Time Signature: How time works in music
Because of the rhythmic nature of drums as an instrument, the main job of any drummer is to keep time. Therefore, the Time Signature is one of the main aspects to take into account.
Although many times we add rhythm to music almost instinctively, there are many melodic pieces in which drummers are not able to create a steady and complete beat. Understanding time signatures allow us to be complete drummers and be able to actually understand the nature of different rhythms and not be limited by anything!
Notation
To understand easily the Time Signature concept it is better to learn and use the music notations. When you are reading a piece of music you are actually reading symbols that represent a note with a specific pitch and rhythm. The pitch depends on the vertical position of the note in the staff (measure bar), while the rhythm is determined by the symbol, as it is shown in the image below. Each symbol represents the duration of a note.
To make it easier just take the Whole Note as a reference, so you know that when you say Eight Note, it means that it is 1/8 of the whole note (as if you divided the whole note into 8 parts and took only one). This means that if only one Whole Note fits in a bar, there could be 8 Eight Notes, and if 2 Whole Notes fit in the bar, there could be 16 Eight Notes, and so on.
Based on what was said before, the time signature is represented as the 4/4 beat image:
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The Top Number tells how many beats (notes) can be in a single measure or bar. Specifying how many notes there could be in each bar. This number has no limitations but in popular music, it is not bigger than 9.
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The Bottom Number represents the length of the beat, basically how long the note should be. Different from the Top Number, there can only be the numbers that represent a type of note (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128), otherwise, it would mean nothing.
Also, this 4/4 Time Signature indicates that there can only be 4 beats in each bar (top number) and each beat is a quarter note (bottom number). However, this doesn't mean that there could only be used quarter notes, it means that the notes in the measure cannot be larger than the length of 4 quarter notes. So you can put 2 quarter notes with 1 half note, or 1 quarter note and 6 eight notes.
Example
As you can see the bottom number is 8, so it is representing an eight note. The top number is 6, so it means that there are six beats. As a whole, the measure follows a time signature of Six Eight Notes. It is important to understand that the time signature as the rule that the measure should follow and Not how it should always be. For example, something like 12 sixteenth notes also follows a 6/8 time signature.
Simple
The Time Signatures are classified either as simple or compound, and its actually really easy to identify them. Just take into account the top numbers. The Simple time signature always have either 2, 3 or 4 as its top number. In this case, these numbers represent the number of beats, and also means that the main beat can be divided by 2.
To make it clearer just look at the image below. As you can see it has a time signature of 3/4, so the main beat has three quarter notes. Also, because its top number is 3, it means that it is a simple time signature, so the main beat can be divided into 2 as it can be seen in the sub-beat. As the image shows, because the sub-beat is product of the 3/4 main beat, the eight notes are grouped by two.
Compound
Again to identify the Compound time signature you have to take into account the top number. In this case the top numbers will be either 6, 9 and 12 and will mean that the main beat can be divided into 3 equal notes.
However in the compound time signature the top numbers don't represent the number of beat but rather the number of sub-beats. That is why the the notes in the main beat of a compound beat will be represented with dotted notes.
Again, to make it clear look at the image below. First we know it is a compound beat because its top number is 6. Taking this into account, the 6/8 is represented in the sub-beat, mainly because the main beat cannot be represented with the time signature notation. Next, because the main beat in the compound time signature is divided by 3, you just have to group by three the notes in the sub-beat. Because the sub beats have 6 eight notes, there are two groups of three eight notes, meaning that each of these two groups is equal to a dotted quarter note. So this means that the main beat of a 6/8 time signature is equal to 2 dotted quarter notes.
