Except you’re “supposed” to clap on the up beats, and stomp on the down beats. Though not at the same time unless you’re going for some old time southern gospel.
Anyways, if you want an example of the difference between 3/4 and 4/4, try listening to The Star-Spangled Banner. You can mathematically divide it into 4/4, but you’ll find it makes more sense in 3/4.
Well, the old stereotype is the white people clap on the downbeat and three, while black people clap on the back beat (two and four in 4/4 time). Where you feel and clap the beats is a matter of tradition. European music tradition stresses the one and three. African-American music mostly emphasizes the two and four.
Here’s kind of a funny example" with Harry Connick, Jr. At the very beginning of the song, everybody is clapping on the 1 & 3. They continue clapping along normally, but Harry sneaks in an extra beat at around 0:41-0:42, to turn the audience’s clapping back to accenting the 2 & 4. 
I don’t know much musical theory, but mathematically speaking, shouldn’t 6/8=3/4?
The OP says “As a listener, it all sounds like a string of notes, regardless.”
If this is true, they probably aren’t going to get much from any of our examples… so most of what is contributed here is for the benefit of anyone who’s interested. And GuanoLad, I already posted Dave Brubeck’s Take Five!
No, 6/8 is a compound meter, 3/4 is simple. This means essentially that 3/4 is split into 3 beats, with 2 eighth notes each (or 3 quarter notes, which is what the 4 denotes). This means that 3/4 is ONE (and) two (and) three (and). 6/8 only has two “beats” with each “stress” (I can’t think of the proper word there) falling on an eighth note so it’s One (two three) Four (five six).
Theoretically you can convert between the two, but in practice the stress is going to be different.
Well, mathematically, they’re equivalent; but the beats get a different emphasis.
3/4 is classic waltz time, ONE-two-three.
6/8 is counted faster[sup]*[/sup] and gets a slight emphasis on the fourth beat, ONE-two-three-Four-five-six. Piano Man is in 6/8. Listen to the piano part at the beginning. There’s a very basic 6/8 beat during the harmonica riff, then there’s a piano theme for four measures, but still hitting the one and four beats, and then back to basic 6/8 when he starts singing.
Could it be written with quarter-notes instead of eighth-notes? Maybe, but I hear it as a six-note pattern instead of three (or, at least I think I do). My guitar book has Time Is On My Side in a fast 3/4 time; I don’t know if I could explain exactly why.
(I tried to write the lyrics with emphasis like I did above, but I couldn’t get it to be quite as clear. Some of the sylables fall right where they should, and sometimes you have to listen under that for the piano to carry the rhythm. That’s why it’s an art, I guess.)
I think that’s kind of a cop out.
I played in my school orchestra in junior high and high school, so I had a rather old-school approach to music. I haven’t picked up a viola in years, but I started playing guitar about a year ago, and took a class. I don’t think any of the other students had studied music before. They’d ask questions like “why is there no E-sharp?”, or “what’s a key?”
It was only a six-week course, I think, so there really wasn’t time to give much of an answer for things like that. But it really got me thinking about how some things are absolutely fundamental to music theory, but so basic that no one thinks to explain them to people just starting out. I’m not sure anyone ever told me exactly what a key is, either.
So I’m not going to give up on the OP so quickly. I think these things can be explained, if someone wants to learn. The challenge is to find the perfect example that highlights a particular idea.
There’s an Open Yale course (Yale University lectures available online for free) called Listening to Music oriented toward the very basics of music appreciation. The third and fourth lectures cover this topic.
The E-sharp question is actually rather simple. There is an E-sharp, it’s just F. A better question may be, “why doesn’t E#==Fb?” I’m not quite sure I could answer that one without a little more research on equal temperament and such, but it is a pretty fundamental question on enharmonics, one I had explained to me certainly within the first couple of years of playing.
