Pulse and beat
Most Western
tonal music, which includes most classical music and virtually all American
popular and folk music, maintains a sense of steady pulse. This is why you can clap to it, dance to it,
or march to it. It is also why we can
have a sense of speeding up or slowing down.
Not all music works this way, but most does, and that is where our study
begins. The easiest way to understand
pulse is to experience it. Sing any
familiar song and clap along at a steady rate.
You are clapping a pulse. I say a pulse because actually there are many
levels of pulse in most music. Try
clapping a pulse that is faster or slower than the one you started with. Each represents a different level of
pulse.
The beat
is one specific level of the pulse.
Usually what we feel as ―the beat‖ falls within the range of about 60 –
180 beats per minute, roughly within the range of the human heart beat. Musicians might sometimes disagree about
which level of the pulse is the beat,
and some-times there is no one right answer.
Meter
Meter is the
grouping of beats into patterns of strong and weak accents. In the analysis of meter, a dash indicates a
strong beat and a curved line indicates a weak beat, like this:
strong weak
strong weak There are three common metric
groupings: duple meter (2
beats) triple
meter (3 beats)
quadruple
meter (4 beats)
Duple meter
groups two beats together in the pattern:
―accented — unaccented‖ or ―strong — weak.‖ Speak this pattern and clap on the word
―strong.‖ The song ―Three Blind Mice‖ is
in duple meter. Sing the song and clap
on the accented beat.
Three
blind mice, Three blind mice, see how they run, see how they
run . . . etc.
for more visit this link ALL-TIME GLOBAL MUSIC
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