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humans and time signatures

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Mikendher:
I have always wondered why for most people it is easier to understand and play in 4/4 time signatures for music. I used to suspect that it was just self-perpetuating, that it was only because most popular music is written in 4/4. But it seems to even be true of people who have had little to no exposure to music with time signatures.

Thoughts? Comments? Criticism? Screams of hatred and pain?

David_Dovey:
I too have pondered this question and the best I can come up with is that humans just like things that are divided into 2, 4, 3 or by the Golden Ratio (i.e; approximately 1:1.8). This is true of arcitecture, graphic design, and art, so why not music?

HFrankenstein:
I think it's mostly a Western thing.  I'm basing this on stuff that I learned in college more than four years ago, but my understanding is that Eastern music isn't quite as locked into multiples of 2 and 3, and sometimes doesn't have any meter at all.  But I may be completely wrong about that.

If I were to think about this based on human nature, I think humans just like things that come in 2's and 3's, I forget the reason.  We also like things that divide evenly, which is why the most common meters are multiples of 2 and 3, such as 4/4 and 6/8.

I'm thinking it's just a chicken-or-the-egg thing in the West.  Which came first, the person playing in 4, or the person copying him?  I think it just kind of developed naturally, the way languages do.  And actually, since musical atunement is borne from our linguistic necessities, since because rhythm and pitch are such important facets of a language, we have developed a natural affinity for the two concepts, this just may be the case.

Some of the best stuff is in weird meters, though.  The opening to Zepp's The Ocean has three bars of 4, followed by one of 3.  Pink Floyd's Money is in 7.  I can't think of any others off hand, but I know they're out there.

EDIT: Fixed spelling.

a pack of wolves:
I think you're probably right about it being a cultural thing. A friend of mine spent some time in Cuba and said that the musicians he met there tended to naturally go into 5/4 instead of 4/4.

rynne:
Like HFrankenstein said, there’s a (Western) tendency to think of a measure and then divide it into smaller portions, with 4/4 (and derivatives) being a fairly simple way of doing so—divide the measure in half, then divide both the halves in half, and so on.

From what I understand, a lot of music in the Mid East and Far East take a somewhat different view by building up measures from smaller rhythmical units.  I believe this different way of thinking influenced a lot of minimalist composers.  These built-up rhythms aren’t necessarily regular, so they end up geing transcribed as odd time signatures in the Western sense.

Personally, if I’m playing my guitar, I tend to think in 3’s.  More often than not, I’ll fall into 3/4 time or something with triplets (6/8, 12/8, etc.)

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