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humans and time signatures

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jeph:

--- Quote from: KharBevNor on 05 Oct 2006, 10:12 ---Various people also claim it synchs in to the heartbeat, which may be true, but I remain unconvinced.

--- End quote ---

It doesn't synch in with the heartbeat any better than any other meter, unless you're specifically arranging heartbeats into 4/4 measures.

"thumpthump, thumpthump, thumpthump, thumpthump" (4/4) is really no different than "thumpthump, thumpthump,thumpthump" (3/4) unless you are imposing measures on top of the base rhythm.

A well-regarded modern classical composer once spoke at a class back at Hampshire when I was a music student. He wrote off the entirety of 20th-century popular music by saying "it's all the same beat."

It took all my willpower not to ask him how many people he thought could hum one of his songs by memory. I probably should have ripped his stuffy, pretentious head off, in hindsight.

Mikendher:
I think people are probably right about it being a cultural thing.

It's a very interesting phenomenon. Many of my friends can't tap along to a 3/4 time signature.

HFrankenstein:
Another thing I forgot to mention earlier: have you ever noticed that a lot of the best violinists are Chinese?  A part of that is due to the languages spoken in China.  Good violin playing requires a very sharp ear for pitch, and it so turns out that Chinese languages like Cantonese and Mandarin use pitch as part of their syntax.  One syllable inflected a certain way might mean something entirely different when inflected with a different pitch.  Because of that, over the centuries, many speakers of Chinese dialects have developed a very acute sense of pitch.

Completely irrelevant to the current discussion, but something that I find interesting.  :P

Johnny C:

--- Quote from: jeph on 05 Oct 2006, 15:04 ---It took all my willpower not to ask him how many people he thought could hum one of his songs by memory. I probably should have ripped his stuffy, pretentious head off, in hindsight.

--- End quote ---

You should have turned his skin into a drum and beat it in 4/4 time.

Splunkle:
Time signatures are probably cultural - but they aren't the ideal way to describe rythym, methinks.  For example, 8/4 can be split up as such:

1-2 1-2 1-2 1-2

That is, 2 beats forms a kind of.... ultra-beat.  Or something.  But its also possible to split 8/4 up like so:

1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2

So you have 3 ultra-beats.  It is clear that these ways of spliting up 8/4 are quite different.  Now I've heard stuff like the first one is really just 4/4, but not.... this strikes me as a rather silly way of explaining it.  Still, time signatures are preety spiffy.

interesting factoid:  Most Hip-hop is a heavily syncopated 4/4 beat.  Its all about the snare, people.

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