Although all time signatures can have their ' time' and place I definitely favor 3/4. Have you ever thought about that? I wonder if it has to do with the innate nature of rocking. Were we all rocked as children....weren't you? When I write I freely change time signatures in the piece. I would definitely say that is the beauty of creating contemporary neo-classical music. Sections of songs don't even have to be in an even number of ...
top of page
MODERN CLASSICAL PIANO
bottom of page
Aside from 4/4, one of my favourite time signatures is 7/4.
I like experimenting with rhythm and trying to write pieces in 7/4 that feel natural and calming.
A little late to the party here, but still wanted to add my thoughts on this! I think it is a quite interesting topic. Personally I am very influenced by modern jazz artists like Tigran Hamasyan (from Armenia, Album: An Ancient Observer!!), Avishai Cohen (Album: Gently Disturbed!!), Shai Maestro (both from Israel) who definitely have another approach or way of thinking when it comes to time signature. In the end I guess they all studied in Berklee, but you can clearly hear their musical background. I find their music very inspiring, especially when it comes to rhythm and changing it freely without hesitating or thinking too much about it, but it just feels natural (edit: same for harmonies of course!). Same applies for modern European or American jazz groups like E.S.T. or The Bad Plus, to me at least. In the end I try to not overthink this topic and just play lines and melodies and when I feel like this melody should stop at a certain point I do so, no matter what time signature it is. But it can be a really nice exercise to write a riff or just a chord progression in a different time signature. Just like someone already proposed the challenge to write songs in a particular mode or scale :) (edit: @Silas Rosenskjold once suggested this idea ;) ). Personally I also like 6/4, or 4 /4 + 2/4. It's quite fun to play with the tension of the 2/4 at the end. If you want to create this at least. Normally you would expect 2 more beats but you just go back a little early and it does not feel too odd like 5 or 7. And you could also expand this to a normal 4/4 and so keep it interesting and surprising at any time.
got inspired by dream theater's music, so rhythm and time signature is a big thing for me 😀 I love the nod feeling of 6/8, and some binary triplet mixture, but for most of my pieces I stay in 4/4. Not thinking about it when starting to compose. it has to fit to the melody line. But there are some experimental one, I remember one 7/4 of Nils Frahm. And @HEMSING has some 5/4 parts in his "felt" ;)
My mother must've rocked me at a 3/4 time signature. I will ask her! Haha
It was interesting to me when I realized that I naturally gravitate towards a 3/4 time signature (95% of the time), whether I'm writing for piano or guitar and not thinking about time signatures.
Personally, i don't think i've ever sat at the piano and said "ok, i'm going to compose something in THIS time signature". it just naturally happens to be in one or another...
Curious to read what others have to say!