corseque:tehlibrarylife:I wouldn’t have known what this was...

corseque:

tehlibrarylife:

I wouldn’t have known what this was if diebrarian hadn’t tagged it.

This is how you wave your hand/conductor’s baton to lead the song if you’re a music conductor. You make different movements depending on the time signature of the song. (wiki article) (youtube example)

This, except it’s VERY rare to beat in 8 or 12! These would normally be considered compound time signatures, where instead of beating every individual beat, you conduct groups of beats. For instance, the Game of Thrones theme is in 12/8, meaning there are twelve eighth beats in every measure. This really groups into four groups of three and conduct a pulse on beats 1, 4, 7, and 10, in a four-pattern. If that doesn’t make sense, think of it as ONE two three FOUR five six SEVEN eight nine TEN eleven twelve. In the GoT theme, it goes “doot doot do-do doot doot do-do doot doot do-do doot doot”. The doots are the eighth notes. Listen for the greater four grouping to get the swing feeling instead of counting in twelve and being robotic about it. :)