Violin Forum/Message Board

[Ode to Tragedy]

..music?

Say I have a reel which is 4 lines on the page of sheet music. I f I play it through it only last like 30 seconds but I notice that on the youtube videos they will play for like 2 minutes+ (and also constantly varying- though I don't wanna try and do that myself atm- would be interesting to know what they are doing here though).

Also listening to other pieces which I have the sheet music for, trying to follow along, I notice sometimes they will play the first section twice then the second section twice.

Is there any standardized matter of how many times you play each or do they just play each line as many times as they feel like?

Also waht do the 'time signiatures' mean? -like 4/4 6/8 3/4...Coming from a DJing background I am only familiar with bpms- in that arena there is 4/4 and 2/4 but they just corresponded to how many kick drums were in a bar so I don't think that is related. I know that 4/4 is slower than 6/8 but I don't know what the numbers correspond to...please enlighten me.

Also if it doesn't have a time signature do you just guess? For instance if it's a reel I read that reels are playeed at 4/4 so I just go by the usual speed?

I was looking up the difference between jigs and reels last night and read that jigs are 6/8 and reels are 4/4 which explains why I was finding it easier to play reels. So I'm gonna concentrate on reels for now.

[Lemuel]

If you provide a link to the music sheet, I can tell for sure.

Repeat sections are indicated by the symbol ":".

So for example if you have two sections of music like this:


| notes... | ... | ... | ... : || (A)
| notes... | ... | ... | ... : || (B)

you would play (A) twice followed by (B) twice.


Those numbers you see at the beginning of the sheet music are called time signatures. The top number indicates the number of beats in each measure (between two bars). The bottom number indicates what type of note gets each beat.

So for example:

4/4 Four beats per measure, 1/4 note gets one beat.
3/4 Three beats per measure, 1/4 note gets one beat.
6/8 Six beats per measure, 1/8 note gets one beat.

Sometimes, you see none of these number but a C at the beginning of the score. This is the same as 4/4 timing. Sometimes you'll also see a vertical line cutting through the C in the middle. This is the same as 2/2 timing.


The speed of how fast notes are played, or more appropriately called the "tempo" is not dependent on time signatures, but rather on Italian-Latin words and/or metronome designations in beats per minute.

For example, you might see one of the following words located at the beginning of the music on the top left hand side (from slowest to fastest): Largo, Larghetto, Adagio, Andante, Moderato, Allegro, Presto...etc. which is really an indication of how fast the beats are sounding on the metronome.

Metronome designations appear something like this (I have no way of indicating notes on posts, so I have to write the name of the note).

(Quarter note = 66) Quarter note is one beat, 66 beats per minute
(Half note = 40) Half note gets one beat, 40 beats per minute

[Ode to Tragedy]

Very useful thanks

Yes I just checked and I see the : at the end of each line.

This draws them out alot better and makes alot more sense now and will make them into 'proper' tunes .

[Benedict White]

There is lots of shorthand in music notation, much of it short for Italian expressions that explain how you are meant to play a piece.

A piano is not a piano but a piano forte (Or a soft and loud).

So a p means soft, an f under the score means load and an mf means metzo forte or medium loud. A long less than (<) under some notes actually means building to a crescendo (yet another bit of Italian) and then the reverse (>) means getting quieter (diminuendo).

A dot next to a note means play it for 1 1/2 times its length. All good fun.