Meter and Rhythmic Notation Breakdown

2/4/13 Lesson 10: Meter and Rhythm
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METER AND RHYTHM
Introduction to Musical Time
Music consists of a complex series of sounds over time. There are several ways to organize musical time, but here we will concern ourselves with the layering and grouping of musical pulses. A musical
pulse is a periodic marking of time, like the ticking of a clock. This mark, this emphasis on a moment of time is a metric accent that gives rise to the perception of musical pulse. The beat is actually the
duration of time in between the metric accents. Each beat lasts until the next beat begins.
If all musical pulses are identical, it is easy to get lost in musical time (just as when we considered the possibility of all intervals in pitch space being identical). Musical pulse tend to group into twos or
threes. In the Western tradition, the first pulse is more accented than the others. The is the fundamental rhythmic concept of strong and weak pulses. Pulses can group into fours, fives, and sixes; but four
is two twos, five is a two and a three, and six is either two threes or three twos. Our brains/minds tend to simplify complex patterns for easier cognition.
In order to organize music in time, we measure out the time. The measure out of musical time is called meter.
The primary pulse, the one that is generally the most salient, is widely known as the beat. We say that there is a beat level of musical time. Remember that a beat is not a point in time, rather it is a
duration of time.
Each beat can be divided into either two or three equal parts. This is the division level of musical time. If the beat is divided into two equal parts, we say that the division is simple. If the beat is divided
into three equal parts, we say that the division is compound.
Beats can be grouped together into measures, ususally consisting of two, three or four beats. This is the measure level of musical time. The groups are labeled as duple, triple, and quadruple,
respectively.
The meter is labeled by combining the division and measure level descriptions, such as simple triple, or compound duple.
Conventions of Rhythmic Notation
The durations of notes are encoded into symbols, that are arranged in a temporal order on the musical staff. Theses symbols derive from a time when the measure or meter was the primary organizing unit
of musical time. The symbol that represents the entire duration of the measure (in common time) is called a whole note. Through traditional musical practice, the common time of Western music has been
simple quadruple meter, that is the primary metrical unit is a group of four simply divided beats. The whole note is a shaded, tilted oval. When the oval is stemmed, the durational value is divided in half,
it now represents just two simply divided beats. This is called a half note. Two half notes fill the same duration as one whole note. In common time, a duration of one-fourth of the measure represents the
beat level of musical time. In this case, the beat would beat a quarter-measure long, or a quarter note. This is represented be a stemmed, filled, tilted oval. Of course, four quarter notes fill one measure in
this case. If a flag is addedded to the stemmed, filled, tilted oval, it divides the quarter note in half. The eighth-note represents one-eighth of a measure in common time. Each flag that is added further
divides the respresented duration in half. The next division is the sixteenth-note.
Of course, if the meter is not common time, that is simple quadruple, then the names of the notes no longer represent the portion of a measure that they represent. Yet, in the American system, they still
retain their common time referenced names. In the British system, this misnomer problem is avoided by naming the note symbols without direct reference to their common time proportions. (breve,
semibreve, crochet, quaver, semiquaver, etc.)
It is a notational convention to group all of the notes that comprise a single beat by then use of a beam. Occasionally, a group of four quavers that comprise either the first half or the second half of a
common time measure, or the last two (unaccented) beats of a simple triple meter may all be grouped together under a single beam.
Ususally, beams are used to group the events within a beat, thus also making the beats themselves distinct from each other. This aides in the reading of music much in the same way separating words in a
sentence by a space helps us to group the letters of individual words together and differentiate the words as separate groups of letters.
Each note value has a complimentary value. A rest is a duration of silence. Musicians perform rests, they do not rest during rests.
Ties and Dots
Notes may be combined in order to create other durational values. This is often accomplished by using a symbol called a . Two or more notes may be tied together. In other words, when two or more
notes are tied together, their separate durational values are combined into a single durational value. For example, if in common time, a quarter note is tied to an eighth note, their durations combine to last
one and a half beats or three-eighths of a measure. Or as in the example below, we can represent three quarter of a measure of common time by tying a half note to a quater note.
