What is 6/8 in the key signature mean?
The other people here did a great job of explaining how 6/8 is played and conducted, but there is an easy way to determine how to play any key signature…. 6/8 means that there are 6 eighth notes in the measure. 4/4 means that there are 4 quarter notes in the measure. 3/4 means that there are 3 quarter notes in the measure. 12/8 means that there are 12 eighth notes in the measure. Technically, the composer can write rhythms in any way he desires, making the subdivisions different, but like everyone here said, 6/8 is most commonly felt as a triple meter in 2.
Not what you’d think. Mathematically, it should mean that there are six beats to a bar and an eighth note gets one beat, but that’s not true. 6/8 time, unless it’s extremely slow, is always felt and conducted as two beats per bar, each consisting of a three-note group — like a triplet (although a triplet is really something else). So a bar of 6/8 is not ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR-FIVE-SIX, but rather ONEtwothree FOURfivesix. Think two waltz measures per bar, but with the accent on one not as strong as in 3/4; feel a more even distribution of impulse, with an accent on one and a secondary accent on four. The perfect example: Norwegian Wood. It’s published as 3/4, but that will have been some assistant editor in a publishing house (McCartney didn’t read music, at least not then). But in fact it’s a perfect 6/8, triples in double pulses (each of the following lines is a measure, with the beats falling on the capitalized words; double hypen is an eighth rest): SHOWED me her . . . ROOM and she TOL
