RE: Time Signatures in music - why do they matter? What is 4/4 anyway? [my answers]
An interesting aspect of music is that a time signature is merely a framework to help describe the actual music and that with syncopation and other variations, what is written in 4/4, for example, can sound like a different time signature. What is important to understand is that music is something beyond what is traditionally taught and understood.
Filling up a chart by the lines on the paper is like painting by the numbers. Sure, you can make a very nice painting by following the numbers and using the techniques developed over the years, but if you want to be your own fish, you have to jump out of school.
The human ear needs time to get used to sounds it is unfamiliar with, but once it does, those new sounds can offer extra dimensions to musical expression. Always be open to sounds that don't appeal to you at first. Given time, even the harshest and oddest sounds can turn pleasurable. This appreciation will then give you a greater choice of musical entertainment and expression.
Yeah, I am very familiar with this. I actually myself do not recognize time signatures unless I'm forced to count them. I just tend to feel the music as a whole. I don't sight read for example. I am slow at it as I was late at life in learning any of that. I am mostly by ear. I can read music... slowly. Once I know a piece I don't need the music. Most things I do play I never had sheet music just learned by ear.
Yet when discussing Time Signatures and complexity of music you and I already know what they are referring to. Yet, to people that do not know the term discussing how amazingly complex something is to people and referring to how often the time signatures change is meaningless.
I viewed this post as simply another tool for music appreciation. It might give people that didn't know such concepts another VIEW into music.
No doubt. I am merely pointing out something and not critiquing what was written in the post, just adding a little something extra, that like you said, you and I already know, but maybe others hadn't actually considered.
Best of everything to you, bud.