Forum: music.stackexchange.com
Tags: <time-signatures>
Title: Can this notation be considered either 3/4 or 6/8 time?
Question: When I gave a worksheet today, 2 of my students labeled this notation as 3/4 time, simple triple. Are they wrong or is this acceptable? If it's not acceptable, why? Is it simply because it wouldn't make sense to use 2 eighth rests at the end here in 3/4 time?

Answers:
sents: text: 6/8 is duple time - the bar is split into two equal parts.
text: With the first note, a dotted crotchet, it makes the first half.
text: There's no reason to have two quaver rests at the end in 6/8 - a crotchet rest will suffice.
text: Having said that, it would also be fine in 3/4 time, which would query the dotted crotchet at the beginning, which may be more acceptable (in 3/4) as a crotchet tied to a quaver.
text: But, we see this sort of thing more and more - notes across the middle of 4/4 for example, so perhaps we just need to get used to what used to be called sloppy writing...
text: As an aside, should one give out work that one hasn't scrutinised for potential discrepancies, with all possible answers researched?
text: Maybe another way to read it is using notes in place of rests.
text: As in, would the last note have to be two tied quavers, or would a crotchet be acceptable?
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/2808/Tim
score: 8
sents: text: If this were 3/4, 'old' theory would demand the dotted quarter was written as a quarter tied to an 8th.
text: OK, we don't always do that now.
text: But in 3/4 the bar would be completed with a single quarter rest, not two 8ths.
text: We can't wriggle out of that one!
text: It's 6/8.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/17003/Laurence Payne
score: 7
sents: text: The grouping of the rest tells you it is 6/8 time.
text: If it was 3/4 time the last two quaver rests would be a crotchet rest as to better indicate the crotchet beats, this time signature has two beats of dotted crotchets that is better illustrated with the given rest grouping.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/7306/Neil Meyer
score: 2
sents: text: To the best of my knowledge, they are not the same.
text: 3/4 feels like there are 3 "binary" beats each bar.
text: Think of waltz.
text: 6/8 feels like there are only two beats and where each beat can be felt as having 3 subdivisions.
text: So it's a matter of figuring out the "beats" that there are on the bar cause
text: they feel completely different.
text: Coming from Venezuela myself, I know in venezuelan music there are some types of music where they can be mixed (and which is very tricky to figure out for people from other countries).
text: The best example I can think of right now is "Preludio Criollo" by Rodrigo Riera where he has the bass voice going on 3/4 and yet the main voice is going 6/8.
text: Tricky to play.
text: Talking about (venezuelan) genres, probably Pajarillo or other varieties of Joropo like "Seis por Derecho" are the hardest to pick up.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/48531/eftshift0
score: 2
sents: text: For the most part: the best way I explain it my lead guitarist; (Who plays as well as Chet Atkins did, but my guy can't read music); is to just think of it as a waltz no matter what and follow my bass guitar.
text: I have only noticed it wrote that way in hymnals usually.
text: They use 6/8, 9/8 and so forth to control the layout of the music to fit one or two pages at the most.
text: For example "Softly and Tenderly" is written in my hymnal as 6/8
text: but I can just as easily convert it to 3/4 and
text: it will play exactly the same way.
text: It just requires more bars to write it out.
text: Double the amount of bars in this case.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/61664/Richard Terry
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
 They use 6/8, 9/8 and so forth to control the layout of the music to fit one or two pages at the most. For example "Softly and Tenderly" is written in a hymnal as 6/8 but it can just as easily be converted to 3/4 and  it will play exactly the same way.  It just requires more bars to write it out.
Double the amount of bars in this case.