time signature
6/8
6 eighth notes in a bar, counted as 2 beats of dotted quarter, grouped 3 + 3.
What follows from it
One bar lasts 576 ticks of the 768-tick whole note this site counts in, and one beat is 288 of them.
Beams may join notes inside one beat and never across one, so the beaming groups of this metre are 6 + 6 sixteenths.
It is a compound metre: each beat divides into three rather than two, which is what the eight underneath actually means here.
A sound that crosses a beat is written as two notes tied, unless it starts on a beat and its own length divides where it starts. That single rule is what keeps a half note off the second beat of four-four.
Printable exercises in 6/8
quarters and eighthsThe two values everything else is measured against, and nothing shorter.sixteenthsFour notes to a beat, and the beams that group them.dotted notesA dot adds half again. The reading problem is not the dot, it is what has to follow it.ties across beatsOne sound written as two notes, because the beat underneath has to stay visible.restsSilence measured exactly, and grouped by the same beats the notes are.tripletsThree in the time of two, bracketed and numbered so the eye is told before the ear is.syncopationNotes that start between the beats. The exercise is keeping the beat where it was.