Cut time, 2/2, 4/4???

[Juststarting]

Ok, I have a few folks who are willing to accept my incompetence and let me try to play with them. We have been doing Cripple Creek. I have practiced with sheet music that shows either 2/2 or the C with a vertical line for the time signature. Keep getting told the song is in 4/4, not 2/2. I seem to be able to go along with some of the jam tracks on you tube, but with other folks it is a disaster. They say 4/4. HELP! I am totally confused!

[JeffD]

Well I am not sure of the specific complaints your band mates are referring to. You should really get them to try and explain, and not explain music theory, but explain exactly what they want that you are not doing.

Formally, I believe the only difference between common time and cut time is emphasis. 2/2 has a sort of up down up down kind of feeling, where 4/4 has sort of three layers of emphasis like: one two three four, one two three four, where the third beat gets a noticed a little more than two and four, but not as much as one.

But I don't know if that is what your band mates really mean. Which is why they have to answer a different question, which is "what do you want, specifically, from me."

[Juststarting]

Thanks Jeff,
I'm not sure my band mates know how to communicate what they are trying to tell me, and that is part of the problem. I get the up/down, up down concept for 2/2 (and is what I have been playing). I also get the one two three four, one.
I hear the 2/2, but with mando emphasizing the two, not the one. Seems to me the difference between 2/2 and 4/4 is the difference in the ratio of strong beat to weak beats (1/2 for 2/2 vs 1/4 for 4/4, although 3 does get a weaker strong beat than 1, still stronger than 2 and 4).

Time seems to be confusing to a lot of folks, so I guess I'm in good company.

[des]

To be very pragmatic about it, and as beginner playing old-time or similar, if you just disregard the cut-time time signature and play it as if it were 4/4, it should work out fine. You will still get the same number of whole notes, quarter notes etc in a bar.

Cut-time was used very commonly in popular sheet music published up to 40 -50 years ago where it related to specific dance forms such as marches, quicksteps and foxtrots that we don't meet much today outside of ballroom dancing. Other than classical music you don't see it so much - and particularly not in the sort of lead sheets used in genres such as jazz and old time and ITM where the sheet music is more likely to be used to learn a tune than to play from in a jam.

Personally I think the distinction between cut-time and 4/4 is valuable. It's a matter of the pulse - cut-time counts as 1 & 2 & 1 & 2 - it sounds fast but relaxed- think Nat King Cole trio playing Route 66 - think reels in Irish or Scots music. 4/4 - common time is so common that it's almost hard to spot. It counts 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 - to my ear the word that describes it best is solid - think the Beatles "She Loves You" - think Hornpipes in Irish trad. There are further variations of this kind of thing such as the 8/8 "double time" you sometimes hear in jazz ballads, and the triplet version - 12/8 - beloved of Fats Domino. Double time and 12/8 to my ears sound even more solid - a lot of notes played to cover the same ground. If it were cycling 2/2 would be a high gear on a downhill slope, 8/8 would be a low gear on a climb and 4/4 a mid gear on the flat.

I have the impression that people often confuse 2/2, cut-time, with 2/4 which has a completely different feel to any of the above - and also NB cannot be read as 4/4. 2/4 is very much associated with Polkas and doesn't have the smoothness of cut time.

I hope this hasn't confused you even more - but just look at your sheet music - it there are 4 quarter notes - crotchets if you're on this side of the Atlantic - in the bar you can play it as 4/4. If it has 2 quarter notes to the bar you're in 2/4 - but I don't think that sounds like Cripple Creek.

[mandocrucian]

The reason you see stuff written as 2/2 (or 4/4) is because it's more often easier to read quarter and 8th notes rather than the 16ths of 2/4

The real "difference" between 2/2 (or 2/4) and 4/4 is the implied accompaniment and rhythm

2/2 or 2/4: 1-bass &-chord 2-bass &-chord

4/4: 1-bass 2-bass&chord 3-bass 4-bass/chord
or 1-chord 2-chord 3-chord 4-chord


Listen, you, and they are not playing classical compositions, so whether something is "officially" in 2/4, 2/2, 4/4 isn't really a big deal. "Just tell me how you want the backup groove or the drum kit pattern to go."

