Monthly Archives: March 2010

Everything we do in life, down to breathing, takes place in time, and much has been written about the rhythm of life. So saying that music takes place in time is a bit obvious. Nevertheless, throughout history,  men and women have shaped time musically in profoundly meaningful ways. In this lesson, we will look at the most common method of shaping time through music.

Time is completely open in music. In other words, how we shape time through music is limited only by our imagination. If you remember our lesson on pitch, I said that the pitch continuum may be organized in an infinite number of ways. But our freedom to be completely unfettered in our creation using pitch is somewhat limited by our present pitch system, even though numerous composers have pushed past these limitations in a number of ways. In shaping time, however, these limitations do not exist.

Still, today there are common methods used to shape time musically, and these methods are what I will show you. But be aware that this is only the convention of the day, and like pitch, it evolved over centuries and is not perfect. There are infinitely more ways to shape time, and different cultures and composers have been highly creative in doing so. In future lessons, perhaps we’ll get to see some of these other methods of shaping time. But for now, lets cover the basics of the most common method used today.

The Beat

We shape time today musically by dividing it into measurable units. The beat, a regularly recurring pulse, is the most basic unit of musical time.  How fast the beat moves is called the tempo. Listen to the following three examples. One is a beat at a slow tempo, the second a moderate tempo, and the third one a fast tempo:

Beat at a slow tempo:

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Beat at a moderate tempo::

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Beat at a fast tempo:

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Beat Groupings (Meter)

Now I’m going to take the beat at the moderate tempo, and change your perception of it by adding a stress on every other beat. I’m not going to change the beat at all, only the stress. Notice how the beats now sound like they’re in groups of two:

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Now listen to the same exact beat, only this time with a stress added to every third beat:

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Finally, I’ll add a stress a to every fourth beat:

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Beats are commonly grouped in twos, threes, and fours as you heard above. These groupings are what we call meter. In written music, beat groupings usually are designated through the use of measures and barlines. We’ll get to those later.

Beat Division

Now we’ll move on to what is called beat division. Let’s take our moderate tempo example grouped in three. Here it is again:

Moderate Tempo Beat grouped in three’s:

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Listen now as each beat is divided into two parts. The beats are still grouped in three, but each beat is divided into two:

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We can also divide the beat into three parts:

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Beat Subdivision

If we take our beat that was divided into two parts and divide it again, we have a beat subdivision. We generally use the term subdivision when we divide the beat into more than three parts.  Here’s an example of the same beat grouping in three, but each beat is subdivided so now there are four parts for each beat:

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Duration

Duration is simply the length of time we hold a pitch. For example, I can hold a pitch for the duration of one beat, two beats, or any number of beats. Here is an example of holding a pitch for three beats. So we say the pitch has a duration of three beats. Holding a pitch for longer than a beat is commonly referred to as beat multiplication:

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Rhythm

The term rhythm is not used consistently today, even in music. For our purposes, rhythm is the combination of beat division, subdivision and multiplication into distinct patterns. Rhythm is the element of musical time that brings the music to life. Obviously you found the above audio examples boring. But now let’s try to bring at least a little bit of life to them by adding rhythm. Here’s our beat grouping in three with a rhythm added to it:

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Now let’s add pitch to the rhythm:

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So there you have the most basic elements of musical time. I’ve provided a pdf document that you can download which gives you the most important terms that we covered in today’s lesson. You can download it from the Free Music Resources link to the right, or just click here.

We’ll continue our journey through the basic elements of music next with musical texture. As always, thanks for reading, and please send your questions and comments!

Go to Elements of Music Lesson 5

Music, we might say, is a sequence of events comprising the elements of music (pitch, time, dynamics, etc.) But music is rarely just a single event at a time. Commonly, there are two or more musical events happening at the same time. Take, for example, the famous nursery rhyme Row, Row, Row Your Boat. It is intended to be sung in what is called a round, where a singer or group of singers starts singing, then a second group starts the same melody again before the first group has finished. Even though there is only one melody, it is being sung at different times resulting in two different musical events happening simultaneously. The relationship of these events is what we call musical texture. Musical texture ranges from very simple to rather complex. If the texture is too simple for too long of a period of time, we, as listeners, tend to get bored. If it is too complicated (too many events happening at once), the music gets confusing, and we stop listening.There are three main types of texture, ranging from simple to complex: monophony, homophony, and polyphony.

(One side note before we proceed: It is common to call melodies or different parts “voices” in music, even when they are played by instruments and not literally sung by human voices.)

Monophonic Texture

Monophony, or monophonic texture, as its name implies, is a single melody with nothing else going on around it: no accompaniment, no harmony, just the melody. I’ll use the same tune to demonstrate the three main types of textures, and I’ve included the written music for those who would like to see it. If you can’t read the music, don’t worry about it; we’ll get to music reading later.

O for a Thousand Tongues: monophonic texture:

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Homophonic Texture

There are two types of homophonic texture: hymn style, (sometimes referred to as familiar style), and melody and accompaniment.  Hymn, or familiar style has additional melodies, or voices under the main melody, but those additional voices move along with the main melody in the same rhythm, essentially providing harmony to the main melody:

O for a Thousand Tongues: Homophonic (Familiar Style):

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The other type of homophonic texture, melody and accompaniment, is just as its name suggests. The most obvious example would be a singer accompanied by a piano, guitar, or other instrument. But melody and accompaniment is also possible with a single instrument. Let’s take the O for a Thousand Tongues tune again. This time, listen to the bass; it’s not following the rhythm of the melody, but is providing harmony and a rhythmic background:

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Polyphonic Texture

Polyphony literally means “many voices.” So a polyphonic texture is one where there are two or more independent, clearly recognizable melodies, or voices. Row, Row, Row Your Boat, when sung as a round is polyphony. Because the second voice does the same thing as the first, we call it strict imitation. If the other voices imitate the first voice, but don’t follow it exactly, we call it free imitation. In this next excerpt, the first part of O for a Thousand Tongues is played by different “voices” of the piano. Listen to how each voice enters with the first part of the melody, then goes off on its own without continuing to imitate the first voice.

O For a Thousand Tongues, Free imitation:

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The last type of polyphonic texture we’ll listen to is called non-imitative polyphony. Again, this one is pretty self-explanatory. Here, there are at least two independent melodies, but they have no melodic relationship to one another, that is one is not imitating the other. In this example, the left-hand of the piano is playing the melody of O for a Thousand Tongues while the right hand is playing a completely different melody of its own:

O for a Thousand Tongues: non-imitative polyphony

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