Meter or metre is a concept related to an underlying division of time characteristic of western music. A hymn is a type of Song, usually religious specifically written for the purpose of praise adoration or Prayer, and typically addressed to a deity/deities The concept provides that the pattern, is usually 2, 3, or 4 beats long, (duple, triple, quadruple), and each beat may be normally divided into 2 or 3 basic subdivisions (simple, compound). Another view is that meter is the measurement of a musical line into measures of stressed and unstressed "beats", indicated in Western music notation by a symbol called a time signature. Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. In Musical notation, a bar or measure is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration See also Modern musical symbols Music notation or musical notation is any system which represents aurally perceived Music through the use The time signature (also known as " meter signature" is a notational convention used in Western Musical notation to specify how many beats Yet another view is that "meter" describes the whole concept of measuring rhythmic units, but it can also be used as a specific descriptor for a measurement of an individual piece as represented by the time signature—for example, "This piece is in 4/4 meter " is equivalent to "This piece is in 4/4 time" or "This piece has a 4/4 time signature" – all of which are formally called simple quadruple meter, four beats, each normally divided by 2. A rhythmic unit is a Durational pattern which occupies a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying Metric level, as opposed to a
Rhythm is distinguished from meter in that rhythms are patterns of duration while "meter involves our initial perception as well as subsequent anticipation of a series of beats that we abstract from the rhythm surface of the music as it unfolds in time" (London 2004, 4). Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός - rhythmos, "any measured flow or movement symmetry" is the variation of the length and accentuation of
Ametric music includes chant, some graphically scored works since the 1950s, and non-European music such as Honkyoku repertoire for shakuhachi (Karpinski 2000, 19). Chant (from Old French chanter) is the Rhythmic speaking or Singing of Words or Sounds often primarily on one or two Honkyoku (本曲 "original pieces" are the pieces of Shakuhachi or Hocchiku music played by Mendicant Japanese Zen monks The is a Japanese end-blown Flute. Its name means "18 feet" referring to its size There is discussion as to whether the western concept of meter existed before the development of tonality in the late 16th century as polyphonic music before this time was written without bar lines.
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Rhythmic meter
In common practice period music, there are four different time signatures in common use:
- Simple duple – two beats to a bar, each divided by two, the top number being "2" (2/4, 2/8, 2/2 …)
- Simple triple (3/4 ) – three beats to a bar, each divided by two, the top number being "3" (3/4, 3/8. The common practice period, in the history of European Art music (broadly called Classical music) spanning the Baroque, Classical, and In Music, simple meter or simple time is a Time signature or meter in which each beat (or rather portion 1/2 or 1/3 of a Triple metre (or triple meter, also known as triple time) is a musical metre characterized by a primary division of 3 beats to the bar usually 3/2 …)
- Compound duple - two beats to a bar, each divided by three, the top number being "6" (6/8, 6/16, 6/4 …)
- Compound triple - three beats to a bar, each divided by three, the top number being "9" (9/8, 9/16, 9/4)
In some regional music, for example Balkan music (like Bulgarian music, and the Macedonian 3+2+2+3+2 meter), a wealth of complex compound meters are used. In Music, duple refers to duple meter. Duple is also a duration of 1½ the regular note value duration in compound and or Triple In Music, compound meter, compound metre, or compound time ( chiefly British variation) is a Time signature or meter in The music of Southeastern Europe or Balkan music is a type of music distinct from others in Europe Bulgarian folk dances are intimately related to the Music of Bulgaria. Leventikos (Λεβέντικος Levéntikos; Macedonian Slavic: Пуштено Pušteno) also called Λιτός ( Litós) Kucano In Music, compound meter, compound metre, or compound time ( chiefly British variation) is a Time signature or meter in Another term for this is "additive meter". This has influenced some Western music as well, for example, Béla Bartók, and Paul Desmond in the well known tune Take Five. Béla Viktor János Bartók (March 25 1881&ndashSeptember 26 1945 was a Hungarian Composer and Pianist, considered to be one of the greatest Paul Desmond ( November 25, 1924 - May 30, 1977) born Paul Emil Breitenfeld, was a Jazz alto saxophonist and " Take Five " is a classic Jazz piece first recorded by The Dave Brubeck Quartet and released on its 1959 album Time Out.
| Beats divided in two | Beats divided in three | |
|---|---|---|
| Two beats per measure | simple duple | compound duple |
| Three beats per measure | simple triple | compound triple |
If each beat in a measure is divided into two parts, it is simple meter, and if divided into three it is compound. If each measure is divided into two beats, it is duple meter, and if three it is triple. Some people also label quadruple, while some consider it as two duples. The latter is more consistent with the above labeling system, as any other division above triple, such as quintuple, is considered as duple+triple (12123) or triple+duple (12312), depending on the accents in the musical example. However, in some music a quintuple may be treated and perceived as one unit of five, especially at faster tempos.
