The time signature used most often in pop and jazz is four-four time. But in writing music, musicians often choose the note values in a bad way, so the backbeat isn’t right. According to drummers, the backbeat consists of the accents on the second and fourth beat of a four-four bar. If you notate a piece of music, you should choose your note values in such a way that the second and fourth beat coincide with the backbeat.
Let’s have a look at a couple of songs from recent years. First, Uptown funk by Mark Ronson. Sometimes this song is written down in the following way:
In the way the notes are notated here, the (from the original recording) doesn’t sound on two and four. Instead, in each bar there is only one backbeat, on three. Thus, all notes are notated two times too large. The right way to notate the piece, is using sixteenth notes:
Let’s have a look at another example from a more mainstream pop style: Send my love by Adele. Her notes are like this:
In song books you might encounter the following version, in which all notes are made twice as long and the backbeat is on the third beat:
In some cases, two-two time is used instead of four-four time, in which the notes have double length:
In certain way, this notation is more correct than the first. In this case, the beat of the time signatures corresponds to the natural pulse in the music. But still the backbeat is not on the right spot. Furthermore, the length of the notes don’t look right and in reading the music you might make mistakes easily.
The mistake described above is quite common. Sometimes the opposite occurs, in which the notes in the score are notated using too small values. On the internet I came across the following version of Hold back the river by James Bay:
However, the tempo of the song is fast. And this high tempo is creating the nice drive in the song. Therefore, the right version is:
