## 3. Rhythm, Beat and Tempo

Rhythm is how music is organised in time: a steady beat, a speed to count it at, notes of different lengths laid over it, and bars that group the beats so the music has a shape you can follow.

Source: https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm
Level: Beginner · Sound · 5 sections
Before this: Fundamentals of Music Theory

### Pulse and Beat

https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#pulse-and-beat

> Play these two. Both are the same short sound repeated eight times, and both fill the same stretch of time. You could tap your foot along with one of them without thinking about it, and you could not do that with the other. Say which is which, and what the difference actually is, before you read on.

**Plays:** Eight even taps (G4) · Eight uneven taps (G4)

Four evenly spaced cells, one for each pulse, ticking at 90 a minute — the rate of the first clip above; the second one runs on a finer grid of half-pulses. Press play on the grid and the clicks come straight from the page; press a chip and the sound goes to the strip at the bottom of the screen instead. Rhythm is the one thing this course draws as a grid rather than as notes on a staff, because a row of cells is what a pulse actually looks like — and clicking any cell marks it as stressed, which is what the fourth section of this chapter is about.

**beat**

*also called*: pulse (used interchangeably, though "pulse" leans towards the sensation and "beat" towards the unit being counted)

**Definition.** A beat is the steady, evenly spaced pulse that runs underneath a piece of music — the unit of time listeners tap, clap, nod or march along with, and the unit every other duration in the music is measured against.

The first clip has one. Eight taps, each the same distance from the last, and within two or three of them your body has already worked out where the next one will fall. That prediction is the whole phenomenon: a beat is something you can anticipate, and anticipating it is what lets a room full of strangers clap together. Every clip in this chapter is built from taps like these — a click on G4 for an ordinary pulse and a click on C5 for a stressed one, so that the grouping stays audible however quietly you are listening.

The second clip has exactly the same number of sounds in exactly the same amount of time, and no beat at all. Nothing in it lets you guess where the next tap will land, so there is nothing to tap along to. Sounds alone are not rhythm; regularity is what turns them into it.

What you tapped is also not necessarily what you heard. Put on almost any recording and the pulse you nod to is often sounded by nothing in particular — the singer is between beats, the guitar is holding a chord across them — and you keep nodding anyway. The beat is something a listener supplies, prompted by the music but not identical to it.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) The beat is felt, not necessarily played. A listener keeps counting through a bar where no instrument marks the pulse at all — which is why a drummer can drop out for four beats without anyone losing their place, and why the missing beats in a stop-time break are still heard as beats.
- (Fact) Regularity, not loudness or pitch, is what makes a sequence of sounds tappable. The two clips above use the same note, the same number of taps and the same total length; only the spacing differs, and only one of them can be followed.

**You already know this**

- Rhythm, the second of the four elements — the clip where the only thing that changed was when the sounds happened — https://musictheory.center/course/fundamentals#the-four-elements

**In real music**

- Queen — “We Will Rock You” — the stomp-stomp-clap is pulse and nothing else, and it carries the whole song — no pitched instrument joins it until the guitar arrives at the very end; count along from the first stomp and you are already exactly with the crowd
- The Dave Brubeck Quartet — “Take Five” — the piano vamp states the pulse plainly before the saxophone enters; then keep tapping through the long drum solo in the middle, where the piano drops out and the pulse is yours to supply rather than anyone's to play

**Try it on your instrument:** Put on a recording you know well and tap the pulse on your knee until the end of the first verse. Then play a single note on your own instrument in time with those taps, one note per tap, and keep going after the recording stops.

**Check:** One clip, in two halves with a gap between them. Only one half keeps a steady pulse. Which one?

- The first half **(correct)** — Correct. The first four taps are the same distance apart every time, so after two of them you already knew where the third would land. That is the pulse, and you can tap along with it.
- The second half — The second half has four taps too, but the gaps between them are all different — a short one, then a long one, then a longer one. Try tapping along and you will be wrong every time after the first.
- Both halves — Only the first half is even. Play the clip again and tap along from the beginning: your foot keeps working until the gap, and after the gap it has nothing to hold on to.

