Forum: music.stackexchange.com
Tags: <terminology><time-signatures>
Title: Which time signatures are associated with particular types of music?
Question: A waltz is always played in 3/4 time, but are there any other types of music that are associated with specific time signatures?

Answers:
sents: text: From the Wikipedia article on Time Signature : 4/4: Widely used, rock, country, blues, funk, pop 2/2: Marches and musical theater
text: 2/4:
text: Polkas and marches 3/4: Waltzes, minuets, scherzi, country and western ballads, R&B, pop 3/8:
text: Same as above 6/8:
text: Double jigs, polkas, sega, salegy, tarantella, marches, barcarolles, Irish jigs, loures, and some rock music (half of all Chevelle songs, seemingly)
text: 9/8:
text: Triple jigs, rare (famously used in The Ride of the Valkyries )
text: 12/8:
text: Slower blues (shuffle), Do-wop, example: Dazed and Confused by Led Zeppelin
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/6070/Todd Wilcox
score: 4
sents: text: Do you think specifically about 3/4, or time signatures in general?
text: Pop, rock and metal are almost always 4/4, and rarely change meter, though there can be exceptions (e.g. Iron Maiden - Number of the beast alternates between 4/4 and 6/4, Oingo Boingo little girls - alternates between 4/4 and 2/4).
text: Great exceptions are postrock and avant-garde metal, where there are no specific rules regarding meter, and changes of meters can be common.
text: Dubstep (both old school and brostep) are mostly 4/4 (as far as I know), except maybe some post-dubstep, though I can't think of an example right now.
text: And modern electronic dance music is commonly 4/4 (e.g. Trance, EBM, IDM).
text: Though, nothing of this is strictly rule, look for example at chapter about meters in EDM in this book.
text: Derivatives of drum'n'bass music such as breakcore use variety of different time signatures, and it mostly depends upon the producer.
text: Venetian snares writes his music in 7/4.
text: Igorrr uses in some songs duple meter, while in others triple (e.g. Igorrr & Ruby My Dear - Barbecue), and also their combinations.
text: Lauren Bousfield from Nero's Day
text: At Disneyland alternates between duple and triple meters in many of his songs.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/21630/Gitnik
score: 2
sents: text: In the Baroque style period (roughly 1600–1750) the rhythms of a number of folk dances from all across Europe were incorporated into instrumental compositions -- at the same time, what we now know as ballet was being developed in France.
text: There are numerous Baroque dances and rhythms.
text: Many great composers wrote famous instrumental pieces called suites which have numerous short movements one after the other, each in a different rhythm and meter associated with a particular dance style.
text: These pieces are still performed today.
text: This list is from the Wikipedia article on Baroque dance .
text: Click on the link and you can go to individual articles on each of the dance forms in this list to read about the rhythm associated with each.
text: Allemande Bourrée Canarie (canary)
text: Chaconne Courante Entrée grave Forlane (forlana) Gavotte Gigue Loure Menuet (minuet) Musette Passacaglia Passepied Rigaudon Sarabande Tambourin Further details of a more musical nature can be found at this Wikipedia article on the Baroque suite .
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 2
sents: text: There is a long list of styles of music with particular distinct rhythms and time signatures at the Wikipedia article on Ballroom Dance .
text: That is to say that these are competition styles of dance , but each dance has its own style of music that goes along with it.
text: Here is a partial list from that link
text: Waltz:
text: 3/4 time Tango:
text: 4/4 time Viennese Waltz: 3/4 time Foxtrot: 4/4 time Quickstep: 4/4 time Samba: 2/4 time Cha-cha-cha: 4/4 time Rumba: 4/4 time Paso Doble: 2/4 time Jive: 4/4 time Boogie-Woogie: 8/8 time ( "eight to the bar" ) Bolero Mambo
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 2
sents: text: Here is a long and detailed list of many Bulgarian folk dances and styles of music (going back centuries) which make use of various odd-time signatures like 7/8, 11/16, 5/8, and many others.
text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_dances
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 1
sents: text: If you are talking about stylistic appropriate time signatures you can also add that Irregular Time Signatures are a distinct characteristic of modern music.
text: They where extremely rare before the Modern scene was invented.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/7306/Neil Meyer
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
Pop, rock and metal and dubstep are almost always 4/4, and rarely change meter, though there can be exceptions (e.g. Iron Maiden - Number of the beast alternates between 4/4 and 6/4, Oingo Boingo little girls - alternates between 4/4 and 2/4).  From the Wikipedia article on  Time Signature :   4/4: Widely used, rock, country, blues, funk, pop  2/2: Marches and musical theater.
A wide variety of genres, such as rock, pop, metal and dubstep, all use 4/4 time signatures regularly.