If you are swinging the 8ths with a triplet feel, are they insistent that they are playing 12/8 instead of 2/2 or 4/4?

There can be similar issues regarding whether it's a slow 6/8 or in 3/4. Check multiple sheet music versions of "Silent Night" and you'll see both time signatures being used. A lot of time, what get's used is what is easier for the eye to read.

There's also 3/4 at the 16th note level, (polska, polonaise, minuet, etc) which is 1a&eh 2a&eh 3a&eh
(2/4, or 2/2, would be 1a&eh 2a&eh)
This is nothing like a waltz rhythm. Actually a polska is to a reel what a slip jig (9/8) is to a jig (6/8). it's simply 3 groups of 4 notes vs. 3 groups of 3 notes.

I write a lot of stuff and odd meters or mixed meters, extra beats, half-measure aren't in the least unusual. The question of where you insert the bar lines (do you notate it as a bar of 4/4 followed by a bar of 3/4 or by one measure of 7/4? 4/4+2/4 or 6/4?) I've checked a lot of sources to try to find out what the "conventions" would be, but don't find anything consistent. (If August Watters or someone like him can point me to any articles on the subject, etc. I'd appreciate it). I tend to see how these mixed meter/extra beats issues are handled/notated in various tunes books ...Jethro Tull, Grateful Dead, Burt Bacharach, prog rock etc. and follow their example (usually). However, I want the bar lines to make the accompaniment grooves/pauses as clear as possible, not only to other, but for me as well when I go back to something I wrote awhile back and can't really remember it as clearly as when I put it onto paper.

If you really want to clarify some of these meter/groove issues, I would really recommend getting a book/CD instruction for beginning drums (drumkit). You don't need drums to learn this stuff, you can do this with your hands on the table or floor - anything that will give you several different sounds (low, middle, high). And when you learn this stuff, you can start to put it onto the mandolin strings.

Niles H

[Dave Sheets]

As others have said, it's about the feel of the tune, being in 2 or 4.

If you are playing a medley with both reels and jigs, you can think of them as both being in 2 instead of being in 4/4 and 6/8 respectively, it makes life easier.

In 4, you think of two groups of 4 8th notes, in 6, it's two groups of triplets, the main pulse is still in 2, only the subdivisions differ- makes it easier on dancers. Contra dances (as an example) are typically thought of as being in 2, so the dance callers think of the moves as some many beats in 2- so if the band thinks of everything as being in 2, life is easy when it comes to matching tunes to dances. You can play marches, polkas, jigs, reels etc, as long as you can think of them in 2.

[MandoAblyss]

Just one more thing, tempo, right? If marked as 120 in cut time (each beat is a half-note), then quarter-notes are played at 240. So I sometimes think of cut time being used in bluegrass notation to deviously obscure wicked-fast tempos.

[Mark Wilson]

Just one more thing, tempo, right? If marked as 120 in cut time (each beat is a half-note), then quarter-notes are played at 240.

Yep. For the unwashed(myself included) the difference falls to how you count time. Folks I play fiddle tunes with are gonna play it how they want, while always describing the tempo or bpm in cut time -no matter what's on the sheet.

[bobby bill]

A time signature provides no tempo information. It is merely something to help you read the notes on the page (what kind of note gets a beat; how many beats to a measure). The difference between 4/4 and 2/2 could be as simple as counting into the former "1 2 3 4" and counting into the latter "1 and 2 and." Not a big difference. It is usually up to the performer to figure out tempo and which beats to accent (among other things).

I have piles of music but very few have metronome tempo suggestions. When I do see such suggestions, the metronome number references a note (such as a quarter note) rather than a beat, so there is no question as to the meaning of the suggestion. I usually do not consider such suggestions part of the written music but rather a note from the editor.

