It’s the part of the music that organizes all the relations of time. It also organizes accentuation.
Music is organised in a temporal frame. That means that some kind of rhythm is always present in music.
The idea of rhythm puts together three different musical concepts:
4.1 Beat or tempo
It’s the level of rhythm that controls speed.
Most music around us control speed by a kind of inner beats at regular intervals.
Beat speed can be measured by the metronome and is expressed in a number of “beats per minute”.
Each beat is represented by a note value called quarter in America or crotchet in the UK.
These people clapping whit the music are marking the beat.
Usually songs keep the same tempo from the begining till the end. But we can also find examples (as we've seen in Melendi's) of songs with different sections with different tempos. In the next example we are going to see a song that starts slowly and speeds progressevely. We call this accelerando. If, on the contrary the song slows down progressevely we call it ritardando.
All music with measured rhythm has a beat, but in some styles this is more visible than in others. For example in dance music, beat is very clear. Commercial modern music is usually very danceable and it has a strong sense of beat. In Electronic Dance Music styles as “house” for example, each beat is stressed very clearly so no matter how bad you are with music it’s impossible to make mistakes.
Traditional music and ancient music for dancing shows very clearly their rhythm as well. Percussion instruments are very common in these music styles.
Look at this Cape Breton traditional dancing. The violinist is marking the beat with the movement of his foot.
In other kinds of music the beat is not strongly marked and is difficult to see. It is there, but hidden behind the melody.
This is tr 2nd movement of Haydn's "Emperor's Quarter". There are no percussions instruments marking the beat and it is not so eassy difficult to see.
The beat has an interesting roll in musical expression. The faster the beat the more happy or energetic the music is. Sad music tends to use slower beats.
Tempo (speed) and musical expression
In this video you can see how the beat of music is related to the beat of the heart. It's taken from the film "We are your friends"
The capacity of music of somehow connecting with the beat of the heart is in the base of its expressive power.
Music with slow tempo transmits low energy feelings. Calm, relaxation or even sadness. In clasical music these tempos are called with the italian names largo, lento or adagio.
This Green day's song, written in conmemoration for the death of the composer's father, is a good example of a slow tempo song that transmits this kind of feelings.
La canción Teenagers de My Chemical Romance, es un ejemplo de tiempo medio. En música clásica el tiempo medio se llama "andante". Transmite sensaciones animadas pero controladas.
My Chemical Romance's song Teenagers is an example of middle tempo. In classical music this tempo is called andante. It transnits animation but under control.
When tempo is very fast, music transmit feelings full of energy: Happyness, rage, stress... You can see it specially from 5:80 in this Song of Metallica Master of Puppets. In the middle of the song there are a contrasting slower tempo. In classical music these fast tempos are called Allegro, presto or presttisimo.
Slow and middle tempos allow, in general, to enjoy melodies better. Fast tempos are more energetic and highlight the rythmical elements of music. Some musical works try to combine both effects pressenting a fast tempo in the instrumental acompaniment and a slow tempo in the main melody. You can see this effect in this Monteverdi's musical work. Vespreo de la beata vergine.
Rock and roll music also takes advantage of this effect. You can see it in Sum 41's "Makes no Difference to me"
Or in "All the Small Tings" of Blink 182
In this video you can watch to an explanation about tempo expression and its roll in cinematographic music from 7:00 to 8:45:
Free time music
Some kinds of music nevertheless, don’t have beat. Then we call it free time music.
In these cases the musical expression relies mainly in melody. Melody is not forced in this case by any kind of beat. In other words, the duration of the notes is only controlled by melodic expressivity.
Gregorian chant, tonada montañesa, tonada asturiana, flamenco and Indian music are very known musical repertoires that use this rhythmical system.
Asturian "tonada"
Cantabrian "Tonada"
Sean nos is an Irish music style that uses free time.
Classical music also uses flexible beats And free time music. In this case is indicated with the words "Ad libitum". You can see flexible beat in this example od Debussy's music.
In flamenco and Indian music is usual to back up a free melody with instruments that clearly remark well-defined beats.
You can see it in this example. The guitar goes some time following the beat and in a free way in other occasions. The singer always uses free time music.
4.2 The Time Signature
Beats are always grouped. They never sound isolated.
Time signatures are clusters of beats grouped into some weak beats joined to a stronger one. These groups can be perceived as a rhythmic unity.
Beats could be grouped in an infinity variety of ways in theory, but in fact western music uses very few possibilities.
Basically it works with divisions and subdivisions of 2, 3 and 4 beats.
Kinds of time signatures
We have these different kinds of time signatures:
· By its divisions:
Duple: It’s divided in two beats. The first one is strong and the second one weak.
Triple: It is divided in three beats. The first one strong the other ones are weak.
Quadruple. It has four times. The first and the third are strong (the first stronger) the two others weak.
· By its subdivisions
Simple: Each beat is divided into two.
Compound: Each time is divided into three.
You can see it in the next scheme:
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simple |
compound |
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Duple |
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triple |
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Quadruple |
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The more common time signature is 4/4 because is the usual in all music related with rock and pop.
In this video from 8:45 on, you can watch how time signature works.
This is an interesting video about clapping, beat, time signature and …..Justin Bieber.
Mixed time signatures
Different musical traditions use different accentuation systems. Some of them can be represented by the “mixed time signatures”. These time signatures combined duple and triple accentuations.
The most typical example is the 5/4 time signature that alternates a ¾ with a 2/4 one.
This kind of time signature is used in many traditional music styles as in Castilian or Basque ones.
Mixed time signatures were used for first time by nationalist Russian composers in the context of classical music. Musician as Stravinsky or Tchaikovsky introduced in their compositions traditional rhythms from their country.
You can watch an example of the use of 5/4 time signature in the 2nd movement of the symphony number 6 of Tchaikovsky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXWVCaovpZ8
Or in “Mars” form the orchestral suite The Planets composed by Holst
The next video is an extreme example of rhythm complexity. It's a piano cover of a song made by a band of "Math Metal" called Tool. The song uses very complex mixed time signatures that are constantly changing. It's also using polirhythms presenting different rhythm at the same time.
Rhythmic modes
They are rhythmic patterns of durations or accentuations that generally don’t fit in the idea of time signature.
Rhythmic modes where very used in Medieval European music. Currently they are used in eastern music and flamenco.
Flamenco modes are called “palos” and they are made of aggrupations of 12 beats. Each “palo” has the stress in different beats.
For example these are four typical flamenco palos.
Weak beats are depicted as points and strong beats are depicted as X.
4.3 The notes value
This is the last level of rhythmic organisation. There can be notes of different time value in different beats of a time signature. This value results from divide or multiplies the value of a quarter by 2 ( a quarter is the note value that represents a beat).
Therefor there are the following note values (in the English American denomination)
