In this lesson you will learn another new time signature: the cut time signature. Cut time is sometimes written as $ (two two), but it appears more frequently as W.
In the previous lesson you saw that the number on the top half of a time signature tells you how many beats there are in each bar. Therefore, in $ time the number 2 tells you that each bar has two beats.
The number on the bottom half of a time signature tells you what kind of beats you are counting. Thus, in $ or W time, the number 2 tells you that you are counting half note beats.