The key question is much more interesting, and I’d say that fundamentally it’s unanswerable to someone who hasn’t already had a good deal of musical experience. The general answer would probably be that music, through tradition or human conditioning of what sounds “good” rely on things like chords. Certain chords sound better after certain other chords, and certain combinations of sequential changes (“chord progression”) are satisfying. A key is, quite simply, a set of fundamental instructions for the center of this progression. At its lowest level, it’s a bunch of simple instructions like “start here,” “for a satisfying conclusion, end with this,” and “for musical tension use this sort of structure.” (Most of how this is accomplished has to do with cadences and non-chord tones in musical terminology). Of course, we could complicate the issue further by bringing church modes, intentional parallel 5ths/8ths, non-standard chords and whatnot into it, but at its fundamental level I think that’s the basis of a what a “key” entails.
Also, I know you weren’t really looking for an answer, but I felt like typing it out.
“My Wave” by Soundgarden is predominantly in 5/4. And it sounds awesome. One of the smoothest 5/4 songs I know (often, 5/4 can sound a little jarring at first, but My Wave doesn’t do that for me). “Spoonman” has parts in 7/4 (or alternating 4/4, 3/4, whichever way you want to write it).
As to the OP, a lot will depend on your musical background. I can certainly hear the differences in time signature in a song. As was mentioned, determining between 2/4, 4/4 or cut time (2/2) can often be difficult just from listening, and picking up changes in time signature, especially if it’s only for one measure, can sometimes be hard, but if it’s got a strong beat, it’s not hard to pick out a lone 3/4 measure in a mainly 4/4 song. 6/8 and 3/4 can sound alike, but I can often tell which is which by ear, but not always.
FTR - > been playing percussion/guitar/trumpet/piano for 21 years, so it helps.
If the question is “what is a key?”, I think there’s a simple answer that will do for a start. Most songs don’t use all the notes on a keyboard (or all the frets on a guitar), just a certain subset of them. Start on C and play a full chromatic scale up to the next C and back down again. It doesn’t sound like much. Then play a major scale, skipping over the black keys, and see if that sounds familiar to anyone.
Why are there keys? Answering that could take years.
Adding to the list, Tattooed Love Boys by the Pretenders alternates 7/4 and 8/4 in the verses (or it’s in 4/4 with a beat dropped from the second measure, depending on how you’re counting it.)
This is an interesting one. I was going to bring up “Piano Man” as an example of 3/4 before. It does have the stereotypical bass-chord-chord pattern in the piano that is typical of most waltzes. However, when the drums come in, they play more of a 6/8 pattern. Most sources I can find say it’s a fast 3/4, and all the sheet music I’ve seen of it has it written in 3/4, but I’m more inclined to call it 6/8 in feel, especially because of those drums.
edit: I guess put it this way: the piano sounds like a fast 3/4 to me, the drums sound like a slow 6/8 to me.
No because they are not fractions. They look like fractions but they aren’t.
For 6/8 think of the Liberty Bell March by John Phillip Sousa or as you may think of it, the theme from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
You can not write in 3/4 because the second beat of a 6/8 is not as strong as the first. If you wrote it in 3/4 the second beat would become the first beat of a different measure and have an equal emphasis.
Also there is the structure.
Not a LAW but a rule is 8, 12 or 16 bar structure. If you converted it would have 16, 12, or 32 bars as it structure. You can break the rules of course but most people don’t and most listeners would ‘know’ the difference.
That list doesn’t include the song with possibly the most esoteric time signature ever: Thirteen, by Frank Zappa. (youtube link)
He explains the time signature to the audience in the first 15 seconds, and by the three minute mark the song heads into insane territory, magnified by this being a live performance.
This particular live performance is 15 minutes long, broken up into two parts. Part two is here.
For those who can’t click the link, the count goes:
OneTwo
OneTwoThree
One…Two…Three…Four
The “OneTwoThree” takes the same amount of time as the “OneTwo”, both of which are quicker than each of the last four beats.
6/9?
So, is this why ‘boom chicka bow wow’ is sometimes associated with porno movies?
Listen to Shall We Dance from The King and I, parts get counted during the song.
Commonly found in the works of noted composers Connie Lingus and Phil Atio.
Get it now?
Old concert-band joke:
A concert band has a new piece that they’re working on, and it’s written in 7/8 time. Nobody’s ever seen 7/8 time before, and they’re all trying to figure out how to count it. Finally, the drummer says, “Wait, I’ve figured it out! It’s One-two-three-four-Five-six-se-ven!”.