Q: How does one figure out the time signature of a song? I know what time signatures are but I have no idea how to figure them out in songs that are more than just like one instrument (so most songs)
A: step 1 is, find the beat. so as the music is going, see where you would tap your foot or nod your head, or wave your conducting wand. in most songs, this is pretty easy to find. of course you could always make crazy songs where you can't find it, but in Most songs you can find it. however, in most songs you can also do it twice as slow (or half as fast) if you want. in some songs, it is at just a certain tempo that you're almost not sure whether to tap the beat at one speed or twice as fast. this is ok, any piece of music can be written in multiple ways, you could set the tempo twice as fast and write all the notes as half the values and it would mean the same thing. but in most songs, it is reasonably clear where the foot-tap is. and i will go a step further to say that most music usually has these beats grouped together in groups of 2, 4, 8, etc. the way most music is written on paper is in groups of 4 beats, with bar lines dividing the bars (or 'measures'). most music uses 4 beats per bar. that being said it is really up to you to decide where the begining of the bars should be. but i think in most music there is a clear answer. to learn how to detect other time signatures besides 4/4, just start finding examples of them and then you will get better at hearing them. but when songs use 3-based time signatures, it can often be represented in multiple ways, many of which actually still heavily involve 4s. 2s, 3s, and 4s, are used all the time in music. it is very rare that music consistently uses a 5 or 7 pattern all the way through. usually when time signatures like 5 or 7 happen, it tends to be only once, and then goes back to 4. it is quite common for songs to need to add an extra beat or half a beat here and there, particularly at the end of the chorus or at the end of a section. this is accomplished by having 1 bar that is a different time signature. it is much more rare to have a song that entirely is based on a 5 pattern or a 7 pattern or another higher odd number. i'm not sure if that answers your question actually, but i think my most important point is that most music is in groups of 2, 4, and 8. and the way that is most commonly written on paper is with 4 beats per bar, and the time signature is called "4/4" (actually the first number is written above the second number but that's not easy to type here) the top or first number represents how many beats per bar. the bottom (or second) number is supposed to tell you what kind of a note gets the beat. so 4/4 should technically mean there are 4 beats in a bar and a 'quarter' note gets 1 beat. i realize there are holes in this system and many time signatures really can't be analyzed quite this way but that is the way the idea is supposed to work