[ralph johansson]

A time signature provides no tempo information. It is merely something to help you read the notes on the page (what kind of note gets a beat; how many beats to a measure). The difference between 4/4 and 2/2 could be as simple as counting into the former "1 2 3 4" and counting into the latter "1 and 2 and." Not a big difference.

Time signature alone provides no tempo information. Neither does "bpm". You gotta specify both. The difference between a two feel or four feel is important.

[ralph johansson]

Just one more thing, tempo, right? If marked as 120 in cut time (each beat is a half-note), then quarter-notes are played at 240. So I sometimes think of cut time being used in bluegrass notation to deviously obscure wicked-fast tempos.

Bluegrass is a non-notation music. But most bluegrass is definitely in 2/2. In the early days Monroe´s bass player, Howard Watts provided a steady 4/4; later Joel Price often switched from 2/2 to 4/4 on instrumental solos.

[ralph johansson]

I have the impression that people often confuse 2/2, cut-time, with 2/4 which has a completely different feel to any of the above - and also NB cannot be read as 4/4. 2/4 is very much associated with Polkas and doesn't have the smoothness of cut time.

I hope this hasn't confused you even more - but just look at your sheet music - it there are 4 quarter notes - crotchets if you're on this side of the Atlantic - in the bar you can play it as 4/4. If it has 2 quarter notes to the bar you're in 2/4 - but I don't think that sounds like Cripple Creek.

The difference between 2/2 and 2/4 is purely notational.

[ralph johansson]

Ok, I have a few folks who are willing to accept my incompetence and let me try to play with them. We have been doing Cripple Creek. I have practiced with sheet music that shows either 2/2 or the C with a vertical line for the time signature. Keep getting told the song is in 4/4, not 2/2. I seem to be able to go along with some of the jam tracks on you tube, but with other folks it is a disaster. They say 4/4. HELP! I am totally confused!

You never said anything about genre. At least in Buegrass I have heard many recordings of that tune, and they're all in 2/2, not 4/4.
I'm inclined to believe that your friends don't know what they're talking about.

[A 4]

May I request that some of the more knowledgeable ones here post a couple of video examples in 2/2, 2/4 and 4/4? Maybe even the same tune done the different ways. I know that when I count along to music, I can tell that 4/4 doesn't work on songs with a strong 1-2 feel, but I don't know the difference between 2/2 and 2/4. I don't pay that much attention in my own playing, but maybe I should.

Thanks.

[sblock]

A real rhythmic difference between 2/2 and 2/4 doesn't exist. The differences are instead between the way measures are written, and between the 'home' tempos. These are both "two-beat" counts: one,two -- one,two -- one,two, etc. The only meaningful difference is that the beats are considered to last the duration of half notes or quarter notes, respectively.

Note also that many types of standard notation (and tablature, too) of fiddle tunes found in books and online will actually annotate 2/4 reels and breakdowns in 4/4 notation (but played with a bit of 'swing'), just so that you don't have to read have so many distracting measure bars, and see so many flags on all the notes. So, although there is technically a small difference in the rhythmic emphasis between 2/4 and 4/4, this gets IGNORED altogether for such tunes. I have plenty of TablEdit tunes in my collection that are 2/4 time but written as 4/4 time (and therefore where a tempo of "240 BPM" really means 120 BPM). Some purists may hate this, but it's done all the time, and it saves work when transcribing.

[des]

This is how I hear it :

Count 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 to these 4/4 tunes





Count 1 & 2 & 1 & 2 to these 2/2 - cut time tunes





Count 1 2 1 2 to these 2/4 tunes

[des]

This topic exercises me a bit - the distinctions between these time signatures are not rigid and there is an increasing tendency to write everything that's not obviously in 3's or 6's as 4/4. Nevertheless I think that the cut time idea is helpful. Here are three example where the pulse of the time signature is right up front and hard to escape

Exhibit A The Twist by Chubby Checker - unmistakable cut time



Exhibit B Misiriou by Dick Dale and the Deltones - 4/ 4 - just count 1 2 3 4 when the band comes in



