Introductory remarks on the goals and objectives of the module, what students will learn.
Rhythm in music can be defined as the organization of music in time. The rhythmic structure is a sequence of sounds and rests of specific durations.
Pulse — much like a human pulse, the pulse in music represents steady, uniform beats. Unlike a rhythmic pattern, the pulse is constant, though not always audible. Uniform pulse beats can be felt "underneath" the rhythmic pattern. Pulse is easiest to hear in the rhythm section.
Pulse / Pulsation in music can be straight (when equal note values pulsate) or dotted/swung (when longer and shorter beats alternate). An example of dotted pulsation can be heard in swing.
Tempo — the speed of movement in music, determined by the number of metric beats per unit of time. Most often, quarter notes serve as these units; thus, tempo is roughly the number of quarter notes fitting into one minute.
Determining the BPM of a music track in Chromatone.
Indicating tempo in modern times using Italian terms, denoting ethos (In modern general rhetoric, "ethos" refers to the affective state of the receiver resulting from a message).
Every music genre has a characteristic average tempo. For example, drum 'n' bass features tempos from 160 to 200 BPM, blues is heard at 60–80 BPM, funk at 100 BPM, and rock is typically around 120–130 BPM.
Electronic Music Genres:
Dub: 60–90 BPM
Hip-hop: 60–100 BPM
Triphop/Downtempo: 90–110 BPM
House: 115–130 BPM
UK garage/2-step: 130–135 BPM
Grime: 140 BPM
Techno/Trance: 120–140 BPM
Acid Techno: 135–150 BPM
Schranz: 150 BPM
Dubstep: 135–145 BPM (70–75 BPM in half-time)
Hardstyle: 150 BPM
Juke/Footwork: 160 BPM
Drum and bass: 160–180 BPM
Pulse beats are always regular, but not uniform. There are strong beats and weak beats. This phenomenon can be compared to accent / stress in words: there are stressed and unstressed syllables. When stressed and unstressed syllables alternate in a specific order, poetry is created. Poetic meter even has its own rhythmic feet — iambic, trochaic, dactylic, amphibrachic, anapestic, etc.
Beat — every step of the meter (every pulse beat, every hand clap).
Strong Beat (Downbeat) — accented, leading.
Meter — a measure determining the scale of rhythmic structures up to small compositional forms (such as a period). In elementary music theory, meter is defined as the pattern of regular alternation between strong and weak beats.
Meter establishes a coordinate grid of strong and weak beats with equal distances between beats. It can be visualized as graph paper, where the smallest grid cell of fine lines represents the shortest note value in the piece, thicker lines represent beats, even thicker lines represent secondary strong beats, and the thickest lines represent main strong beats (downbeats).
Rhythmic figures composed of segments of different lengths (notes of various durations) can be drawn along the lines of this grid. The figures can vary completely, but all of them rely on grid lines.
Meter is an abstract concept. In a musical composition, meter may not be expressed dynamically (through sounds) or graphically (through written notes) at all, existing solely in the imagination of the performer and listener. Thus, the key category of meter — the beat (divided into strong and weak beats) — especially in classical bar metric structures, is posited as a psychological rather than a physical object.
Simple Meters
Duple
These meters express time signatures such as 2/2, 2/4, and 2/8. ONE-TWO.
Triple
These meters express time signatures such as 3/2, 3/4, 3/8, and more rarely 3/16. ONE-TWO-THREE.
Compound / Complex Meters — composite
Formed by combining two or more simple meters (for example, 5/4 derived from a combination of 3/4 + 2/4, or vice versa).
The accent on the first beat of a complex meter is stronger than its other accents, which is why this beat is called the primary downbeat (strong beat). Beats with weaker accents are called relatively strong (secondary strong) beats.
Examples:
Quadruple (4/4, 4/2, and rarely 4/8);
Sextuple (6/4, 6/8, and rarely 6/16);
Nontuple / Nine-beat (9/8, and rarely 9/4 and 9/16);
Dodectuple / Twelve-beat (12/8, and rarely 12/16).
In Western music theory, it is categorized slightly differently: simple meters have duple subdivisions (divided by 2), while compound meters have triple subdivisions (divided by 3).
The interval from one strong downbeat to the next strong downbeat is a measure (bar).
A measure is defined by the number and unit value of its metric beats; the number and type of beats are designated by the time signature. In score notation, the time signature is placed after the clef at the beginning of the piece (or measure where it changes), written as a fraction (e.g., 3/2, 2/4, 6/8, 4/4) or standard symbol ( equivalent to 4/4, equivalent to 2/2). The numerator indicates the number of beats, and the denominator indicates their relative duration value.
Indicating tempo in modern times using Italian terms, denoting ethos (In modern general rhetoric, "ethos" refers to the affective state of the receiver resulting from a message).
