Trying to figure out time signature of a piece of music to recreate in GB

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Trying to figure out time signature of a piece of music to recreate in GB

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to figure out the time signature of a particular piece of music, as I do a lot of work with this particular piece of music and I am attempting to migrate over to GarageBand on a Mac from FL Studio 6 on a PC.

This piece is the theme music to the British science fiction series Doctor Who, created in 1963 by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. This is a classic and timeless piece of music and I'm prone to doing quite a few recreations and remixes based on this theme.

Wikipedia is hosting a condensed version of the theme at the following URL:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5d/DoctorWho_themeexcerpt.ogg

I'm sorry about the strange slight pitch bending up and down... must be some kind of copyright thing. The real piece remains at a constant pitch. I would post mine but I'm sure that it's some kind of copyright violation.

From what I've read online, the original theme was done in a 4/4 time signature at 140 bpm. A good friend of mine insists that it's easier to do in a 4/3 time signature. In FL Studio back on the PC, I did everything in 4/4, but both 4/4 and 4/3 worked fine for me as far as easily laying out the bassline in simple "dum-de-dums" and "diddly-dums" but no matter what time signature and no matter how far I zoom in, I cannot get the correct note lengths for the bassline in GarageBand. I've tried 4/4, which is the most logical of the time signatures, but the notes never fit the correct "dum-de-dum" pattern timing-wise and I can't do a "diddly-dum" because it won't let me divide one section (bar? beat?) into three notes as is required for the "diddly" of the "diddly-dum." (I must sound like a madman referring to the bassline notes as "dum-de-dums" and "diddly-dums," but hey, it works for me.)

Anyway, if someone else could perhaps come in and tell me what I'm doing wrong or another way of configuring GarageBand so that I can put this bassline in properly, I would be most grateful to you!

Thanks so much,
Danny

Mac mini Mac OS X (10.4.6) Intel Core Duo, 1.66 GHz, 512 MB RAM

Posted on Jun 29, 2006 10:18 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 30, 2006 12:39 AM in response to timelord726

First of all: There is no 4/3 signature, you probably mean 3/4, right?

You're perfectly right to assign 4/4 to the song, the long "dums" are the quarter notes. The "diddlys" are triplets. You get these if you set the grid in the editor window (lower window with the scissors icon!) to 1/8 triplets (click on the little ruler icon in the upper right corner!) - then the grid has 3 parts to every quarter note.

Couldn't determine the exact tempo because of the .ogg format, but I'm sure you'll find this out by trial and error.

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Answer 2

timelord726 Author

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Jun 30, 2006 6:08 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

Hi Christoph!

Thanks for the response. I probably do mean 3/4... FL's way of displaying time signature must be weird, and I'm coming from that, which is all I'm used to.

Also, thank you so much for the advice -- I would never have noticed that little tiny ruler up there, but now that I've switched it to the proper grid type, "dum-de-dums" and "diddly-dums" snap right into place! Time to get cracking on a new remix. 😉

Thanks again and take care,
Danny

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Answer 3

Jun 30, 2006 7:22 AM in response to timelord726

Great to hear it worked!

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Answer 4

Jun 30, 2006 9:16 AM in response to timelord726

Danny,

The theme to Doctor Who is in 12/8. In music theory, there's no such thing as a 12th note, the notation and nomenclature is all based on things being divisible by four. So for the diddly-dum feel to happen, you have to give the beat to a quarter note plus another eighth note -- we call it a dotted quarter note, and now you have three eighth notes per beat so you can go diddly. So, since you can't call the time signature 12/dotted quarter, you call it 12/8 and go faster. Make sense? Anyway, for GB's purposes, all you need to know is that you'll get that feel by choosing 12/8.

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Answer 5

Jul 1, 2006 7:09 AM in response to ginnboonmiller

(Pretty misleading post, in my opinion. In 12/8, there is no such thing as a "12th note". What is true is that it's a matter of taste if you set the song up as 4/4 where the fast notes are 1/8 triplets, or as 12/8 where the fast notes are 1/8s.)

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Answer 6

timelord726 Author

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Jul 1, 2006 7:25 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

I tested out 12/8 and it does indeed seem to be a matter of taste. I've already begun building a mix in 4/4 so I think I'm going to leave it like this for now as it sounds just fine. I may experiment more with 12/8 later on.

Thanks to both of you for posting!

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Answer 7

Jul 2, 2006 11:19 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

That's why I wrote "there's no such thing as a 12th note."

It is a matter of taste, I suppose. I tend to come from the perspective of someone that learned to write music with a pencil and paper, so I err on the side of what works that way. But triplets in 4/4 works fine. Just less traditionally.

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