# Time signatures (`time-signatures.html`)

Western meter is a fraction at the start of the staff. It tells you how the bar is grouped — how many beats, and which note value is one beat. Use the metronome’s **Beats** menu; this page teaches what those labels mean.

Interactive page: [`time-signatures.html`](time-signatures.html). Twin of this document. Part of Listen & read, with [Ear training](/tools/ear-training.html), [Sight reading](reading.md), [Note values](note-values.md), and [Highway](highway.md).

## The fraction

The **top** number is how many beats sit in one bar. The **bottom** number is the note value that gets one beat: 2 = half note, 4 = quarter, 8 = eighth. So 4/4 means four quarter-note beats; 6/8 means six eighth-note beats.

Beat 1 is the **downbeat** — the same job as **sam** in a taal. Western music rarely names the cycle. A few nicknames exist; the rest is the fraction plus, for odd meters, the **grouping**.

Named cycles live on [Tabla](/tabla/) and [Madal](/madal/). Guitar strums the same meters on [Strumming · time signatures](/guitar/strumming.html#meter).

**Sources (two-check):** Open Music Theory — simple, compound, and irregular meter · musictheory.net time signatures.

## Simple meters

Each beat divides in **two**. The walking pulse is a quarter note when the bottom number is 4.

| Meter | Count | Nickname / feel |
|------|-------|-----------------|
| **4/4** | 1 2 3 4 | Common time (the **C** symbol). Pop, hymns, most film songs. |
| **3/4** | 1 2 3 | Waltz. Strong–weak–weak. |
| **2/4** | 1 2 | March. Two-step, polka. |
| **2/2** | 1 2 | Cut time / alla breve. Looks like 4/4; feel two half-note beats. |

## Compound meters

Each dotted-quarter pulse divides in **three**. 6/8 is **1** & a **2** & a — two pulses, not six slow beats (compound duple). 9/8 is three pulses; 12/8 is four (a blues shuffle often lives here).

The metronome’s tempo box is the **quarter note**. An /8 meter therefore ticks twice as fast as the same top number in /4.

## Odd and irregular meters

When the bar does not split evenly into 2 or 3, write the **grouping**. 5/4 is often 3+2 or 2+3; 7/8 is often 2+2+3. The Beats menu already groups those.

This is still Western meter — not a named taal. For 7-beat and 10-beat cycles with bols, go to Tabla (Rupak, Jhaptaal).

## Listen

On the HTML page, **Feel it** sits on each simple, compound, and odd-meter row. It sets the metronome and plays a C major triad on the strong beats, a single C on the weak ones. The same button becomes Stop. Count with the dots under Listen and in the practice bar.

Continue: [Note values](note-values.md) — how whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes fill those bars.