Time signatures and beat calculations
 

Right, I have some gaps in my musical knowledge and I am hoping someone can fill them for me...

With time signatures I know that 4/4 means there are 4 instances of a 1/4 note per measure.

So 5/8 would mean that there are 5 instances of an 1/8 note per measure.

My question is this - does that mean that with a 5/8 time signature there are 5 beats per measure?

So with a tempo of 100bpm and a time signature of 5/8, is the following maths correct:

300ms per 1/8 note (ie beat)

and 1.5s per measure

I think I have but would appreciate someone confirming this or if not then explaining it in simpleton terms.

Thanks,

Drammy

Re: Time signatures and beat calculations
 

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Is "yes" a simpleton term enough?

Re: Time signatures and beat calculations
 

Can you dumb it down just a tad? ;)

Thanks Juho...

Sorry to bring this post back up again, but I still can't get my head around something. Problem is I am not too sure what it is I cannot get my head around...

Lets take a track with a tempo of 120bpm.

If the signature is 4/4 then each beat lasts for 500 ms... (correct?)

Now what...?

How long would each beat last for if the signature is 6/8? Sorry to be a school teacher but you must show your workings...



Ta,
Drammy

Im gonna take a wild guess and say that nothing has changed...

Only now, you have 6 8th notes per bar (cant remember technical term), but your tempo is still 120BPM, so each beat still is only 0.5s

Am I right???

EDIT: Geez... I was so wrong!!!! Maths was never my strong point, so why am I studying acoustics at uni? Crazy I tells ya....

I don't know, thats the problem.

Or has the fact that the 4th has become an eigth - made the length of the beat half?

It is all so confusilating (I've been playing Ratchet and Clank 2).

just use timings based on the smallest reasonable measure
125ms

so, 125ms, 250ms, 500ms, 375ms(250ms+125ms)

get tricky, 62.5ms+125ms=187.5

187.5ms+250ms=437.5ms

try em, mix em right channel 250ms, left channel 375ms, feedback 187.5ms

etc etc etc

There is a simple formula for BMP to Milliseconds, do a Google.

Divide 60000 by your tempo to find the ms of a 1/4 note.

IE: 60000/132 = 1/4 note that's 454.54ms long

To find an 1/8th note, just halve the answer, IE 227.27ms

Yeah I get all this guys,

Thing is I am writing a delay calc for myself in Visual Studio and I am trying to work out how to calculate delays on different time signatures...

I have all the 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 and so on notes worked out for normal notes, dotted notes and triplets, but I don't quite understnad the effect of a time signature on a beats length.

Although my investigations are leading me to believe that it doesn't matter...


Anyone for input?