Alright, in our last segment we talked about how to find the beat in a piece
of music. But
obviously there's more to music than just the beat. If all we had was a beat, you'd never
be able to get anything interesting going.
For example
I'm just going to think of a song that you will know
in my head and I'm going to play the beat that goes with it.
(tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap)
Could you identify that tune?
Of course not! There was nothing there to help you! You could count how many beats
I played but other than that,
there's really no useful information there. So the next layer that we have
to build onto our beat in order to make a piece of music
is they rhythm.
So we ahve already talked about the beat being steady and just keeps plowing along
until we get to modern music and it does some other things.
So we got the beat that's going along, pulsing along underneath,
sort of like the
motor in our boat sort of rumbling along underneath.
So all we need to add on top of that is
the rhythm.
So we now have a nice steady beat going.
Now we're going to put rhythm which is how the sound moves
through time. So this is a temporal kind of thing, it's not a steady thing,
although it does have to fit with the beat. It's just
series of long and short sounds
moving through time.
We hear them all the time. Happens in life all the time.
So I'm going to do the same song I was thinking in my head before
with just the rhythm
this time.
So the beats going to be sort of in my head there, but you're going to hear the rhythm
this time.
(tapping out rhythm)
Hi, did you figure out what I was playing that time?
Hopefully you did. It's a very common song.
That's the rhythm for Happy Birthday.
Happy birthday to you,
happy birthday to you! So if I'm doing Happy Birthday now, I'm just going to
chant it, I'm not going to sing it because that's another concept and
we're not there yet.
So here's my beat.
Happy birthday to you, (accompanied by beat)
happy birthday to you, happy birthday, happy birthday (accompanied by beat)
happy birthday to you. (accompanied by beat)
You can see that the beat was always the same,
but some of the sounds that I made rhythmically were longer
and shorter.
So, like we sing... happy,
happy, that's one beat.
Happy birth (beat, beat)
So we get more than one sound within a beat!
We could also have a sound that goes longer than a beat. So we had
happy birthday to you. (beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-beat)
That one (you) lasted for two beats.
So, long sounds
short sounds
put them together in all sorts of combinations
and that's what rhythm is. So one of the things that can be confusing for a novice
person who's trying to talk about music, is to separate those two.
So if I did, sticking with our happy birthday 'cause that's easy to do,
what if i do happy birthday faster
Happy birthday to you (accompanied by rhythm)
Happy birthday to you, (accompanied by rhythm)
happy birthday, happy birthday (accompanied by rhythm)
happy birthday to you. (accompanied by rhythm)
Has the rhythm changed?
No, it hasn't. The structure of the rhythm is still the same. The relationships between the
shorts and the longs
are the same.
What we changed
was how fast the beat went.
So if you're hearing a piece of music and maybe the first part of it is
a fairly relaxed kind of rhythmic pattern, it's not do anything very fancy,
lots of long sounds,
just kind of moving along,
but then in the next section of the piece
we have a lot more rhythmic activity
what a lot of students will think is, 'Oh, listen, there's a whole lot more notes
going on.
That must be a different beat.
We must have gotten faster.
But in fact we probably haven't
If you listen really carefully and just focus on that beat
pounding in the background or not pounding as the case may be with the piece of music
and then think about
okay, is that beat changing,
or are we just getting more complicated rhythms
on top of it?
So let's just take an example. I'll create something here. I'll compose a piece just
for you today.
So here is my beat.
It's just gonna go softly here in the background (with beat)
ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-etc (while playing the beat)
This is an exciting tune isn't it? (while playing the beat)
ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-etc (while playing the beat)
Alright that's the end of my first section.
lots of long sorts of sounds.
Nothing
moving along very fast.
Alright, keeping the same beat,
here's my next section of my piece. (playing the beat)
ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-etc (playing the beat)
The beat didn't change!
The rhythm changed!
So you might have thought, wow, listen to how much faster that section of the music was! It's not!
So don't get caught up in what the rhythm's doing if you're thinking about the
speed of things. Listen to that underlying beat
and then realize that the rhythm that was across the top can change, it can
stretch, it can be longer, shorter,
lots of different kinds of combinations.
As we go through this course, you'll find us talking about those
rhythms a lot so we'll be talking about the beat,
the meter, how it's organized and then how those rhythms can change on top of it
because what we're looking for in music and any kind of artistic expression is
some sort of contrast. If my entire piece of music that I just made up was like
the first part,
after a while that might get a little old.
If I contrast that with something that's very different
but still goes within that same beat pattern, we get contrast and that's what makes a
really great artwork.
Contrast!
Things that are like and things that are different. That's what we like to have in
our lives. Too much of the same
gets boring. Same thing in the arts. Gotta have contrast. So, think about the beat.
Figure out what that rhythm is doing and next we're going to add pitch to it!