Slow Tempos
Largo — broad, slow, drawn-out (40–60)
Grave — heavy, serious, solemn (25–45)
Adagio — slow, stately, at ease (66–76)
Andante — at a walking pace, unhurried (76–108)
Lento — slow, drawn-out (45–60)
Moderate Tempos
Andantino — slightly faster than andante (80–108)
Moderato — moderately (108–120)
Sostenuto — sustained, restrained
Con moto — with motion, briskly
Allegretto — moderately fast, lively (112–120)
Fast Tempos
Allegro — fast, lively, joyful (124–156)
Vivo — lively, brisk
Vivace — lively, animated (156–176)
Vivacissimo — extremely lively and fast (172–176)
Presto — fast, quick (166–200)
Prestissimo — extremely fast (over 200)
Tempo Modifiers
molto — very, much
assai — very, extremely
con moto — with motion
non troppo — not too much
sempre — always
meno mosso — less motion (slower)
più mosso — more motion (faster)
Changes in Tempo
accelerando — speeding up
stringendo — pressing forward, speeding up
stretto — speeding up | condensed, quickened
ritenuto — held back, slowing down
ritardando — gradually slowing down
rallentando — slowing down, broadening
allargando — broadening, slowing down
Restoring Original Tempo
tempo primo — original tempo
tempo I — original tempo
a tempo — in the previous tempo
L’istesso tempo — at the same tempo
Flexible Tempo Control
tempo rubato — flexible tempo (literally "stolen time")
A time signature is a fraction indicating the number of beats per measure in the numerator and their duration value in the denominator. A measure without a time signature is functionally useless on its own. The time signature is the key to the measure and is written at the very beginning of the score.
6/8 time signature: a sextuple (6-beat) meter with an eighth-note pulse. It consists of two 3/8 measures. The count is also "ONE - two - three - ONE - two - three". It is easily confused with 3/4 because the total duration of the measure is identical. However, there is a key difference: 6/8 has two strong downbeats, whereas 3/4 has only one. This creates a significant difference in accents and changes the rhythmic pattern.
12/8 time signature: a compound twelve-beat meter with an eighth-note pulse. It consists of four 3/8 measures. The count is also "ONE - two - three - One - two - three - One - two - three - One - two - three" — blues.
Additive / Irregular Time Signatures. 5/4 and 5/8 time signatures:
5 = 2+3 (secondary strong beat on beat 3)
5 = 3+2 (secondary strong beat on beat 4)
7/8, 9/8, 11/8, 13/8
Polymeters and Polyrhythms
3:2
6:4
3:4
3:8
4:3
2:3
5:4
7:11
8.3 Note Values and Rests. Subdivisions. Counting
What is note value / duration
Whole note (semibreve)
Half note (minim)
Quarter note (crotchet)
Eighth note (quaver)
Sixteenth note (semiquaver)
Dotted note — increases duration by half
Triplet — a rhythm produced by dividing a note duration into three equal parts instead of two.
From a single quarter note, we get 3 eighth-note triplets (instead of 2 standard eighth notes under duple subdivision). In other words, 1 quarter note = 2 eighth notes = 3 eighth-note triplets. The principle is identical for all other note values (both even and odd subdivisions).
Quintuplet — a rhythm produced by dividing a note duration into five equal parts instead of four.
Important: dividing a note by 5 does not mean we get 5 eighth notes from a single quarter note. It means that instead of dividing into 4 (sixteenth notes), we divide into 5 sixteenth-note quintuplets.
Sextuplet — a rhythm produced by dividing a note duration into six parts instead of four.
If a piece begins on a weak beat, an incomplete measure is formed at the start, called an anacrusis (or pickup measure). In most cases, an anacrusis does not exceed half a measure. An anacrusis can also occur in the middle of a piece before any of its sections. By tradition, pieces starting with an anacrusis end with an incomplete measure that rhythmically completes the pickup.
Accent — emphasizing a specific beat in a measure using volume (or other dynamic means).
Poetic Meters
iamb -*
trochee *-
dactyl *--
amphibrach -
anapest --*
Syncopation — shifting the accent from a strong beat to a weak beat.
Relative to meter, syncopation can be:
intrameasure (contained within a single measure), which can be:
intra-beat (contained within a single beat);
The metric downbeat falls on the first note in the measure — a sixteenth note. However, the rhythmic accent falls on the second note — an eighth note, which gets syncopated. The syncopation itself occurs within the first beat.
inter-beat (spanning multiple beats within a measure).
The second note (a quarter note) is accented. Half of its value falls on the first beat, and the other half on the second beat.
inter-measure (the syncopated note extends across measure boundaries).
The syncopated note rests on the boundary between two measures and continues sounding into the second measure.
Dotted rhythm — a rhythm combining a dotted note and a shorter undotted note.
The long dotted note starts on the strong beat, while the short note starts on the weak beat. There are many variations of this subdivision, for example:
dotted eighth note + sixteenth note (instead of two undotted eighth notes);
dotted quarter note + eighth note (instead of two undotted quarter notes).
It sounds like this:
Dotted rhythm variations:
Dotted quarter + eighth
Dotted eighth + sixteenth
Dotted half + quarter
Swing and Triplet Pulse
Swing — a jazz rhythmic pattern where the first note of a pair is lengthened and the second is shortened.
In swing, there is no strict rule defining exactly how much to lengthen the first note and shorten the second. Because of this, swing sounds unique depending on the performer. Furthermore, swing is an entire movement in classic jazz and can be viewed as a standalone musical genre.
Schematically, swing can be understood as follows: in a pair of notes written as equal durations, the first note is played twice as long as the second, perceived aurally as a triplet figure.
In this case, we begin talking about a triplet pulse / feeling.
A rhythm where two eighth notes are converted into a quarter-note triplet and an eighth-note triplet belongs to a triplet pulse. A similar principle applies to other note values.