Turn on commercial radio and what time signature are you 95% likely to hear in the  first song? 4 beats to the bar, that's what. Is that just the natural pace of music or is something else going on?

In fact, if you went to a dance in the nineteenth century, it would most likely be in 3 time, or a waltz. Travel to, say, Burundi, Bulgaria, Bengaluru or Bursa and outside of commercial radio, local time is quite different - 11/8, to take one example.

So how did 4 time come to dominate? Was it the classical composers? Radio managers? The Romans? Join me, Ian Forth for a discussion of how we ended up with the ubiquity of 4 beats to the bar.

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