"Once a metric hierarchy has been established, we, as listeners, will maintain that organization as long as minimal evidence is present" (Lester 1986, 77). Duple time is far more common than triple. Most popular music is in simple quadruple time, eg 4/4, though often may be in simple duple, 2/2 or cut time such as in bossa nova. Doo-wop and some other rock styles are frequently in 12/8, or may be interpreted as 4/4 with heavy swing. Similarly, most classical music before the 20th century tended to stick to relatively straightforward meters such as 4/4, 3/4 and 6/8, though notational variations on these such as 3/2 and 6/4 are also found. By the twentieth century, composers were also using less regular meters, such as 5/4 and 7/8.
Also in the twentieth century, it became relatively more common to switch meter frequently—the end of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is a particularly extreme example—and the use of asymmetrical rhythms where each beat is a different length became more common: such meters include already discussed quintuple rhythms as well as more complex constructs along the lines of 2+5+3/4 time, where each bar has a 2-beat unit, a 5-beat unit, and a 3-beat unit, with a stress at the beginning of each unit; similar meters are used in various folk musics. Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский) ( &ndash 6 April 1971 was a Russian born Composer, considered by many to This article is about the ballet music For the emo/hardcore band see Rites of Spring The Rite of Spring, commonly referred In Music, an additive rhythm is a Rhythm in which larger periods of time are constructed from sequences of smaller Rhythmic units added to the end of the In Musical notation, a bar or measure is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration Other music has no meter at all (free time) (such as drone-based music as exemplified by La Monte Young), features rhythms so complex that any meter is obscured (such as in some pieces using serial techniques[Pierre Boulez, Marteau sans maitre; Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gruppen]), or is based on additive meters (such as some music by Philip Glass). In music a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or Accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout much La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14 1935) is an American Composer and musician In Music, serialism is a technique for composition that uses sets to describe musical elements, and allows the manipulation of those In music Additive Meter refers to a pattern of beats that subdivide into smaller irregular groups WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> Philip Glass (born January 31
Meter is often combined with a rhythmic pattern to produce a particular style. This is true of dance music, such as the waltz or tango, which have particular patterns of emphasizing beats which are instantly recognizable. The waltz is a ballroom and folk Dance in time, performed primarily in Closed position. Tango is a style of music that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay. This is often done to make the music coincide with slow or fast steps in the dance, and can be thought of as the musical equivalent of prosody. Sometimes, a particular musician or composition becomes identified with a particular metric pattern; such is the case with the so-called Bo Diddley beat. Bo Diddley ( December 30 1928 &ndash June 2 2008, born Ellas Otha Bates) was an original and influential American Some examples (Scruton 1997):
Polymeter
- See also: Polyrhythm
Polymeter or Polyrhythm is the use of two metric frameworks simultaneously, or in regular alternation. Examples include Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 2. Béla Viktor János Bartók (March 25 1881&ndashSeptember 26 1945 was a Hungarian Composer and Pianist, considered to be one of the greatest The String Quartet No 2 by Béla Bartók was written between 1915 and October 1917 in Rákoskeresztúr in Hungary. Leonard Bernstein's "America" (from West Side Story) employs alternating measures of 6/8 (compound duple) and 3/4 (simple triple). WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> WikipediaWikiProject Classical music#Biographical_infoboxes "America" is a well-known song from the musical West Side Story. West Side Story is a musical by Arthur Laurents (book Leonard Bernstein (music and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics This gives a strong sense of two, followed by three, stresses (indicated in bold type): // I-like-to be-in-A // ME RI CA//.
