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Metre (music)
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Meter or metre is a concept related to an underlying division of time characteristic of western music. 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 division of a musical line into measures (or "bars") of stressed and unstressed "beats", indicated in Western music notation by a symbol called a time signature.
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Meter or metre is a concept related to an underlying division of time characteristic of western music. 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 division of a musical line into measures (or "bars") of stressed and unstressed "beats", indicated in Western music notation by a symbol called a time signature. 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 " 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.
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).
Ametric music includes chant, some graphically scored works since the 1950s, and non-European music such as Honkyoku repertoire for shakuhachi (Karpinski 2000, 19). 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.
Rhythmic meter
In music of the common practice period (about 1600–1900), there are four different families of time signature in common use:
- Simple duple – two or four beats to a bar, each divided by two, the top number being "2" or "4" (2/4, 2/8, 2/2 … 4/4, 4/8, 4/2 …). When there are four beats to a bar, it is alternatively referred to as "quadruple" time.
- Simple triple – three beats to a bar, each divided by two, the top number being "3" (3/4, 3/8, 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. Another term for this is "additive meter". This has influenced some Western music as well, for example, Béla Bartók's compositions, and Paul Desmond in the well known tune Take Five.
| Duple | Triple | Quadruple |
|---|
| Simple | simple duple | simple triple | Simple quadruple |
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| Compound | compound duple | compound triple | compound quadruple |
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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 meter is now 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 (compound quadruple), or may be interpreted as 4/4 with heavy swing. Similarly, most classical music before the 20th century tended to be composed in 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 (additive meters).
Also in the twentieth century, in concert music, 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+2+3/4 time, where each bar has two 2-beat units, and a 3-beat unit, with a stress at the beginning of each unit; similar meters are used in various folk musics. Other music is based on additive meters (such as some music by Philip Glass).
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. 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. Some examples (Scruton 1997):
Polymeter
Polymeter or Polyrhythm is the use of two metric frameworks simultaneously, or in regular alternation. Examples include Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 2.
Leonard Bernstein's "America" (from West Side Story) employs alternating measures of 6/8 (compound duple) and 3/4 (simple triple). This gives a strong sense of two, followed by three, stresses.
"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).
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."
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. (Four measures of 7/4 = seven 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).
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. 3).
Rhythmic units can be metric, intrametric, contrametric, or extrametric.
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. 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). 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.
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. 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).
Examples of various meter sound samples
- sample of how sounds in a tempo of 90bpm.
- sample of how sounds in a tempo of 90bpm.
- sample of how sounds in a tempo of 90bpm.
- sample of how sounds in a tempo of 90bpm.
- sample of how sounds in a tempo of 120bpm.
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. 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. 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.
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.
- Karpinski, Gary S. (2000). Aural Skills Acquisition: The Development of Listening, Reading, and Performing Skills in College-Level Musicians. ISBN 0-19-511785-9.*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*
- 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.*Yeston, Maury (1976). The Stratification of Musical Rhythm. New Haven: Yale University Press.
See also
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