For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
But what about weird fractions like 5/7 and such?
You aren’t really going to find songs in “5/17” time or 5/7 time, if at all. I believe the bottom number is meant to be divisible by 2 (2, 4, 8, 16). I’m not a musician, but I have an interest in music. The bottom number just explains which note you’re using (half, quarter) and how many beats would be in the measure. Top number is how many beats in the measure. To use a previous example, 7/8 looks like
TA-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-TA-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta
Sometimes you’ll find Songs in 14/8 time, (YouTube link) which could be divided into two measures of 7/8 depending on how you might like to read it.
Yep. The bottom number is always divisible by 2
Weird: in my multiple attempts to grok what time sigs are about, I’ve heard a different explanation: that the lower number indicates the beat on which the emphasis is. But now the first paragraph in Wikipedia’s article body confirms what you say. Some kind of Mandela effect going on here. However, Wikipedia also notices that irrational meters may have a lower number that’s not a power of two.
Irrational meters and by extension polymeters and polyrhythms are some serious music nerd stuff, well beyond my own personal knowledge and capability.