What Are the Functions of the Bar Line in Determining Meter?
- Bar lines work in tandem with time signatures to dictate meter.Partition image by MarieMag from Fotolia.com
Music scores can seem complicated to those who are not familiar with them. However, learning a few basics is all that is needed to understand notation, rhythm and meter. Bar lines are the lines that appear at the end of a "bar" (often called a "measure") and are used in conjunction with the time signature at the start of a piece to determine meter. Meter is what determines which notes are the strong notes and which are the weak. - Bar lines have not always been used in music notation and before the seventh century, their use was rarer. Before the Renaissance, bar lines were not used at all and meter was determined by the musician or by a choir master. Even after bar lines were introduced, their relationship to meter was not quickly established. Bar lines were often used as a way to keep notes tidied and ordered but their use in signalling meter did not become uniform for some time. Modern versions of these older scores may have altered time signatures and bar lines, as decided by an editor, to make the meter clearer.
- Bar lines today tend to have a direct relation to the meter and time signature. For example, if the time signature is written as "4/4," there will be four crotchet beats to each bar, grouped between two single lines (the bar lines). Usually, one can infer meter based on the arrangement of notes. Traditionally, the first and third beats of the bar are the strong beats, so in the 4/4 example, grouping four crotchets between bar lines help a musician or conductor to identify which notes are the strong beats.
- While using a bar line to infer meter is a good starting point, it should not be relied on as many exceptions exist. Where meter does not follow common conventions (as decided by the composer), determining meter in this way will confuse a reader and distort the score's intended sound. For complicated pieces of music, listening to a performance may be required to infer meter as it can be ambiguous to begin with, even where a time signature and bar lines exist. Other markings on a manuscript may be required to determine meter. There are further complications to inferring meter in this way as many modern composers do not subscribe to traditional conventions and use bar lines for other purposes.