Another way of combining note values is to add a to a note. Adding a dot increases a note's duration by half its original value.
TIME SIGNATURES
Most musicians are taught that in the time signature the top number tells you how many are in the measure and the bottom number tells you what kind of note gets the .
This is true when describing simple meter.
With simple meter, the time signature describes the beat level of musical time.
With compound meter, a dotted note will get the beat, and there are no numbers that represent dotted notes.
In this case, for compound meter, the time signature describes the division level of musical time.
The top number tells you how many are in the measure and the bottom number tells you what note gets the .
RHYTHMIC VOCABULARY
It is perhaps most important to successful music reading, that one reads rhythms well. There are couple of reasons for this. First, If you are playing with a large group, if you play a wrong note at the right
time, then it might be covered up by all of the other instruments also playing at the right time, and won`t be noticed. However, if you play the right note at the wrong time, during a rest when no one is
playing, then everyone will likely notice the error. Secondly, people are very comfortable learning common note patterns, scales, arpeggios, jazz licks, but people rarely approach rhythm in a similar
manner.
I learned rhythm using the 'clap and count method; one counts the beats out loud, and also speaks any subdivision on which a note occurs, while simultaneously clapping the rhythm. Since the counting
of time is intertwined with the counting of the rhythm, any hesitation in the rhythm alters the tempo, usually unnoticed by the student. Some students may come to this text with Orf experience. Like the
Orf method, I will also ask you to speak the rhythms, using the syllable TAH or DAH. This actually trains the tongue, the muscle most often used to articulate rhythm, espcially in singing. A steady
pulse, usually the beat, or a subdivision of the beat if necessary, is kept kinesthetically, usually be tapping a finger or a hand. As greater coordination is achieved, this tapping should then become
conducting patterns. The conducting pattern helps to keep track of the measure and in which beat you are singing. Rather than TAHing notes, Orf students mat prefer to maintain their Orf syllables. For
those not familiar with Orf training, different durational values have different spoken names, (e.g. tah, tiki). This idea uses different vowel sounds (different timbres) as motor cues that can be associated
with visual symbols; by saying the right vowel, the body is cued to place notes in their correct temporal relationship.
What I also was not taught when I learned rhythm, was the concept of getting beyond the parsing of rhythm to get to notes to occur on the correct beat or subdivision, and reintegrating the notes into a
salient whole beyond the correct placement of the individual notes. What I have found is that using a language metaphor aides the learning of rhythm. This supposes the possibility of developing a
rhythmic vocabulary.
I did not realize it at the time, but I started developing a ruthmic vocabulary when I was in the eighth grade, learning to play the electric bass guitar for the jazz band. It may still be true today, but in the
1970s, one of the most common bass rhythms in junior high school jazz band music was
After seeing that rhythm several hundred (or several dozen) times, it became unnecessary to ever count to myself, 'one...(two)...and three...(four). Metaphorically, counting out a rhythm is like
phonetically sounding out a word. When you phonetically sound out a word, you look at the individual letters, determine their sonic function (phonem), and integrate the individual phonems into a whole
word. Once learned, the 'sounding out process is no longer necessary when the same word is encountered in the future. The same learning is possible with musical rhythm. Once the counting out has
occured and temporal note placement is determined, the musician 'knows how it goes, or in other words, has learned the rhythm. Once learned, the same rhythm should not need to be counted out in
order to be performed correctly. Sadly, most music students approach every piece of music, every rhythm as something completely novel, never before experienced until it has been practiced over and
over again. Essentially, they have so far missed one of the main objectives of practice; to build a repetoire of skills that can be used in a variety of contexts. Similarly, just as phonems combine to form
syllables, which combine to form words, which can combine to form compound words or phrases, so can rhythmic vocabularly be conjoined. Notes fill beats or halves of measures which fill measures
which fill phrases. Take for example some syllables that you may well recognize;
lat temp con tive
Familiar as they are, if you put them in a familiar order:
contemplative
they form a fairly complex word the you do not need to phoneticize in order to say.
