 Polymeter, Triplets, and Twista

20 Comments

@fleeb 5 years ago Pinned

I think I saw something in Early Music Sources that suggests, maybe, the classical 9/8 view might take strong influence from very early music, and mensural notation. What we think of as 9/8, in mensural notation, becomes perfectum maior (circle with a dot in the middle). Imperfectum maior would be 6/8 to us (semi-circle with a dot in the middle). I wonder how much of this influence carried forward to how we teach music today, rather than a more modern thinking espoused here, where we may subdivide in whatever way we choose to generate the rhythms we seek in our compositions, and not get too hung up on the time signature used to convey this meaning.

@hamzasalman6345 5 years ago

I clicked in 9/8th of a second

@paris1970100 5 years ago

i have a funny story abt 9/8. first of all im Greek and most of our traditional music is in odd time, usually 7/8 or 9/8. So Im in this band and our instructor had a gig where they played such songs and they had trouble figure out a part in 9/8 i think. thay had been talking abt it and of the guys goes: dont worry if you fall out of the beat just follow the audience's clapping. he did indeed fall out of the beat but because the audience was clapping the 3+2+2+2 pattern (without them even knowing) he jumped right back in. idk if it is just me that finds it fascinating😂

@EminTuralic 5 years ago

I'm from the Balkans and 9/8 is so engraved into our culture that people with no musical background, almost completely tonedeaf, can follow the rhythm without any problem, dance, and sing along to them. Always found it odd (no pun intended).

@MaggaraMarine 5 years ago

I feel like a lot of people here in comments who say "I'm feeling 9/8 as 3+3+3" or "I'm feeling 9/8 as 2+2+2+3" are missing the point. 9/8 shouldn't be felt in one way. The way you should feel 9/8 depends on the context. In older classical music, it's basically always 3+3+3 (and this is where the idea of 9/8 being a compound triple meter comes from - old theory books describe it in this way, because they focus on classical music, where this is the way 9/8 is felt, at least the vast majority of time). In more modern music, there are more options (either 3 groups of 3, or some combination of 3 groups of 2 and one group of 3).

@IndependenceGuitar 5 years ago

Time signatures like this are the reason I encourage every musician to learn basic konnakol.

@stefandoerr3859 5 years ago

I just wanted to point out that 9/8 is very common in Greek, Turkish and probably more eastern music traditions (and thus not especially confusing to our ears). For example the fast karsilama rythm which is counted as 12 12 12 123. And of course the zeibekiko dance which is a very slow 9, nearly feels like a 4+5.

@ariesmp 5 years ago

As soon as that 9th note hit, it was like Google earth zooming in on the Balkans.

@AtakanKöprülü 5 years ago

Video: Why is the 9/8 time signature so confusing?

Random Turkish guy: Hold my Ayran

@ataberkyavas7476 5 years ago

In Turkey it's very common, especially in areas closer to Balkans. Gypsys love this for some reason, evey gypsy folk song is in 9/8 in Turkey.

@venahtmusic 5 years ago

You should do a video sometime on how to make 4/4 NOT sound like 4/4. Similar to how you explained there's a lot of ways you can write in 9/8 instead of three groups of three, there's also ways to "prog up" 4/4 :)