What Is The Time Signature Of a Rhythm?

In this article I’m going to explain in simple, non-technical words, how I understand the concept of time signature from a dance point of view, and why it is important at all.

Let’s start with an example of 4/4 time signature. 4/4 basically means that a single bar of the rhythm has four quarter notes. Well, I’ll leave a detailed explanation of what is a quarter note outside of this article because this is more relevant to musicians rather than dancers. For us, it’s more important that there are four of those notes.

It may sound a bit confusing, but in reality it’s super simple and obvious. Have you ever tried to break down a song or a rhythm into counts? If yes, then most likely you were using time signature without even realizing it.

4/4 means that we can break a single bar into 4 counts. I’ll shows examples of it in just a minute, but first let’s clarify:

X - top number indicates the number of notes

Z - bottom number indicates the duration of the note.

4/4 – four quarter notes in a single bar;

2/4 – two quarter notes in a bar;

10/8 – ten 1/8 notes in a bar;

6/8 – six 1/8 notes in a bar;

9/8 – nine 1/8 notes in a bar, and so on.

So, let’s see now what it meant in practice. We’ll use Masmudi Kabir as our first example. Its time signature is 8/4, meaning it has eight quarter notes in a bar. If I decide to break it into counts, I would naturally do it on eight:

Dum Dum - Tak Dum - Tak -

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Well, can I break it down only in four counts instead of eight? Yes, sure, you can simply count twice slower. Or the opposite, twice faster, break it down in 16. However, I highly encourage you here to put on a song with this rhythm and listen to it. You’ll notice that trying to count on 4 or 16 doesn’t feel very natural or easy. Instead, counting it on 8 will feel like the best fit. I sometimes tell just to relax your body, and notice how it wants to “bounce” the rhythm, often our instincts are much more successful than our brains on identifying rhythms or beats.

Let’s see a few more examples:

Valse (3/4):

Dum Tak Tak

1 2 3

Samai (10/8):

Dum - - Tak - Dum Dum Tak - -

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Maqsum (4/4):

Dum Tak - Tak Dum - Tak -

1 2 3 4

Dive deeper into rhythms exploration with a special intensive at the Iana Dance Club: Identifying Rhythms.

Exercise: Listen to each of these rhythms. Now the concept of time signature will be more clear to you. I’m not trying to explain it in proper musical terms. I’m trying to show how it can be related to dancers on a practical level, but in order to fully understand it you need to apply it, so turn on some music and go through each of above examples again.

Now, let’s take the last example of Masqum. If you actually followed my suggestion on putting the music on and listening to it, you most likely will have this question in your mind: “But I want to count it naturally on eight, not on four. Does it mean that I found some rare 8/4 Maqsum?!” – No, it doesn’t. :)

Make sure that when you count the rhythm for the purpose of this exercise, you are conscious about separating only ONE bar. Otherwise, if you continue the count for the second or third bar in a row, you can reach far beyond the count of 8. Let’s see.

Two bars of Maqsum (4/4)

Dum Tak – Tak Dum – Tak – Dum Tak – Tak Dum – Tak –

1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4

1 2 3 4 | 5 6 7 8

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Another example, Valse (3/4)

Dum Tak Tak Dum Tak Tak Dum Tak Tak Dum Tak Tak

1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3

1 2 3 | 4 5 6 | 1 2 3 | 4 5 6

1 & A | 2 & A | 3 & A | 4 & A

1 2 3 | 2 2 3 | 3 2 3 | 4 2 3

There can be many different ways of indicating the count, but the time signature remains the same regardless of how you decided to pronounce the count.

Understanding of the time signature can make your dance life much easier, especially in terms of communication with a live band. Sometimes when you are structuring your show, or just a song, musicians may say something like: “Ok, we’ll start with some upbeat 2/4, then switch to a regular 4/4, and… do you want a taqsim over 8/4 in the middle?” Well, now you actually know what they are talking about.

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Author: Iana Komarnytska
Photographer: Pedro Bonatto