Tempo, Rhythm & Meter

Tempo - the speed of music

Like a person whose heart beats, every tune has a pulse whose rate is definite. Music can be fast or slow. Many times, further directions will appear in Italian above the notes. They also indicate speed, but relatively. For example, press each instruction and hear our metronome beating at the required speed. Note that the absolute speed can be different from one performance to another.

Rhythm - the lengths of sounds

Each note has its own duration. In every melody, there will be short sounds and long sounds. Among other things, notes allow us to write the length of each sound.

Say our beat (a beat is a single pulse unit) is a crotchet (quarter-note). A line of identical sounds whose length is one beat would look and sound like this:

You can also have crotchet-long rests:

þþThere are also sounds that are a quaver long - two of them last one beat:

By clicking the note duration chart you can get to know some more durations used in notation:

Meter - the regularity of downbeats and upbeats

In different tunes, you can feel some notes are accentuated compared to others, which are weaker.

This is the meter, according to which measure lines (bars) are aligned, for after every bar an upbeat will come.

In a duple meter, every first beat out of two is accentuated.

An example of this "Humoreske No.1, Op.101 No.1" of Dvorák

In a triple meter, every first beat out of three is accentuated.

Chopin's waltz is a good example

In a quadruple meter (4/4 or 4/8), every first beat out of four is accentuated.

This example is from "The Nutcracker" - Tchaikovsky's great ballet.

There are also beats based on quaver beats, such as the 6/8.

A part of Smetana's symphonic poem - the "Moldau".

There will also be cases when the metre changes during the musical piece, as in the following example: