[MUSIC] [SOUND] In this module we are going to be discussing Rhythm and Meter, how it's created, how it's notated. Writing rhythm and meter correctly is always one of the biggest challenges faced by students, particularly if they are relatively inexperienced reading music. I find that musicians who play from a score such as band and orchestra instrumentalists have a well-developed sense of how notated music is supposed to look. If the rhythm and meter are written correctly they can sort of go on autopilot, because the recognize a vocabulary of learned patterns. This version of the Star Spangled Banner just looks right. The meter is correct, and the notes and rhythms are in the right place. [MUSIC] When the rhythms are complex or don't fit the meter or if the meter doesn't fit the music, musicians playing from a score can struggle. This version of The Star-Spangled Banner has exactly the same notes and rhythm, but they don't fit the notated meter. A musician playing this would find it odd. If I play while saying the meter beats, you'll see what I mean. One two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four. It just has the accents in the wrong place. Listen to this excerpt from the Prelude in C minor from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.. As you listen, try to tap a beat. We're gong to talk about what create the sense of beat in music. I'll have my computer play as a harpsichord first, which is what Bach would have written it for. Later, I'll switch to piano so that we can hear the beats. [MUSIC] When I tap along with this music, here's how I do it, tapping every four of the fast notes. [MUSIC] Others might tap at this speed every two notes. [MUSIC] And others might tap at this speed, every eight notes. [MUSIC] But I'm willing to bet you didn't tap at this speed, every three notes, unless you were just trying to be different or challenge yourself. [MUSIC] We're at this speed, every five notes. [MUSIC] It's quite difficult to tap either way, it feels like you're fighting the music. Obviously, there's something in this music that makes us want to group by twos, or fours, or eights, but not by threes, or fives, or sevens. First, when we feel a repeating beat in music that we can tap along with, we say that the music is metric, that it has a meter. Meter is created by a repeating pattern of some kind. If we look at the Bach prelude, we see that every four 16th notes, the [SOUND] pattern repeats. This repeating pattern creates a sense of beat on the quarter note level, as well as even subdivision of eight notes and 16th notes. The quarter notes can be grouped into twos, also. At no level are we tempted to group by threes. Meter is sometimes taught as repeating beats that are caused by accents, which implies that there are repeating loud soft, loud soft, or loud soft soft. But it's usually not loud and soft notes that create accent. The meter is present even if all the notes are exactly the same loudness. In fact, the excerpt of the C minor prelude that we heard was being played by my computer, which doesn't play any notes louder than the others. The accents come from something else. So, we need to carefully define what we mean by accent. Accent is being created here by the high notes and the low notes at the beginning of each set of four sixteenth notes. It has nothing to do with loudness. So like this, [MUSIC] So high note, low note, high note, low note. [MUSIC] If we say that an accented note is one that we notice more than its neighbors, we can think of many ways to create a sense of accent. If we repeat these accents in a regular pattern as in the C minor prelude, they create a sense of meter. Obviously, loud notes are accented. LOUD, soft, LOUD, soft. Or LOUD, soft, soft, LOUD, soft, soft. But we could also create an accent with a note that is softer than its neighbor. soft, LOUD, LOUD, soft, LOUD, LOUD. We can create a sense of accent with a note that is longer than its neighbors, this is called an agogic accent. In each of these rhythms, you'll hear accents created by the long notes. The repetition of accents will create a sense of meter. Here's the first one. [SOUND] The pattern long, short, short, long, short, short creates a duple meter, one that has no triple levels. Here's the next one. [SOUND] The pattern long, short, short, short, long, short, short, short, short creates a triple level. One, two, three, one, two, three, and here's the bottom one. [SOUND] Did you notice that no regular meter was established? Long, short, long, long, short, short, short, long, short, doesn't have a pattern of accents which are necessary to create meter. All three of these rhythms were played by my computer, with no difference in loudness, by the way. The sense of meter was created only by duration. Other accents can be created by high notes and low notes, as we all ready said, or by changes of direction in a melody. So for example, [MUSIC] Each time the melody changes direction, [SOUND] it creates a sense of accent. So, meter is created by a regular pattern of accents. Most tonal music is also a metric, that is music is organized around a single pitch and a regular grid of metric beats. When we talk about notating rhythms we must always choose notation that agrees with the meter. That's a good start on rhythm and meter. In this lecture you learned about meter, how we define it, and how accents form a pattern that creates a sense of meter either double or triple. In the next lecture we'll define the different meters more specifically as we get ready to write rhythms. [MUSIC]
