Time signature
specification of beats in a musical bar or measure
A time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, and measure signature) is an indication in music notation that specifies how many note values of a particular type fit into each measure (bar). The time signature indicates the meter of a musical movement at the bar level.
In a music score the time signature appears as two stacked numerals, such as 44 (spoken as four–four time), or a time symbol, such as or (spoken as common time or cut time, respectively). It immediately follows the key signature (or if there is no key signature, the clef symbol). A mid-score time signature, usually immediately following a barline, indicates a change of meter.
Most time signatures are either simple (the note values are grouped in pairs, like 24, 34, and 44), or compound (grouped in threes, like 68, 98, and 128). Less common signatures indicate complex, mixed, additive, and irrational meters.
Time signature notation
Most time signatures consist of two numerals, one stacked above the other:
The lower numeral indicates the note value that the signature is counting. This number is always a power of 2 (unless the time signature is irrational), usually 2, 4 or 8, but less often 16 is also used, usually in Baroque music. 2 corresponds to the half note (minim), 4 to the quarter note (crotchet), 8 to the eighth note (quaver), 16 to the sixteenth note (semiquaver).
“Time signature” enters the record as specification of beats in a musical bar or measure. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Time, signature and specification can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Time signature” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.