An example from the rock canon is "Kashmir" by the seminal British hard-rock quartet Led Zeppelin, in which the percussion articulates 4/4 while the melodic instruments present a riff in 3/4. " Kashmir " is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin from their 1975 album Physical Graffiti. Led Zeppelin were This is also heard in Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog. " Black Dog " is a song by English rock band Led Zeppelin, which is featured as the lead-off track of their fourth album, released in "
"Touch And Go", a hit single by The Cars, has polymetric verses, with the drums and bass playing in 5/4, while the guitar, synthesizer, and vocals are in 4/4 (the choruses are entirely in 4/4) (The Cars 1981, 15). On this page you will find the complete discgraphy of the New wave band The Cars. The Cars were an American rock band that emerged from the early New Wave music scene in the late 1970s
In "Toads Of The Short Forest" (from the album Weasels Ripped My Flesh), composer Frank Zappa explains: "At this very moment on stage we have drummer A playing in 7/8, drummer B playing in 3/4, the bass playing in 3/4, the organ playing in 5/8, the tambourine playing in 3/4, and the alto sax blowing his nose. Weasels Ripped My Flesh is an Album by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, released in 1970 (see 1970 in music) Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21 1940 – December 4 1993 was an American Composer, Electric guitarist Record producer and Film director "
The metal band Meshuggah uses polymeters; typically the songs are constructed in 4/4, with guitar and bass drum patterns in other meters such as 11/8 and 23/16. Meshuggah is a Swedish five-piece Experimental metal band formed in 1987
Another notable example in postmodern music is the band King Crimson, which often employs a rather special form of polymeter, namely two guitar tracks playing essentially the same riff, but one track has one or more notes added or subtracted, thus creating highly complex harmonic and rhythmic structures. King Crimson is a Progressive rock band founded by guitarist Robert Fripp and drummer Michael Giles in 1969 In Music, a riff is an Ostinato figure a repeated Chord progression, pattern refrain or melodic figure, often played by the Rhythm An example for this kind of polymeter can be found in their song "Frame by Frame," which features a riff in 7/8 over which the second guitar plays the riff with one note less every other time, thus creating an overlay of 7/8 with 6/8+7/8. These are all examples of what is sometimes referred to as "tactus-preserving polymeter. " Since the pulse is the same, the various meters eventually agree. (4 measures of 7/4 = 7 measures of 4/4). The more complex, and less-common "measure preserving polymeter," occurs when there exists more than one meter, but the measure stays constant. This is also referred to as polyrhythm (Waters 1996,; Larson 2006,
Research into the perception of polymeter shows that listeners often either extract a composite pattern that is fitted to a metric framework, or focus on one rhythmic stream while treating others as "noise". This is consistent with the Gestalt psychology tenet that "the figure-ground dichotomy is fundamental to all perception" (Boring 1942, 253; London 2004, 49-50). Gestalt psychology (also Gestalt of the Berlin School) is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holistic In Visual perception, figure-ground is a type of Perceptual organization in vision that involves assignment of edges to regions for purposes of shape determination
Metric structure
Metric structure includes meter, tempo, and all rhythmic aspects which produce temporal regularity or structure, against which the foreground details or durational patterns are projected (Wittlich 1975, chapt. 2266-Tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl or TEMPO is the Chemical compound with the formula (CH23(CMe22NO Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός - rhythmos, "any measured flow or movement symmetry" is the variation of the length and accentuation of A tone may be sustained for varying lengths of time. duration is a property of tone that becomes one of the bases rhythem or an amount of Time or a particular time 3).
Rhythmic units can be metric, intrametric, contrametric, or extrametric. A rhythmic unit is a Durational pattern which occupies a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying Metric level, as opposed to a
Metric levels may be distinguished. The beat level is the metric level at which pulses are heard as the basic time unit of the piece. A beat is the basic Time Unit of a piece of Music; for example each tick sounded by a Metronome would correspond to a beat Faster levels are division levels, and slower levels are multiple levels (Wittlich 1975, chapt. 3).
Level of Meter is shown to be a spurious concept, since meter arises from the interaction of two levels of motion, the faster of which provides the pulses, and the slower of which organizes them in repetitive conceptual groups (Yeston, 1976[page number needed]).
Hypermeter is large-scale meter (as opposed to surface-level meter) created by hypermeasures which consist of hyperbeats (Stein 2005, 329). In Musical notation, a bar or measure is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration A beat is the basic Time Unit of a piece of Music; for example each tick sounded by a Metronome would correspond to a beat The term was coined by Cone (1968) while London (2004, 19) asserts that there is no perceptual distinction between meter and hypermeter.
