I have quite a bit of sheet music for my favorite classic country artists. A lot of country music is in Cut Time. The C with a line through the middle (like a really big cent sign ￠).
I know its 2 beats a measure. Whole Note gets 2 beats, Half note gets 1 beat. Quarter note gets a half beat. I think of quarter notes in cut time as eighth notes. 1/8 notes become 1/16 notes. God help you if there are any 1/16 notes in the music. They become 1/32 notes.
But, do I have to make life miserable for myself counting 1,2 1,2 1,2? And counting 1/8 notes as 1/16 notes?
How about a faster bpm metronome setting? If I play Common time at 75 bpm would 150 bpm give the same result as 2/2?
Is the pulse or groove going to feel the same? How do most musicians play cut time?
Honestly I can’t play at 150 bpm. That’s crazy fast for me to pick individual notes. I could work up to 120bpm or maybe 130bpm with a lot more practice. I learned to play the melody in 4/4 at 75 bpm. Now I have to decide how to get it into Cut time.
Actually, I think you want a slower bpm with cut time. Because it’s two beats to a measure, and a half note gets one beat (rather than the four beats to a measure, quarter note gets a beat of Common time).
In fact, a large part of the purpose of Cut Time is to make life easier for the musician, by using more half notes and quarter notes rather than quarter notes and eighth notes.
Metronome markings are given in reference to a rhythmic unit. Quarter-note=75 is quarter-note=75 irrespective of the meter. In 2/2, quarter-note=75 would be 37.5 beats per minute. The difference between 4/4 and 2/2 is largely one of feel. 2/2 tends to feel a little smoother, as there are theoretically fewer accents. There’s no particular reason that it needs to be any faster, although it certainly can.
I’m relearning how to play from sheet music. I can’t recall ever playing in cut time in high school orchestra or church choir. I’ve seen 2/2 in music theory books and knew the basic idea.
I thought I’d found an easy beginners song. The melody is mostly quarter notes and a few eighth notes. No sixteenth notes at all. The original song doesn’t sound that fast. Its not like a Bluegrass song that features very precise and fast picking.
Now I’m stuck wondering how to play all those notes in only 2 beats per measure.
I didn’t answer this particularly well yesterday; I was trying to squeeze in coherence between lessons. I’ll try to expand.
You seem to be confusing tempo and meter. Meter is just an arrangement of accents; it tells you where the “strong” points of time are in relation to the music. It is independent of tempo, which tells you how fast the notes move. The difference between 4/4 and 2/2 is one of meter, not tempo.
In 4/4 you have a primary accent (1), and secondary accent (3) and two tertiary accents (2 and 4). In 2/2 you just have the primary (1) and secondary (2). That’s really the only difference. The difference is one of feel; because there are fewer accents in 2/2, you generally get a smoother feel. There’s also less rigidity “inside” the beats since there’s more space between the accents.
Most of the time, quarter notes are not going to move any faster in 2/2 than they are in 4/4. If the quarter note is at 80bpm in 4/4, 2/2 might be 40bpm. You can practice this by starting out counting 1-2-3-4, and once you’ve got it steady, count it 1—2--- where 1 and 2 happen where 1 and 3 were.
My advice would be to forget about cut time for now and pretend it’s in 4/4. Set your metronome for a comfortable quarter note tempo and go from there. Quarter notes are still quarter notes, eights are still eighths. Once you’re comfortable, half the time on the metronome so it corresponds to half notes and see if it results in a smoother feel.
A brief digression about changing meters. You’re unlikely to see a lot of it in the type of music you’re doing, but it’s worth talking about. If you go from one meter to another, where the base unit changes (so from, say 4/4 to 2/2 or 4/4 to 6/8) you need to know what the relationship between them is. If there is no indication given, it means one of two things (well, three). One, that the beat stays constant (in which case 2/2 would in fact be functionally twice as fast as 4/4) or the rhythmic unit stays constant (so the quarter note tempo stays the same). The former was the norm through most of the baroque and classical periods, while the latter is the norm for modern music. The third possibility is that the composer or publisher is just being sloppy and didn’t indicate anything and you just have to figure it out on your own. Which is depressingly common.
I’ve mostly come across cut time in marches, I didn’t know it was common in country too. I’m done learning for the day!
Switching to cut time is kind of like switching gears. If the song is fairly quick and difficult to direct or count in common time, marking it cut time keeps the same tempo but you only have to direct and count half the notes.
The cymbals in the “The Stars and Stripes Forever” are on the beat (1 & 2). If it was in 4/4 instead of 2/2 the director would have to direct four beats in two cymbal crashes. The tempo would be a marching band-killing 240 instead of 120.
It’s more a ‘feel’.
You want to feel two beat per measure. You can count to four if you really want, just hit 1 and 3 (or 2 and 4 depending the style).
Most of Sousa’s marches are in 6/8. Conducted (and felt) with two beats per measure, each beat getting 3 eighty notes.