What's Difference between 7/8 and 7/4?

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Recorded and edited by @soundslikeemma

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[love_to_learn_drums]

Check out my membership for all my drum eBooks, courses, live streams, podcasts, all my videos organised and searchable in one place, and much more! 😊

[haxbfax]

7/4 feels like some combination of 4/4 + 3/4, while 7/8 feels like a 4/4 that gets cut off one 8th early

[saltysumo]

Concise, to the point, no fluff, not pretentious, and most importantly - actually correct. Quite unlike most music YouTube tutorials.

[alsonolan]

It also helps to count "sev" instead of "seven" to prevent yourself from falling into 8/8 or 4/4.

[JacubWhite]

Her voice makes it feel like I'm getting a drum lesson from a fairy tail and I love it.

[carlosferreira]

Yea, of course in the same context they are different. But it is possible to have a 7/8 piece written in 7/4 and vice versa, just double/half the tempo and adjust the dynamics.

[alanjenkins]

I have no idea what you are talking about but you have an engaging personality I watch to the end.

[titucolceri]

I've seen a lot of musicians make these types of arguments when in fact, it's arbitrary. It depends entirely on whether the composed piece uses quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes or even 16th notes as the base meter. It also depends entirely on the written tempo.

I stopped using "7/8" or "7/4" a while ago since you can't know the intended root beat structure without talking to the artist.

I find it's more accurate to talk about time signatures as functions of a musical phrase. Where does the phrase start and stop? How many beats are present in each phrase?

Then just call it a phrase in 4, or 6 or 13 or whatever the artist is using.

[NoteSmoking]

Turkish Beats 1-2 1-2 1-2-3
Subdivision becomes a big reason to use different meters. You often see triplets in compound meters so it works for things like that, too.

[nuuhishere]

in general it has to do with grouping more than that. 7/4 are seven beats and 7/8 is generally and combination of 2, 2 and 3 beats. So for example you'd count "1 2 1 2 1 2 3"

[KbeezyThe]

Thank u so much . I've been playing over 30 yrs and u have helped me understand things so easily, I'm mostly by ear and feeling. Just wanted to thank you for your lessons. ❤

[andycharlton]

I heard a good tip once from Rod Morganstein. If you count 7/8 as 12334567, you can fall into counting it as "Five six sev-en" and you're back in 4/4. Better to count as, Five, six, sev', one two...'

(I did notice you count "Seven" in 16th notes to avoid this.)

[bradparker]

Very interesting even as a guitarist. A very nice job, and a GREAT shirt, by the way

[vanpet]

Try to count 7/8 like 3+2+2 and accent start of each group. That's how we do it on Balkan, because it's natural to our folk music and it's easy to understand it that way... Like: one-two-three, one-two, one-two. Similarly with 9/8... It helps :)

[davidisrael]

I have the same David Gilmour shirt! Saw him in Chicago 8 or 9 years ago, what a great show.

[scopilio]

now play it where the quarter equals 100 bpm for the 7/4 and the eighth equals 100 bpm for the 7/8

[Msan]

Thanks. That solved it for me.
Made me understand 3/4 vs 6/8 too!

[stevepruitt]

You didn’t explain how they were different.
You demonstrated what the rhythm groupings would be if the quarter note tempo remained equal; using your example, you could have made the quarter note in 7/4 and eighth note in 7/8 as the same tempo to make the rhythms sound identical.
What you should have pointed out is that 7/4 is a simple meter (eighth notes grouped by twos, which differs from compound meter where 8Th notes are grouped in 3’s)) and 7/8 is a complex meter (eighth notes grouped both simple and compound).
Slightly more complicated answer, but keeping the same tempo for the quarter note between both meters seemed like a lowbrow way to demonstrate metric differences.

[elliotmcconnell]

Yup yup. I have on the album i am working on that switches between 7/8 and 7/4 for the first few minutes of the song. Its a really cool transition.

[tbonealex]

Those were both 7/4 but just different tempos! #changemymind