A metric modulation is a modulation from one metric unit or meter to another. In Music a metric modulation is a change ( modulation) from one Time signature / Tempo ( meter) to another wherein a note value from In Music, modulation is most commonly the act or process of changing from one key ( tonic, or tonal center) to another
Deep structure
C. S. Lee (1985) has described musical meter in terms of deep structure, where, through rewrite rules, different meters (4/4, 3/4, etc) generate many different surface rhythms. In Theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of Syntax. For example the first phrase of The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, without the syncopation, may be generated from its meter of 4/4:
4/4 4/4 4/4
/ \ / \ / \
2/4 2/4 2/4 2/4 2/4 2/4
| / \ | | | |
1/4 1/4 | | |
/ \ / \ | | |
1/8 1/8 1/8 1/8 | | |
| | | | | | |
It's been a hard day's night
(Middleton 1990, 211). The Beatles were a pop and rock band from Liverpool, England formed in 1960 " A Hard Day's Night " is a song by British rock band The Beatles. In Music, syncopation includes a variety of Rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced
Examples of various meter sound samples
- sample of how 1/4 meter sounds in a tempo of 90bpm. Beats per minute ( BPM) is a unit typically used as either a measure of Tempo in music or a measure of one's Heart rate.
- sample of how 2/4 meter sounds in a tempo of 90bpm.
- sample of how 3/4 meter sounds in a tempo of 90bpm.
- sample of how 4/4 meter sounds in a tempo of 90bpm.
- sample of how 5/8 meter sounds in a tempo of 120bpm.
Meter in song
Issues involving meter in song reflect a combination of musical meter and poetic meter, especially when the song is in a standard verse form. A song is a Musical composition. Songs contain vocal parts that are performed 'sung' and generally feature Words ( Lyrics) commonly followed In Poetry, the meter or metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse. In Poetry, the meter or metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse. Traditional and popular songs fall heavily within a limited range of meters, leading to a fair amount of interchangeability. For example, early hymnals commonly did not include musical notation, but simply texts. A hymn is a type of Song, usually religious specifically written for the purpose of praise adoration or Prayer, and typically addressed to a deity/deities The text could be sung to any tune known by the singers that had a matching meter, and the tune chosen for a particular text might vary from one occasion to another.
One case that illustrates the potential use of this principle across musical genres is The Blind Boys of Alabama's rendition of the hymn Amazing Grace, which is sung to the musical setting made famous by The Animals in their version of the folk song The House of the Rising Sun. A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other The Blind Boys of Alabama are a gospel group from Alabama that first formed at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939. A hymn is a type of Song, usually religious specifically written for the purpose of praise adoration or Prayer, and typically addressed to a deity/deities " Amazing Grace " is a well-known Christian Hymn by Englishman John Newton and which first appeared in print in Newton's Olney Hymns The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s known in the United States as part of the British Invasion. Folk music can have a number of different meanings including Traditional music: The original meaning of the term "folk music" was synonymous " The House of the Rising Sun " is a folk song from the United States.
Sources
- The Cars (1981). Panorama (songbook). New York: Warner Bros. Publications Inc.
- Honing, Henkjan (2002). "Structure and Interpretation of Rhythm and Timing. " Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 7(3):227–32. pdf
- Karpinski, Gary S. (2000). Aural Skills Acquisition: The Development of Listening, Reading, and Performing Skills in College-Level Musicians. ISBN 0-19-511785-9.
- Krebs, Harald (2005). "Hypermeter and Hypermetric Irregularity in the Songs of Josephine Lang. ", in in Deborah Stein (ed. ),: Engaging Music: Essays in Music Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517010-5.
- Larson, Steve (2006). "Rhythmic Displacement in the Music of Bill Evans". In Structure and Meaning in Tonal Music: Festschrift in Honor of Carl Schachter, edited by L. Poundie Burstein and David Gagné, 103–22. Harmonologia Series, no. 12. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press. ISBN 1576471128
- Lester, Joel (1986). The Rhythms of Tonal Music. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-1282-4.
- London, Justin (2004). Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516081-9.
- Scruton, Roger (1997). The Aesthetics of Music, p. 25ex2. 6. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-816638-9.
- Waters, Keith (1996). "Blurring the Barline: Metric Displacement in the Piano Solos of Herbie Hancock". Annual Review of Jazz Studies 8:19–37.
- Wittlich, Gary E. (ed. ) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-century Music. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice-Hall.
- Yeston, Maury (1976). Maury Yeston (born October 23, 1945) is an American composer lyricist educator and musicologist The Stratification of Musical Rhythm. New Haven: Yale University Press.
See also
External links
- www.oddtimeobsessed.com website and Internet radio dedicated to odd meters in music. (odd time signatures)
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