Why are there 4 beats to a bar ?

Renesongs · 2008-09-27T00:02:29+00:00

As a guitar teacher I come across a broad spectrum of humanity. Most people accept what I teach at face value and don't really question why there are 12 intervals in western harmony or why there are no sharps and flats in the C major scale. When they do I can be a regular Cliff Clavin (TV series Cheers) and bore them to death about Gregorian Chants being in the Natural Minor and secular (folk) music being in the major and that because Church had more power the natural minor got to start with A not the secular major which relative to minor was C... if you still reading this then you must be a masochist. Anyway I got stumped last week when I was explaining time signatures to a student that takes nothing at face value. The question is why are there 4 beats to the bar in common time not 2,3,5 or 6 ? Put another way why is a beat considered to be a quarter note ? ??? All solutions or suggestions will be welcome no matter how esoteric. ?

jakjak

Renesongs wrote
Dude, I think you're drinking in the wrong bars!!
I wasn't counting dead-beats because there would be at least 10 in any given bar 11 if I counted myself ?

lol

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