The idea of teaching students to hear whole rhythms really came into focus after haveing learned Morse code. When copying down a conversation in Morse code, one hears rhythmic groups which one
learns to as quickly as possible associate with the letters of the alphabet, numbers, and punctuation. If a person can quickly associate a rhythmic group with an alphabetic symbol, surely a person could
also associate it just as quickly with a musical rhythm; a group of notes, possibly beamed and arranged in a measure. DAH-di-di-DAH is X in Morse code and can be (8 16 16 4) in musical notation. The
similarity does not end there. As one gets better and better at Morse code, entire words become recognizable as a complex rhythm. One is only associatively aware of the individual letters, as it is with
reading. This is how radio operators can copy 30 to 45 words per minute of Morse code. The same can be true of learning rhythmic vocabulary. Even complex rhythms can be learned well enough to be
nearly automatically read or written. Learningto copy Morse code is very similar to learning to take rhythmic dictation.
Just as learning to write enhances one`s ability to read in the domain of language, so it is with musical rhythm. Since, in music the important artifact of focus is the sound itself, it is beneficial to use actual
musical rhythms as the source material for practice. Just as you can take dictation in language, writing down word for word what your teacher says to you out loud, so can you take dictation for musical
rhythm. This sounds simple enough, and indeed it is, but you have one advantage in the language domain, you can already spell and write several tens of thousands of words. How many rhythms can
you spell and write. If you really think about it, and have had experience as a musician, maybe quite more than you originally thought. The trouble is, you really had to think about your rhythmic
vocabulary before you could actually bring it to consciousness and spell the rhythm out as actual note values. Words, because of a long and deeply ingrained learning process, are much more automatic.
Musical rhythms can become very well learned, with practice and repetition, especially using a multimodal learning process (reading, writing, hearing, singing).
The language metaphor give us some knowledge and terminology that we can draw upon for our understanding of music. Western language has a rhythm that has already been keenly analyzed. Perhaps
its best known master is Shakespeare. The prosodic terms are: iamb (- +), anapest (- - +), trochee (+ -), dactyl (+ - -), amphibrach (- + -), spondee (+ +). These simple accent-nonaccent related groups of
twos and threes (as we have seen in the introduction to musical time) provides fundamental rhythmic grouping cues. These simple groups can be combined, both linearly and archetechtonically
(relationships created between various metrical levels, e.g., beat, measure, subdivision, etc.) to create more complex rhythmic structures. Notice that these traditional rhythmic groups are of two or three
individual sound event-objects. Building larger structures out of fundamental groups of twos and threes is an old 'stupid human trick. This is how musical rhythms were originally notated during the
Medieval period. Certan symbols would represent each of these basic rhythms as well as encoding the pitch.
Basic Vocabulary
We will begin learning rhythmic vocabulary using the beat and division levels of a simple duple measure. There are only eight (8) rhythms you can create.
If we divide the note values of each of these basic rhythms in half, we will have all of the possible rhythms that can be made in one beat of simple meter.
By combining these basic division and subdivision level rhythms, sometimes using ties, we can create most of the simple meter rhythms you will ever see. As you become more familiar with these
combinations, you will begin to read rhythms instead of count them.
Compound Vocabulary
The basic division level and subdivision level compound meter vocabulary is illustrated below.
SUBDIVISION LEVEL
Practice this basic vocabulary until you can sight read it without counting. When taking rhythmic dictation, listen for entire vocabulary words instead of listening for one note at a time. Listening one note
at a time is like taking language dictation one syllable at a time. We don't do it that way. We take in entire words, phrases, and even sentences at a time. Take dictation an entire beat or two beats, or even
an entire measure at a time. If you know how to spell the vocabulary, you can listen for groups of notes.

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2/4/13 Lesson 10: Meter and Rhythm

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