Pulse

• Time: the duration of sounds or silences.

• Rhythm: the organization of sound in time

• Beat: the regularity of a pulse. This can be shown as equidistant lines

• Tempo: the rate of speed of the beat.

• Many composers use Italian words to indicate the tempo of a piece.

Types of Rhythmic Values

• Rhythmic values: the duration of pitches.

• When we study rhythmic values, we are studying their mathematical relationships, which are not affected by the tempo.

• Beginning with the whole note, each note divides into two smaller parts.

  • Half note, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note

• Notice that each note is one-half the value of the note in the line immediately above it.

• Notice that each note is one-fourth the value of the note two lines above it.

• Any note may be used to represent the beat; we sometimes call this note the pulse note.

• The direction of the stem is determined by the placement of the note on the staff, regardless of the clef.

• Notes that are drawn through the third line of the staff usually stem down, but they can stem in either direction, regardless of the clef.

• Notes that are drawn below the third line of the staff stem up on the right. Notes above the third line stem down on the left of the notes, regardless of the clef.

Beams

• Stems with flags can be added only to note heads that are filled in: single eighth notes are drawn with a stem and one flag and single sixteenth notes have a stem and two flags.

• Several adjacent eighth or sixteenth notes frequently are linked together with thick, straight lines called beams.

• Because beams replace flags, eighth notes have one beam and sixteenth notes are drawn with two beams.

• Beams facilitate note reading and counting by grouping notes into units reflecting the beat.

• In older editions of vocal music it was common to use individual notes with flags, instead of beams, to match each syllable of the lyrics with a specific pitch; this practice is not in use today.

• When beaming groups of notes together, the direction of the stems will be determined by the placement on the staff of the majority of the notes.

  • If a majority does not exist, one usually stems the notes away from the note that is farthest from the middle line of the staff.

Time Signature, Bar Line, Double Bar Line

• Time signature: indicates the recurrent grouping of accented and unaccented beats.

• The time signature is found at the beginning of a piece of music just after the clef sign (not at the beginning of every staff of music).

• Vertical lines called bar lines are placed at the end of each grouping of beats and separate the groups into measures.

• A double bar is placed at the end of a section of music (not at the end of every staff).

• The end of a piece is indicated by a final double bar .

• The lower number of the time signature indicates the type of note that receives one beat (sometimes called the pulse note), and subsequently determines the number of beats that each note receives.

• When the lower number of the time signature is 4, the quarter note is the pulse note and receives one count.

Meter

• Meter: the stresses of strong and weak beats.

• ​​In music, the first beat of each measure is normally the strongest and is given an accent (>).

• The repeating pattern of strong beats followed by weaker beats is called the metric accent.

• When the top number of the time signature is a 2, 3, or 4, this is called a simple meter. In a simple meter, the pulse note is divided into two or four equal parts.

• The pitches of a melodic line will sound differently when they are written in different meters.