How to Read Music - Level 1 (High Voices)

7. Time Signatures and Barlines 

Time Signatures

At the very beginning of a piece of music, just after the clef, you will find two numbers, one above the other. This is called a time signature. A time signature gives you two pieces of information:

• how many beats per measure there are
• what kind of beats we are counting

One of the most common time signatures is 4/4 - it looks like this:

The top number tells you that there are 4 beats in the bar. The bottom number tells us that we are counting quarter notes. So 4/4 means there should be four quarter notes in each measure. We have already seen lots of examples of music which has four quarter note beats per measure - here is one:

The top number is most often a 2, 3, 4, 6, 9 or 12. However, you could also see 5, 7, 15 or anything else really! Most music written from the Classical to Romantic eras uses a top number from the first group - these are regular time signatures. This means they can be divided up into equal beats (you can divide all those numbers by 2 or 3). The second group are irregular - you can't divide 5, 7 or 15 by anything, so there is no way to divide the bar up into equal beats. Irregular time signatures are most often seen in music written from the 20th century onwards.

The bottom number can only be 2, 4, 8 or 16. Most of the time it is 2, 4 or 8. Very rarely you might see 16 or even 32! The bottom number tells you what kind of beats to count:

2 = half notes

4 = quarter notes

8 = eighth notes

Some very common time signatures are 2/4 (two quarter notes per measure), 3/4 (three quarter notes per measure) and 4/4. All the music you've been reading so far has been in 2/4, 3/4 or 4/4. Here are some more tunes for you to sing. Remember to make a very slight emphasis on the first beat of each measure.

You will also probably have come across 2/2 - two half notes per measure. Two half notes are mathematically the same as four quarter notes, but there is a slight difference in music. In 2/2, it feels like there are only two beats per measure. In 4/4, we feel all four beats. Don't worry if you can't really tell the difference though - most people can't!

The time signature of 4/4 is so common, that it is sometimes referred to as "common time". It's sometimes written as a C, instead of numbers.

Barlines

So far we have used barlines to divide up the music into equal chunks. The barline we have used is a simple, single, thin line.

Barlines come in different styles however, for different reasons.

• At the very end of a piece, we use a double barline. The first line is thin, and the second is thick. 
   
• At the end of a section of a piece, we use double barline with two thin lines. This shows you that something new is about to start.
  
  Here, the slow, half note section ends, and a faster eighth note section starts. 
• A double barline with two dots added on the left side tells you to repeat what you just sang. 
  
  In the above melody, the repeat barline instructs you to repeat the first two bars, then continue.
  
  Dots added on the right hand side show you where to start repeating from. (They aren't needed if you have to repeat from the very beginning).
  
  
  In this case, you would repeat bars 3 and 4.

Singing Practice

Here are some melodies complete with time signatures and a selection of interesting barlines! Click the play button to hear them - the recordings include the repeats.