### Tempo

https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#tempo

> Play these two. The sound is identical, the spacing is even in both, and each has the same eight taps as the other. Exactly one thing is different. Name it in your own words first, then say which of the two you would find easier to march to.

**Plays:** Eight taps, slow (G4) · Eight taps, quick (G4)

The same four cells as the section before, ticking twice as fast: 120 a minute rather than 90. Nothing about the grid changed except how long it waits between cells, which is the whole of what this section is about.

| Italian marking | Roughly | In beats per minute | What it feels like |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Largo | Broad | 40–60 | Slow enough that you can lose the pulse between taps |
| Adagio | At ease | 66–76 | A slow walk; ballads and funeral marches |
| Andante | Walking | 76–108 | Ordinary walking pace, and the speed most people tap unprompted |
| Moderato | Moderate | 108–120 | Brisk but unhurried |
| Allegro | Cheerful | 120–168 | Most pop, rock and dance music lives here |
| Presto | Quick | 168–200 | Faster than you can comfortably tap a foot |

**tempo**

**Definition.** Tempo is the speed of the beat — how many beats go by in a minute, written as a number of beats per minute and abbreviated bpm.

The two clips above are 60 bpm and 120 bpm. At 60 bpm a beat lasts exactly one second, which is why a clock is the standard way to find that tempo without a metronome; at 120 bpm it lasts half a second. The arithmetic never varies: divide 60 by the bpm and you have the length of one beat in seconds.

Tempo changes nothing about which sounds happen or in what order. Both clips above have the same eight taps in the same relationship to one another; only the clock ran differently. That independence is worth holding on to, because it is what lets the same piece be played fast or slow and still be the same piece.

Before metronomes were common, tempo was given in words rather than numbers, and those words are still printed at the top of most classical scores. They describe a character as much as a speed — "andante" is walking, "allegro" is cheerful — which is why the ranges in the table above overlap and why two conductors can disagree about the same marking without either being wrong.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) One beat lasts 60 / bpm seconds. At 120 bpm that is half a second, at 60 bpm one second, at 40 bpm a second and a half. The relationship is exact and holds for any tempo.
- (Convention) Tempo words are Italian by tradition, because Italian musicians dominated European printed music when the practice settled in the seventeenth century. The words are used in scores worldwide, by composers who speak no Italian, and their bpm ranges are approximations agreed after the fact rather than definitions.
- (Tendency — Western popular music since the 1960s; art music, and most traditions outside this one, spread far more widely.) Recorded songs cluster between about 90 and 140 bpm, with dance floors concentrating harder still around 120–128.

**You already know this**

- The steady pulse from the section before — tempo is the question of how fast that pulse goes, and nothing else — https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#pulse-and-beat

**Where this goes**

- Groove and feel: what happens to a piece when the tempo pushes, drags or changes outright, and why the same notes at two speeds can belong to two different styles — https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove

**In real music**

- Bee Gees — “Stayin' Alive” — about 104 bpm, and taught in first-aid classes for exactly that reason — the hi-hat on the intro gives you the tempo before anything else enters
- Ludwig van Beethoven — “Symphony No. 9, second movement” — marked Molto vivace, and Beethoven left a metronome mark for it that most orchestras still play under; compare two recordings of the opening bars and the difference in tempo is obvious within five seconds

**Try it on your instrument:** Play one note on your own instrument once a second, using a clock or a phone stopwatch to check yourself — that is 60 bpm. Then play two notes a second without changing anything else. Keep each one going for at least thirty seconds.

**Check:** A piece is marked 120 bpm. Before you play anything, work out how long a single beat lasts.

- Half a second **(correct)** — Correct. 60 divided by 120 is 0.5, so a beat lasts half a second and two beats go by every second. The clip above is four taps half a second apart, so a second and a half passes between the first and the last.
- One second — One second per beat is 60 bpm, not 120 — half the speed. A useful check: at 120 bpm you should be able to count two taps in the time a clock takes to tick once.
- Two seconds — Two seconds per beat would be 30 bpm, slower than almost any music ever written. Going the wrong way here usually means multiplying by the bpm instead of dividing into 60.

