Has anyone got any tips for helping students to tell the difference between 2/4 and 6/8, and 3/4 and 9/8 without going into too much detail!!!

Thanks is advance

Katie

Without going into too much detail,compound time examples would be played pretty fast in the lower grades making the 2 or 3 dotted crotchet beats stand out. eg 1 2 3 4 5 6 or 1 2 3 4 5 6

Thanks Nicki

It is because you haven't opened/closed the tags.

You need to put [ B ] information in bold [ / B ]*

*Without the spaces though. So what Danse_Macabre is trying to put is:

1,2,3,4,5,6

Katie

You asked this question specifying Grade 2/3 Aural as the reason: my understanding is that in these early aural tests, the examiner simply wants a definition of 2 in a bar or 3 in a bar. So long as your student can feel the main pulse (be it crotchet or dotted crotchet) that's all they need to do. They won't be asked (at least none of my pupils ever has been) whether it's 2/4 or 6/8.

When trying to explain these time signatures to pupils, I find it easiest to draw out the quavers for a student to see (even if they're not at that stage in their music theory). The difference between quavers grouped in twos and quavers grouped in threes is fairly obvious (especially if you use different colours to highlight the point). I then play each example to my student really stressing the grouping of the quavers and they begin to get the idea. One pupil observed, I thought rather nicely, on hearing 6/8 "Oh it's like dancing very quickly in three time, two times" - well I knew what she meant!
:)