All music can be seen to be in all time signatures at once.

I hear, naturally, any piece of music in the time signature that most economically describes the pattern. By this I mean that I use the time signature with no over or under-lap in reference to the pattern of the music. This happens automatically without the need for abstract knowledge regarding time signatures. However I recently noticed that I could listen to a piece of music written in say 4/4, as if it was in say 5/4 (other examples apply), which would cause an overlap of the signature I was using with the natural understanding of the form causing me to hear the song differently. This is fun to do if you have an instrument and can play a continuous loop. Within the loop you can forget about beginning and end and use your mind to reimpose beginning and end wherever you want, although to reimpose a new model of the loop I have so far had to forget the old one first. With varying degrees of mental strain you can get any number of perspectives on what you are playing, but if anyone were to hear you they would probably not hear what you are hearing as they would be in the natural context.

Just a "fun" mental exercise.

I did something similar using a loop of notes whilst varying the space between each in a way that gave me differing patterns, I could use two or more loops and it not sound repeated. After I had established a few different meta loops using the differentiation of space, I realized that from any point in any of the meta loops, I could transition to a corresponding point in any of the other meta loops. At this point I was overwhelmed and had to take a brake.

hurrah!

Great thought. I sometimes like to play just that game when listening to music. Many pieces by Steve Reich suit the process quite well, IMHO.

Yeah, I agree that song is good for it, or the structure of that song makes it easy. I find it a lot easier to keep track when I am am playing. Plus you can experiment on basic levels.

Time signatures are mental abstractions. As Use any name points out, it makes it easy to keep track of the playing (particularly when the rhythmic patterns conform to the psychological expectations of certain time signatures). This is makes them ideal for communication (i.e. "counting" a rhythm to a fellow musician) and large groups ensembles playing together. If you have a strong sense of time signatures, it can make it easier to both transcribe music, compose as well as improvise by giving you a command over people's expectations. Some time signatures have mathematically equivalent beats (like 3/4 and 6/8 ) but the rhythmic patterns, and accent-stress patterns typically make it clear which is which, and they do feel different. At the end of the day though, it's all just ink on a page.

Terry Riley's In C

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg35ZKH2Omw

hard enough to critically follow this one.

There is a book entitled "psychology of music" that was written way back in 1938 and discusses how time signatures are subjective yet also objective and gives an example of how one could derive a wide variety of different time signatures subjectively from monotonous sounds such as the ticking of an old clock. Sadly the field of music psychology seems to be somewhat neglected by mainstream musical studies nowadays.


Here is a highly fascinating study that is mentioned briefly in the book having to do with rhythm and instinct:



Here a copy of the book that is available to read online. (no copyright violations)

http://archive.org/strea...0417mbp#page/n5/mode/2up

Sounds very interesting, thank you. I think I will start making my way through this today.

The book is a bit dry in parts but it also contains some real true gems of information and a few wonderfully helpful insights.

The quote provided above came from page 145.

here are some more dry but interesting links..

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~cmckay/papers/miscellaneous/EmotionMusic.pdf

http://www.tidbits.co.in/images/sapmia10-raaga.pdf

http://www.brainmusic.or...rumhansl_emotion1997.pdf

I can handle dry .