### Note Values

https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#note-values

> Play these three in order. Each fills exactly the same stretch of time, and each has more sounds in it than the last. Count the sounds in each one, and notice how long each sound is left ringing before the next one arrives as their number goes up.

**Plays:** One sound, filling the whole stretch (G4) · Four sounds, one to a pulse (G4) · Eight sounds, two to a pulse (G4)

Four pulses, each cut into four, at 90 a minute. The taller marks are the pulses themselves and the smaller ones are the sixteenths between them — sixteen cells in all, which is exactly the grid the three clips above were written on, cell for cell. The filled mark on cell one is the only cell the first clip strikes, and that one sound is left ringing across the other fifteen; the second clip strikes every fourth cell and the third every other one, each sound lasting until the next begins.

| Name | Fraction of a whole note | Beats in 4/4 | British name |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 𝅝 Whole note | 1 | 4 | Semibreve |
| 𝅗𝅥 Half note | 1/2 | 2 | Minim |
| 𝅘𝅥 Quarter note | 1/4 | 1 | Crotchet |
| 𝅘𝅥𝅮 Eighth note | 1/8 | 1/2 | Quaver |
| 𝅘𝅥𝅯 Sixteenth note | 1/16 | 1/4 | Semiquaver |

**note value**

*also called*: semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver and semiquaver (British usage, one name per row of the table above, in that order)

**Definition.** A note value is how long a note lasts, expressed as a fraction of a whole note rather than in seconds — so a half note is half the length of a whole note, a quarter note is half of that, and each further value halves the one above it.

The three clips are one whole note, four quarter notes and eight eighth notes, in that order, and each sound is left ringing until the next one begins — so the first clip is a single note lasting all four beats, and the third is eight notes of half a beat each. They take the same time because the arithmetic makes them: four quarters are a whole, and eight eighths are a whole, so each clip is one full turn round the same grid with the same stretch of time divided differently.

Nothing here says how long any of it takes in seconds. A quarter note is one beat in 4/4, and a beat is 60 / bpm seconds, so the same quarter note is half a second at 120 bpm and one second at 60. Note values are proportions; tempo is what converts them into time.

Silence is measured the same way. A rest has a value exactly as a note does — a quarter rest is one beat of nothing in 4/4 — and it is part of the rhythm rather than a gap in it. None of the three clips contains one: their unstruck cells are the sound before them still ringing, which is what makes the first clip a whole note rather than one sound and four beats of silence. The uneven clips in the first section of this chapter are the opposite case, and their empty cells really are silence.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) Each value is exactly half the one above it, so two of any value make one of the next: two eighths make a quarter, two quarters make a half, two halves make a whole. Sixteen sixteenths fill a whole note, which is why the grid above has sixteen cells.
- (Convention) The American names are fractions of a whole note and the British names are a separate vocabulary inherited from mensural notation. They describe identical durations: a crotchet and a quarter note are the same thing, and no piece of music sounds different for being written in one system or the other.
- (Convention) A quarter note equals one beat only in the meters whose lower number is 4 — 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 among them. In 6/8 the beat is a dotted quarter and the counting unit printed on the page is the eighth, which is the subject of the last section of this chapter.

**You already know this**

- Tempo, which is what turns a fraction like "a quarter note" into a real number of seconds — https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#tempo

**Where this goes**

- Rhythm on the staff: the printed shapes these durations are written with, and how they are beamed and dotted — https://musictheory.center/course/notation

**In real music**

- The Police — “Every Breath You Take” — the guitar figure is a steady run of eighth notes from the first bar and barely stops; count two to every tap of your foot and it lines up exactly
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” — the opening phrase moves through three values in eight bars — long held notes, then quarters, then a rush of eighths in the answering figure at about fifteen seconds

**Try it on your instrument:** Pick one note on your own instrument and play four bars of it four ways without changing your counting speed: once held for four counts, then one note per count, then two per count, then four per count. Count out loud the whole time.

