A complete overview of musical rhythm.
For all rhythm exercises and theory: www.daniellaberge.net/
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Hi, rhythm lovers,
In order to have musical rhythm, you need three elements:
-Regular beats,
-The beats have to be divided,
-The beats have to be grouped into bars.
BEATS
To have beats, you need a succession of regular pulses, similar to human footsteps.
In music, a beat is defined as; “the length of time between two pulses”.
Beats can be slow or fast, and decelerate or accelerate, but you have to be able to beat your foot to them.
The speed of the beats is called the “tempo”, expressed in beats per minute.
At 60 BPM, each beat lasts one second, and at 120, half a second.
Most music pieces fall in a range between 70 and 160 BPM.
Beats are felt by the musicians, and that’s what keeps them synchronized.
A conductor’s main task is to transmit the beats visually.
BEAT DIVISION
When notes are played twice faster than the beats;
A binary division occurs,
If the notes go three times faster;
A ternary division is created.
If the notes go four times faster;
A division by four is produced,
Beats can also be divided by six, by eight, or by nine;
As you can see, there are no divisions by five, or by seven.
Beat divisions form two families:
-The binary family; used in about 96% of today’s music, and
-The ternary family; unfortunately called “compound meter”, used in about 4% of music.
RHYTHM FIGURES
True rhythmic notation only started in the fifteenth century, when the figures we still use were designed.
Another set of figures, called rests, indicate silences.
The figures are organized so that each one is half the length of the preceding.
Nowadays, the quarter note is used to represent “one beat” in binary music.
A dot can be placed after a note or a rest to lengthen it by half its original value.
Figures can be tied together to form longer durations.
Since the note values were devised using binary relationships, they had to be adapted for ternary music.
In ternary rhythm, each eight note lasts one third of a beat and a dotted quarter note lasts one beat.
THE RHYTHMIC GRID
The beats and their divisions form a grid of rhythmic positions.
Every note of a piece of music should fall on the grid.
When they don’t; the listener shifts them back to the grid intellectually, and considers the imprecision as interpretation or poor musicianship.
While the beginning of each note is precisely notated, its duration is most often rounded off.
But, if you do want to shorten the durations; simply add staccato dots.
Locations on the grid that fall on the beats or upbeats are rhythmically stronger.
RHYTHMIC POSSIBILITIES
In simple binary division, events can only fall:
-On the beat, or
-On the upbeat.
So, for any beat, there are only four rhythmic possibilities:
-Notes on both the beat and the upbeat,
-Only one note, on the beat,
-Only one note, on the upbeat,
-Or, no note at all.
To write binary rhythm; you simply identify, beat after beat, which one of the four possibilities is used.
In ternary rhythm; there are eight possibilities.
When the beat is divided by four; there are sixteen possibilities.
With them, you can write most of what you hear.
Historically, these possibilities have appeared slowly, one after the other.
TUPLETS AND SWING
You can use ternary beats in binary music, and vice-versa.
You simply add a bracket over the notes, with a number indicating how the beat is divided.
Anybody can invent very complex rhythms; but they cannot be performed properly, and the listener feels no rhythm.
Swing is a modification that transforms binary music into ternary.
Notes falling on the beat are lengthened, so that those on the upbeats are pushed to the two-thirds position.
BARS OR BEAT GROUPING
There are “strong” beats and “weak” beats.
Most of the time, beats alternate; “strong-weak-strong weak”, to form two or four beat bars.
But, they sometimes go; “strong-weak-weak”, to form three beat bars.
Strong beats aren’t louder; they have more rhythmical weight.
Chord changes mostly occur on the first beat of a bar.
So, since there are two kinds of beat divisions (binary and ternary) and two kinds of bars (three and four beats); we get four types of music.
-Three beat binary music,
-Four beat binary music,
-Three beat ternary music, and
-Four beat ternary music.
SYNCOPATIONS, FUNK AND POLY-RHYTHMS
Since the twentieth century, music evolved away from strong rhythmic positions, to put more emphasis on weak ones, becoming more and more syncopated.
To create a syncopation, a note has to start on a weak position of the rhythmic grid, and be held over the following strong one.
If the notes are cut short; that’s funk.
When musical patterns that last a fraction of the beats are repeated, they give the impression of having two simultaneous tempos, such as: “two against three”, “three against two”, “three against four”, and “four against three”.
Thanks, and good rhythm.