Exhibit C Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin - 2/4 . I can't think of any 2/4 dance tunes in pop music since the 50's (maybe some novelty songs?) although you get a occasional bars of 2/4 thrown in to some pieces by sophisticated composers like Burt Bacharach and Lennon McCartney. Anyway this counts 1 2 1 2 1 2

[Tom Haywood]

There is a lot of confusion about whether to call something 2/2 or 2/4. Actually no confusion if you understand the music theory. I try to avoid the argument and just focus on the count. In bluegrass, it is very helpful to count the rhythm as 1 & 2 & 1 & 2 & rather than 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &. This has a very real effect of keeping the emphasis on the correct beats and staying ahead of the beat to drive the rhythm. And it has the psychological effect of slowing things down so that it is easier to play at high speeds. In Old Time playing, it sounds like most of the tunes tend toward a straight 4/4 rhythm. The same tune sounds more relaxed and spacious with this count. I wonder if the OP's band mates are wanting him to play a more Old Time sound rather than a bluegrass sound?

[ralph johansson]

Given all this confusion I realize that the best idea is to specify the actual groove. To my ears there's absolutely nothing 2-ish about The Twist (mainly a straight 4 with accents on the 2 and 4), or the boogie beat in Route 66 (which to my ears is 1&2&3&4& - some give it as 8/8!). The choice between 2/4 and 2/2 notation (the latter saves flags) seems to be guided by convention, e.g., Joplin's rags are notated in 2/4. I understand that reels and hornpipes are - by convention - notated in 4/4 but that's not what I hear in the few records I own, with piano accompaniment.

As for Bluegrass there are no clear conventions since notation is almost never used in practice. On mandozine almost everything is given as 4/4 although the MIDI usually indicates a very pronounced 2/2. Which simply means that the transcribers don't care much about the distinction between 2 and 4.

In Grisman's books the distinction between 2/2 and 4/4 is very strictly observed, and in the grass volume almost all the tunes are notated in 2/2. In one collection I've found a transcription of Merle Taylor's solo on Rawhide. The time signature is given as 4/4, but here one bar is what most of us hears as two, i.e., the solo is really notated in 2/4, i.e., largely in 16th notes.

In mainstream jazz the distinction between 2 and 4 is real - on medium tempo songs it's not unusual to hear the head played with a 2 feel. But, of course, a jazz 2 differs as much from a polka 2 as a jazz waltz from a Viennese waltz.

So really, the OP should use his ears - what kind of groove do the rhythm players (bass? guitar?) achieve? Given the often ridiculous tempos for this tune I'd be surprised to hear it done with a walking four in the bass.

[JeffD]

A real rhythmic difference between 2/2 and 2/4 doesn't exist. The differences are instead between the way measures are written, and between the 'home' tempos. These are both "two-beat" counts: one,two -- one,two -- one,two, etc. The only meaningful difference is that the beats are considered to last the duration of half notes or quarter notes, respectively.

I have to disagree. That is equivalent to saying something like a jig is just a faster waltz, because the math seems to work that way.

If a piece is written in 4/4, but the player is emphasizing 1 and 3 absolutely equally, then it is being played in 2/2. IMO.

Nothing wrong with that, the player makes lots of artistic choices. But IMO it is not then being played "as written", to the extent that it matters.

[DougC]

I'd like to offer a different approach to the question.

Let's 'count' the beats in melody from the original tune in question.

(Or forget that I said that, and just 'do what they are doing'.)





go to 3:17 for the regular tempo

[bobby bill]

Quote Originally Posted by sblock View Post

A real rhythmic difference between 2/2 and 2/4 doesn't exist. The differences are instead between the way measures are written, and between the 'home' tempos. These are both "two-beat" counts: one,two -- one,two -- one,two, etc. The only meaningful difference is that the beats are considered to last the duration of half notes or quarter notes, respectively.
I have to disagree. That is equivalent to saying something like a jig is just a faster waltz, because the math seems to work that way.

If a piece is written in 4/4, but the player is emphasizing 1 and 3 absolutely equally, then it is being played in 2/2. IMO.

