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Posted by alice The eighth notes in "compound time" (6/8, 9/8, 12/8, etc.) are grouped in threes, and often they go by fairly quickly; there are four groups of three in a bar of 12/8, and each group "feels" like one beat. So, although there might be 12 notes in the bar, you feel four pulses in the bar: 1-and-uh 2-and-uh 3-and-uh 4-and-uh. When you look at music in 12/8, you will see the eighth notes "beamed" together (three notes with one horizontal line joining their stems). They look like triplets (if you've encountered them before), but without the little number 3 above/below them. For longer notes: a note that is one "pulse" (like 1-and-uh) is a dotted quarter, a note that is two pulses is a dotted half. I hope this helps you somewhat, Gemma. Good luck with your composition! (If you use a program like Finale NotePad -- free download from codamusic.com -- it will not let you put too many beats in the bar, and it will group your notes properly, if you don't make it too complicated). Alice
on 10/3/2004, 7:04 pm, in reply to "Time Signature help??"
209.161.242.181
I'm sure you've heard that 12/8 means that there are 12 beats in each measure (bar), and that an eighth note gets one beat. What you may not have been told is that it actually feels a bit like 4/4.
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