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Why does "4 time" dominate modern western music?
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Turn on commercial radio and what time signature are you 95% likely to hear in the first song? 4 beats to the bar, that's what. Is that just the natural pace of music or is something else going on?
In fact, if you went to a dance in the nineteenth century, it would most likely be in 3 time, or a waltz. Travel to, say, Burundi, Bulgaria, Bengaluru or Bursa and outside of commercial radio, local time is quite different - 11/8, to take one example.
So how did 4 time come to dominate? Was it the classical composers? Radio managers? The Romans? Join me, Ian Forth for a discussion of how we ended up with the ubiquity of 4 beats to the bar.
Be expertly briefed each week on a wide variety of intriguing musical topics.
Chapters
1. Why does "4 time" dominate modern western music? (00:00:00)
2. Introduction (00:00:20)
3. The Medium-Sized Dive; What is a time signature? (00:01:13)
4. 4-Limb Theory; Marching Theory (00:03:41)
5. Cognitive limits to counting (00:06:22)
6. Musical notation: Chicken and the Egg (00:08:05)
7. Why 4 time and not 3 time? (00:11:04)
8. Conclusions (00:14:21)
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