**Check:** Listen to this clip and count how many sounds fall on each tap of your foot.

- One — quarter notes — One sound per beat would be four sounds in this clip, not eight. Count your foot taps against it: there is a sound landing in the middle of each tap as well as on it.
- Two — eighth notes **(correct)** — Correct. Eight sounds across four beats is two to a beat, and a note lasting half a beat in 4/4 is an eighth note. Tap your foot four times while it plays and each tap has one sound on it and one between.
- Four — sixteenth notes — Four to a beat would be sixteen sounds here — every one of the grid's sixteen cells struck, twice as busy as this clip, which strikes only every other cell. Count "one-e-and-a" against it and you will find half your syllables have no sound under them.

### Bars and Downbeats

https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#bars-and-downbeats

> Play these two. Neither changes speed and every tap is the same distance from the last, but some taps are higher than the rest. The higher ones do not arrive at the same rate in the two clips. Count how many taps go by from one high one to the next, in each.

**Plays:** Higher tap every four (G4 C5) · Higher tap every three (G4 C5)

Two groups of four pulses, each pulse cut in half, at 100 a minute — the chips above tap out the pulses themselves, so they move at half the rate of these cells. The filled mark at the start of each group is the accent, and it falls on cell one and cell nine, the first pulse of each group. Press play and the click on those two cells is plainly different from the rest; click any other cell to add an accent of your own, or click a filled one to take it away, and hear the grouping change.

| Beats in the bar | Counted | Where the stress falls | Usually called |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2 | ONE two, ONE two | Every second beat | March time |
| 3 | ONE two three, ONE two three | Every third beat | Waltz time |
| 4 | ONE two three four | Every fourth beat, with a lesser stress on three | Common time |

**bar**

*also called*: measure (American usage; the two words mean the same thing and are used interchangeably)

**Definition.** A bar is one group of beats — most often two, three or four of them — repeated over and over so that the music is divided into equal units of time, each beginning with the strongest beat of the group.

That first beat has its own name: the downbeat. It is where a conductor's hand falls, where a bass player most often lands, and where you would clap if someone asked you to clap once per group. In the two clips above it is the higher tap, and counting from one higher tap to the next is counting the length of a bar.

Grouping is heard, not merely marked. The first clip gives four beats to a bar and the second gives three, and nothing about them differs except which taps are stressed — same speed, same spacing, same number of sounds a minute. Stress alone is enough to make a listener count in fours or in threes.

The stress can be supplied by anything: a louder drum, a lower bass note, a chord change, a syllable of the lyric, or nothing at all beyond the listener's own expectation. In this chapter it is supplied by a higher pitch rather than by a louder tap, which is a choice about clarity: a change of pitch survives a bad speaker, a noisy room and a low volume setting, and a change of loudness does not. Chapter 18 takes loudness itself as its subject and does vary it.

**Good to know**

- (Convention) Every bar in a piece holds the same number of beats unless the notation says otherwise, which is what makes bars usable as a unit of measurement: "eight bars" is a definite length of time once the tempo is known. Composers change the grouping freely by writing a new [time signature](https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove#time-signatures) mid-piece, and some music does so every few bars.
- (Convention) Bars are drawn on a staff as vertical lines cutting across it, and the lines are placed before the downbeat rather than after it — so a bar runs from one line to the next, beginning on the stressed beat.
- (Tendency — Western popular and classical music. Many traditions — Balkan dance, much of North India, a good deal of twentieth-century art music — group beats in fives, sevens and nines as a matter of course.) Four beats to a bar is overwhelmingly the most common grouping, to the point that a listener assumes it unless something contradicts it. Three is the next most common and is heard as a waltz; two is heard as a march.

