The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in
Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
* Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that i ...
musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...
to specify how many
beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (
bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar (un ...
), and which
note value
In music notation, a note value indicates the relative duration of a note, using the texture or shape of the '' notehead'', the presence or absence of a ''stem'', and the presence or absence of ''flags/ beams/hooks/tails''. Unmodified note valu ...
is equivalent to a beat.
In a music score, the time signature appears at the beginning as a time symbol or stacked numerals, such as or (read ''common time'' or ''four-four time'', respectively), immediately following the
key signature
In Western musical notation, a key signature is a set of sharp (), flat (), or rarely, natural () symbols placed on the staff at the beginning of a section of music. The initial key signature in a piece is placed immediately after the clef a ...
(or immediately following the
clef
A clef (from French: 'key') is a musical symbol used to indicate which notes are represented by the lines and spaces on a musical stave. Placing a clef on a stave assigns a particular pitch to one of the five lines, which defines the pit ...
symbol if the key signature is empty). A mid-score time signature, usually immediately following a
barline, indicates a change of
meter
The metre ( British spelling) or meter ( American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pr ...
.
There are various types of time signatures, depending on whether the music follows regular (or symmetrical) beat patterns, including
simple (e.g., and ), an