Nothing wrong with that, the player makes lots of artistic choices. But IMO it is not then being played "as written", to the extent that it matters.

Sblock is talking about the difference between 2/2 and 2/4 - not the difference between 2/2 and 4/4. Sblock is correct. 2/2 and 2/4 both have two beats per measure and it makes no difference whether you notate a single beat with a half note or a quarter note.

Frankly, I think some folks are placing more importance on (and getting more information from) a time signature that I ever have. To me, a time signature is just help to reading the music. In order to make it musical, you have to access information outside of the time signature (or any of the written music for that matter). A mazurka is in three, with accents falling on the second or third beat, but the time signature of 3/4 is not going to tell you that. You just have to know mazurkas.

Or, said better just a few posts up:

So really, the OP should use his ears - what kind of groove do the rhythm players (bass? guitar?) achieve?

[sblock]

I have to disagree. That is equivalent to saying something like a jig is just a faster waltz, because the math seems to work that way.

If a piece is written in 4/4, but the player is emphasizing 1 and 3 absolutely equally, then it is being played in 2/2. IMO.

Nothing wrong with that, the player makes lots of artistic choices. But IMO it is not then being played "as written", to the extent that it matters.

Sorry, but no. A jig is typically written in 6/8 time (or 9/8, for a slip jig), but a waltz is written in 3/4 time. So a jig is counted in 6's, whereas a waltz is counted in 3's. These counts are different, and they give different emphasis to the beats. So no, a jig is not a faster waltz. But when comparing 2/2 and 2/4, you can see that both these signatures are counted in 2's! So the only difference is the value accorded to the measure beat -- either a half note or a quarter note. Perhaps you misread my earlier post somehow, and thought that I was comparing one of these time signatures with 4/4, which is counted in 4's, not 2's, and would give a slightly different emphasis? But I didn't do that.

Anyway, it is still true that many transcriptions of 2/2 (cut time) fiddle tunes found in books (and tabs), including reels, hornpipes, and breakdowns, are often displayed as 4/4, which cuts down on the note flags and measure bars, but can be misleading. These tunes are often played today in two-counts, not four-counts, regardless of the printed signature.

Finally, as several others have already pointed out, and correctly so, it pays more to hear how the idiom is supposed to sound, and pretty much ignore these finer aspects of the time signature. Does the rhythmic groove have a 2-, 3-, or 4-count "feel" to it? How does the rhythmic emphasis go on a recording you like? How do your jam buddies play it? Go with that!

[ralph johansson]

I have to disagree. That is equivalent to saying something like a jig is just a faster waltz, because the math seems to work that way.

If a piece is written in 4/4, but the player is emphasizing 1 and 3 absolutely equally, then it is being played in 2/2. IMO.

Nothing wrong with that, the player makes lots of artistic choices. But IMO it is not then being played "as written", to the extent that it matters.

Jigs are notated 6/8, phrased (mostly) in groups of 3. But you could think of them as 2/4 with each beat subdivided into triplets.

After looking through some sheet music of mine, I realize that the 2/4 signature is used in two ways. One, as in ragtime, is where the piece could just as well be notated 2/2; I, at least hear a 1&2& in the left hand most of the time. The other, as in certain marches, where each 2/4 bar is really half a 4/4. Most of us would hear 2 barsof that as one bar of 4/4 with equal weight on the 1 and 3.

In many cases 2/2 and 4/4 can simply be conceived of as two different ways of phrasing the same thing - e.g., the head then is stated in 2, and the outchorus in 4. I find that in my own pieces in duple meter I omit the time signature and leave that to the playing situation.

Although I can read reasonably well I've never played mandolin from notation (i.e., from sheet music on a music stand).

[Beanzy]

To avoid unnecessary confusion, I think people need to pause and make sure that the differences between metre and rhythm are treated as such.
Metre needs to be treated as the measuring stick and not get confused with how that gets played.
There are many conventions on how the same metre gets played depending on genre.
This is why we have further terms to instruct how the metre is to be approached, “alla marcia” alla breve” etc ad infinitum.