**You already know this**

- The four quarter notes that filled one whole note — those four beats are a bar of 4/4, and the first of them is the downbeat — https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#note-values

**Where this goes**

- Accent and syncopation: what happens when the stress is deliberately put somewhere other than the downbeat — https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove

**In real music**

- Johann Strauss II — “The Blue Danube” — three beats to a bar throughout; once the main tune arrives, the accompaniment gives you a low note on every downbeat and two light chords after it, which is the grouping made audible
- Michael Jackson — “Billie Jean” — the drum pattern that opens it states four beats to a bar entirely on its own before the bass line joins; the kick drum marks every downbeat and the snare answers on beats two and four, and that pairing runs unchanged through the whole song

**Try it on your instrument:** Play one note on your own instrument repeatedly at a steady speed, and give every third one extra weight — more bow, more breath, a harder pick stroke. Then keep everything the same and give every fourth one the weight instead. Nothing changes but the stress.

**Check:** Listen to this clip and count how many beats go by from one higher tap to the next, counting the higher tap itself as one.

- Two — Two beats to a bar would put a higher tap on every other one, so you would hear high, low, high, low. This clip has two ordinary taps between each pair of higher ones, not one.
- Three **(correct)** — Correct. The higher tap, then two ordinary ones, then the higher tap again: three beats to a bar, which is waltz time. Count "ONE two three" out loud with it and the numbers land where the taps do.
- Four — Four to a bar is the first clip at the top of this section. Count along in fours here and by the second group your "one" is landing on an ordinary tap — the surest sign you are counting a group that is too long.

### Simple and Compound Meter

https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#simple-and-compound

> Play these two. Each has twelve evenly spaced taps and each takes the same time from beginning to end. The only difference is which of the taps are higher. One of them leans in twos and the other leans in threes — decide which is which, and say what that does to the feel, before you read on.

**Plays:** Twelve taps, higher on every second (G4 C5) · Twelve taps, higher on every third (G4 C5)

Two beats, each cut into three, at 80 a minute — one bar of 6/8, which is the shape of each half of the second clip above, and that clip is two bars of it. Six cells, with the two filled marks showing where the beats themselves fall: on cell one and cell four, three cells apart rather than two. The simple version is the first clip above, where the higher taps come every two cells instead.

| Time signature | Beats in a bar | Each beat divides into | Where to hear it |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2/4 | Two quarter notes | Two — simple | "The Stars and Stripes Forever", Sousa — the march step itself |
| 3/4 | Three quarter notes | Two — simple | "The Blue Danube", Strauss — the waltz accompaniment |
| 4/4 (𝄴) | Four quarter notes | Two — simple | "Billie Jean", Michael Jackson — the opening drum pattern |
| 6/8 | Two dotted quarter notes | Three — compound | "We Are the Champions", Queen — the piano figure under the first verse |

**simple and compound meter**

**Definition.** A meter is simple when each of its beats divides into two equal parts, and compound when each of its beats divides into three — so the difference between the two is not how many beats a bar holds but what happens inside each beat.

Both clips above have twelve taps at the same speed, so the same amount of time passes in each. In the first, a higher tap comes every two, which makes six beats of two parts each: simple. In the second, a higher tap comes every three, which makes four beats of three parts each: compound. Nothing moved except the stress, and the feel changed completely.

2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 are the everyday simple meters: two, three or four quarter-note beats, each splitting into two eighths. 6/8 is the everyday compound one, and it is easy to misread, because the six in it counts eighth notes rather than beats. A bar of 6/8 has two beats, each a dotted quarter, each dividing into three.

That is why 3/4 and 6/8 are not the same thing despite both holding six eighth notes in a bar. In 3/4 the stress falls on the first, third and fifth of those eighths; in 6/8 it falls on the first and the fourth. Play the two clips above one after the other and the difference needs no explaining.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) A bar of 3/4 and a bar of 6/8 contain the same total duration — six eighth notes — and differ only in how those eighths are grouped: three groups of two against two groups of three.
- (Convention) In a compound [time signature](https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove#time-signatures) the lower number names the subdivision rather than the beat, so the top number is three times the number of beats: 6/8 has two beats, 9/8 has three, 12/8 has four. This is a quirk of the notation, not of the music.
- (Tendency — Western popular music. In Irish and Scottish dance music the jig — a compound meter — is one of the central forms, and many West African traditions treat two-part and three-part divisions as equally ordinary and often sound both at once.) Simple meter, and 4/4 above all, accounts for the large majority of recorded songs; compound meter turns up most often in ballads, [blues shuffles](https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove#swing-and-shuffle), jigs and doo-wop, where the three-part division is what gives the swaying quality.

