We’re back for lesson 3 on learning how to read musical meter. Reading meter, or time signatures is one of the first skills to learn if music reading is something you want to learn or get better at. In the last music lesson we covered simple simple signature, and in this one we’ll cover compoung. In compound time signatures, the upper number is actually a multiple of the meter: six, nine, or twelve for duple, triple, and quadruple time respectively. Six-eight, for example, is a duple time signature arranged into two groups of three eighth-notes. Each group adds up to a dotted quarter-note, which is the actual value for the beat or pulse of the meter. Six-eight really means two dotted quarter-notes. Nine-sixteen is a triple compound meter: three groups of three sixteenth-notes, or three dotted-eighth-notes per measure. Twelve-eight is four groups of three eighth-notes each, or four dotted quarter-notes:

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