6/8 vs 3/4: POLYRHYTHMS From A Time Signature Difference

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What is the exact difference between 3/4 and 6/8 in music?

Ok, I have to admit that this is not a particularly exciting question at first sight. After all it takes but a minute or two to explain the difference between these two time signatures.

And it's definitely not life-and-death information either: the worst you can get from picking the wrong one when you write a song is a few scowls from a musician or two.

(And these people will scowl at you even if you notate chords in a way they don't like, or if you use the wrong font in the title of the score - true story!)

But if we go and look a bit beyond the obvious... we see that musicians have actually been leveraging the fact that these two time signatures are similar but different.

If you've been following this newsletter for a while you know that I have little patience for theory that is not useful... I like to 'use' music theory to get ideas for composition, not for armchair music analysis.

By comparing 3/4 and 6/8 not only we get some interesting rhythm... we can see also a few tricks to make 'stale' rhythms sound better (like using polyrhythms... or displacing them!)

So if you have a song that has potential... but it does not have 'groove'... have a look at what I do to these rhythms and you will have some ideas to make that song a crowd pleaser.

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