**You already know this**

- The downbeat and the grouping it creates — simple and compound is the same question asked one level down, inside each beat rather than across the bar — https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#bars-and-downbeats

**Where this goes**

- Time signatures in full, and syncopation: odd meters, swing, and stresses placed against the division rather than with it — https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove

**In real music**

- Queen — “We Are the Champions” — the piano under the first verse divides every beat into three; count "one-and-a, two-and-a" from the opening chord and it fits exactly, where counting in twos does not
- The Beatles — “Norwegian Wood” — the guitar and sitar figure at the start lilts in threes throughout; compare it directly with the straight twos of "Eight Days a Week" and the two divisions are easy to tell apart

**Try it on your instrument:** Set a steady pulse on your own instrument and play three even notes inside every beat for a minute without the pulse drifting. Then play two even notes inside every beat at the same pulse. Switch between the two every four beats.

**Check:** Before you play anything: from the table above, which of these four meters divides each of its beats into three equal parts? Then press play to check yourself.

- 2/4 — 2/4 has two beats to a bar, which is the same number as 6/8 — but each of them splits into two eighths, not three. Two beats is not what makes a meter compound; a three-part division is.
- 3/4 — 3/4 is the closest trap here, because it holds six eighth notes in a bar exactly as 6/8 does. The difference is the grouping: 3/4 is three beats of two, 6/8 is two beats of three, which is the first clip at the top of this section against the second.
- 4/4 — 4/4 has four beats and each splits into two, which makes it the most ordinary simple meter there is. Counting "one-and, two-and" fits it; counting "one-and-a" does not.
- 6/8 **(correct)** — Correct, and the clip is two bars of it: two beats to a bar, each one splitting into three eighths, with the higher tap on each beat. That three-part division is what makes a meter compound.

### Key Takeaways

https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#key-takeaways

- A beat is the steady pulse a listener taps along with, and it is felt whether or not any instrument actually plays it.
- Tempo is the speed of that pulse in beats per minute, and one beat always lasts 60 divided by the bpm in seconds.
- Note values are proportions rather than durations: each is half the one above it, and only a tempo turns them into seconds.
- A bar is a repeating group of beats whose first beat, the downbeat, carries the strongest stress, and stress alone is enough to create the grouping.
- A meter is simple when its beats divide into two and compound when they divide into three, which is why 3/4 and 6/8 hold the same six eighth notes and still sound nothing alike.

### Questions

**What is the difference between beat and rhythm?**

The beat is the steady pulse underneath the music, evenly spaced and unchanging. Rhythm is the pattern of long and short sounds laid over that pulse. Tap your foot and you are giving the beat; sing the words and you are giving the rhythm. One is the grid, the other is the picture drawn on it.

**What does bpm mean?**

Bpm stands for beats per minute, and it is how tempo is measured: 60 bpm is one beat every second, 120 bpm is two beats every second. Divide 60 by the bpm and you have the length of one beat in seconds, which is why 120 bpm gives half a second.

**What is a bar in music?**

A bar, called a measure in American usage, is one group of beats — usually two, three or four — marked off so that the music has a repeating unit. The first beat of every bar is the downbeat and carries the strongest natural stress, which is what makes the grouping audible.

**What is the difference between 3/4 and 6/8?**

Both hold six eighth notes in a bar, so the difference is not how much time passes but where the stress falls. In 3/4 there are three beats, each splitting in two, stressed one-three-five. In 6/8 there are two beats, each splitting in three, stressed one-four.

**How do I find the beat in a song?**

Put a recording on and let yourself nod or tap without thinking about it; most listeners land on the beat within a few seconds. Then check the spacing: if your taps are evenly apart and you can keep them going through the whole song, you have found it.

### Other languages

- https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm/llms.txt
- https://musictheory.center/fr/cours/rythme/llms.txt
- https://musictheory.center/es/curso/ritmo/llms.txt