Beat (music)
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For other uses, see Beat.
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. More technically, a beat is a pulse on the beat level, the metric level at which pulses are heard as the basic unit. Depending on the context, beat may denote either
Much music is characterised by a sequence of stressed and unstressed beats (often called "strong" and "weak") organised into a meter and partially indicated by a time signature, the speed of which is determined by a tempo. In the context of a time signature, the term "beat" most often refers to the bottom number — so in 3/4, most people would consider the beat to be the 4; that is, a quarter-note, or crotchet. Musicians typically find that mentally counting a regular series of beats enables them to keep synchronised even if the music is not characterised by regular rhythm. Metric levels faster than the beat level are division levels, and slower levels are multiple levels. A hyperbeat is one unit of hypermeter, generally a measure, as is to a hypermeasure what a beat is to a measure. (Stein 2005, p.329) In hip hop music, the term 'beat' has come to be defined as the entire instrumental, non-vocal portion of the song.
UpbeatAn Upbeat is an unaccented beat or beats that occur before the first beat of a following measure. This is also called anacrusis. In other words, this is an impulse in a measured rhythm that immediately precedes, and hence anticipates, the downbeat, which is the strongest of such impulses. It is also not only this, but also can be the last beat in a normal 4/4 bar where that bar precedes a new bar of music.[1]
It is also an anticipatory note or succession of notes occurring before the first barline of a piece, sometimes referred to as an ‘upbeat figure’, section or phrase. An alternative expression for "upbeat figure" is "anacrusis" (from Greek. ana: "up towards" and krousis: "to strike"; Fr. anacrouse). This term was borrowed from poetry where it refers to one or more unstressed extrametrical syllables at the beginning of a line.[1] DownbeatThe impulse that occurs at the beginning of a bar in measured music.[2] In music performance and music theory, the "downbeat" is the first beat of a measure in music. It is named after the downward stroke of the director or conductor's baton at the start of each measure. This differentiates it from the back beat on the even beats. James Brown’s signature funk groove emphasized the downbeat – that is, with heavy emphasis "on the one" (the first beat of every measure) – to etch his distinctive sound, rather than the backbeat, familiar to many R&B musicians, that placed the emphasis on the second beat.[3] According to the New York Times, by the "mid-1960s Brown was producing his own recording sessions. In February 1965, with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” he decided to shift the beat of his band: from the one-two-three-four backbeat to one-two-three-four. “I changed from the upbeat to the downbeat,” Mr. Brown said in 1990. “Simple as that, really.”[4] According to Maceo Parker, Brown's former saxophonist, playing on the downbeat was at first hard for him and took some getting used to. Reflecting back to his early days with Brown's band, Parker reported that he had difficulty in playing "on the one" during solo performances, since he was used to hearing and playing with the accent on the second beat.[5] Back beatIn music a back beat (also called the backbeat) is a term applied to the beats 2 and 4 in a 4/4 bar or a 12/8 bar [6] as opposed to the odd downbeat, (quarter beat 1). [2] That is, counting out a simple 4/4 rhythm, 1 2 3 4, the 1 beat is the down beat. If beat 4 immediately precedes a new bar it is also called an upbeat [1](see upbeat article for more information on what an upbeat is). The up and down refer to movements of the conductor's baton. Afterbeat refers to a percussion style where a strong accent is sounded on the second, third and fourth beats of the bar, following the downbeat.[7] The effect can be easily simulated by repeatedly counting to four while alternating strong and weak beats:
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