BEATS AND ACCENTS

The note-values you have learnt about in Chapter 2 work hand in hand with time signatures. With these two elements, composers notate everything to do with rhythm and beat.

A time signature sets up a regular pattern of accents. Let’s examine how this works.

A regular beat

First, imagine a slowly ticking clock:

Say the ‘t’s quietly to yourself, keeping them absolutely regular.

Adding accents

Now do it again, but this time give a little extra emphasis to every fourth ‘t’, like this:

Your ‘t’s should still be completely regular in time, but with every fourth one accented. The time signature of a piece of music describes its underlying metre, or pattern of beats and accents. Each ‘t’ is a beat, and in this case every fourth ‘t’ is an accented beat.

BEAT AND TEMPO (SPEED)

Before we look at time signatures in detail, we need to be clear about tempo, or speed.

The pattern of ‘t’s (with every fourth ‘t’ accented) might be fast or it might be slow. Say the ‘t’s to yourself, following these tempo instructions:

Supposing the ‘t’s were written closer together (or further apart)

It would be possible to write the ‘t’s closer together for the fast version, like this:

It seems reasonable, because it looks faster. But conventional music notation doesn’t work like that. You have to look at the time-values of the notes (which you have been learning), the time signature (which we are coming to) and the tempo indication (e.g. ‘allegro’ or ‘fast’). How close together the notes are printed is not important.

PRACTISING DIFFERENT METRES (BEAT-PATTERNS)

Now try putting the accent on every third ‘t’. Choose a comfortable speed, not too fast, and make sure your ‘t’s are absolutely regular in time.

And now, put the accent on every second ‘t’.

You could even try accenting every fifth ‘t’, even though in music this pattern is much less common.

INTERNALISING THE BEAT

It’s useful to be able to internalise (hear inside your head) the steady ticking beat of the music. Here are some patterns to practise. After you have said them out loud, try to hear them in your head, without actually making a sound. This will be much easier if all is quiet around you, without music or distracting noise in the background. Go through these patterns several times.

(There are two more on the next page.)

You will appreciate that these tempo indications are not precise. If it says ‘fast’, exactly how fast is up to you. But once you have decided on a speed, keep it steady, keep the ticks regular.

As mentioned before, it is possible to set the tempo more precisely, for instance like this:

Try saying these accent-patterns, keeping to the stated tempo. If you have a watch or clock that marks the seconds, visually or audibly, use that to keep in time.

Again, start by saying the ‘t’s out loud. Then internalise them, so that you can distinctly imagine, or hear in your head, the regular beat and the accents.

Go back to the four examples above, starting at the bottom of page 27, and go through them again. For each one, when you have settled on your tempo, check against a clock to see exactly how fast/slow it is, in beats per minute. (Often, that’s how a composer decides what metronome mark to put at the head of a score.)

THE NATURE OF BEAT

All those examples will help you to understand time signatures. They are concerned with defining the metre or beat-pattern.

As you have realised, the beat (or pulse) of a piece of music can be fast or slow. Even if the tempo changes – for instance if the piece gradually speeds up, or there’s a sudden change of tempo–basically the musician thinks of the beat as something steady, like a ticking clock, against which other things in the music happen.

GROUPING BEATS IN BARS

Each ‘t’ is a beat. And each accented ‘t’ marks the first beat in a bar (or measure, which is the American terminology).

Bars and barlines

Bars are separated by vertical lines called barlines:

Here are some barlines on an empty stave, just to show what they look like:

But for the moment we are concerned only with duration, not pitch, so we don’t need the stave.

Now let’s replace those ‘t’s with proper notes.

Using notes as beats

Look at the next four examples. All of them have three beats in each bar.

Slow

Very slow

Fast

Fast

Looking at these four examples yields two important points:

• A beat might be a minim, or a crotchet, or a quaver. It might be any of them, or it might even be a semiquaver, or another note-value such as a dotted crotchet. Any note-value might be used to represent the beat.
• Don’t assume that minims are always slower than crotchets, or crotchets slower than quavers. It’s that business of relative time-values again: in a particular piece, at a particular moment, the quavers take exactly half as long as the crotchets, but when you are comparing two different pieces that relationship disappears.

The ‘t’s – used to represent the regular ticking beat on the previous pages of this chapter – have now been replaced by notes. But those notes tick by in the same regular way, at a speed roughly indicated by the tempo mark at the beginning of each example.

Putting in barlines shows where the accents fall, by showing which is the first beat of each bar.

TIME SIGNATURES

Any note-value can be used to represent the beat – minim, crotchet, quaver, semiquaver, dotted crotchet, dotted quaver, etc. A crotchet beat is the most common of all. But of course, it is very important that we know which note-value has been chosen.

That’s where time signatures come in.

A time signature consists of two numbers, one above the other.

Understanding what time signatures mean, and how they work, is critical to reading music notation. We’ll look at some examples of time signatures on the next page.

Examples of time signatures

and the most common of all:

INTRODUCING RHYTHMS

The difference between rhythm and beat

Broadly speaking, we are using beat to mean something absolutely regular, like the ticking of a clock. (Some musicians prefer the word pulse to beat.) In the examples above, all the notes you can see are also beats. The first example has three crotchet beats in each bar, the second example has three minim beats in each bar, the third example has two minim beats in each bar, and so on.

Rhythm, on the other hand, is a word we use for something more complicated – not just a regular ticking beat, but a definite pattern, with some longer and some shorter notes. In other words, rhythms have a mixture of different note values.

Don’t expect everyone to use those two words in quite that strict way. It’s not a distinction that matters much in everyday language, so ordinary usage is a bit vaguer. Also, a pop musician might talk about different ‘beats’ where a classical musician would say ‘rhythms’. But generally, dealing with music on a practical level, if someone refers to ‘this rhythm’ or ‘that rhythm’, then they mean this particular rhythmic pattern or that one. Or they might refer to the pulse, and then they mean the regular beat.

How different note-values fit against a beat

The next step is to start reading a variety of note-values against the background of a regular beat. Shorter notes may subdivide the beat, or longer ones may go across several beats.

The first few examples (on the next page) are all in . That means there are four beats in each bar, and each beat is a crotchet.

Incidentally, to say a time signature, simply say the top number first: ‘four four’, ‘three four’ etc.

Also, when time signatures are printed in the middle of a passage of ordinary text, not on the stave, it’s troublesome typographically to print the two numbers one above the other, as we have done a little further up this page. So normally, in ordinary text, they are printed with an oblique stroke like a fraction: 4/4. Always remember, though, that a time signature is not really a fraction at all, even if it looks a bit like one.

Back to the business in hand, which is reading different note-values against a regular beat. Start by establishing the steady beat in your head, or by tapping your foot. Choose a moderate tempo, and feel the regularity of the beat, as in a march. Give a slight emphasis to the first beat of each bar. Count the beats, like this:

Now read the four rhythms below, either in your head or by tapping or saying them in some way. The numbers above the notes show how the notes stand in relation to the beat.

The double barline at the end is just an indication of finality.

Rhythms in different time signatures

Now try reading some rhythms in other time signatures. Follow this procedure:

• 1.Look at the top number to see how many beats there are in each bar, and at the bottom number to see what time-value each beat has.
• 2.Then count the regular pattern of beats in your head, using the top number to tell you how many beats to count.
• 3.Finally read the rhythm against the background of the beats.

Think of a waltz for the next one:

Can read those rhythms? Can you tap them on a table, or hear them in your head? Go over them again if necessary, and don’t be surprised if you find them difficult. It’s not easy, trying to read or play a rhythm while keeping the regular beat mentally in the background.