timing/beats per measure

Ive never had any formal music lessons of any kind. I started playing about a year ago and Im totally self taught. My problem is that I dont know anything about timing and beats per measure and all that stuff. how fast is 4/4 or 8/4 or whatever. is there a place on here that will help me or does anyone know a good site that can explain it to me.

thanks

4/4 or 5/4 would be your beats per measure and the tempo is your timing. So let's say you had a song in 4/4 time with tempo of 95 beats per minute. This is a pretty standard time and can be easily duplicated with a metronome. Now when you are tapping your foot with the beat you are just tapping 1, 2, 3, 4. Then the measure starts over 1, 2, 3, 4. When you go to a 5/4 count you have to count to 5 instead of 4 now. So tap your foot 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Then the measure starts over. Hope this helps some. It's 12:30 here and I'm delerious. HAHAHA

I like the clock explanation.

Take 4/4 like stated above it is four beats/measure and a quarter note= a beat.

Now put that at 60 beats per minute{bpm} (which is quite slow) That is 1 beat every second if we use our second grade math.

Now how many measures or groups of four beats are there?

Well 4 beats = 1 measure so if my third grade teacher was right
60/4= 15 measures in a minute.

Now you can double time the tempo to 120 bpm which is a pretty good pace.

so you get 2 beats every second

30 measures in a minute.

It's a lot easier when you use Multiples of 60 as the tempo at first.

Now if we go to 5/4 the only difference is the number of beats per measure.

So now at 60 bpm we still have a beat every second but we cut the measures in that minute down to 12 and so on.

This is how I learned a long time ago in middle school band.