Issues of musical rhythms and tempos

Factual Questions
1

I want to be able to organize my music library by tempo and rhythms, and I got this neat little electronic metronome to help me. It is the Dr. Beat db-30.

FYI, I am pretty musically illiterate. I know some of the terminology, but I can’t really relate it to what I’m hearing.

I’m having two distinct issues in this project.

  1. The tempo – I can find a tempo easily enough by tapping on a button in time to the music. But it’s almost always possible to tap either half as fast or twice as fast (sometimes 4 times as fast) to generate other tempos. All keep time with the music. Is there some way to know which is the ‘right’ choice, given that I can’t look at the sheet music and couldn’t read it if I could see it?

  2. The thythm ‘types’ or ‘styles’. This particular metronome has 9 preset types, though it seems there are lots more. What I’m really looking for are correct descriptive terms for these rhythms. They are all denoted by symbols, and even the owner’s manual doesn’t give them names.
    Please bear with my inadequate language in describing them.

Assume I enter a tempo of 120 BPM… There is a virtual pendulum which sweeps back and forth across the display to simulate the metronome’s pendulum.

  1. designated by a single musical note - it simply generates 120 beats per minute, each beat at the end of a sweep.

  2. designated by 2 musical notes - it generates an additional beat halfway between each ‘main’ beat, which is ‘accented’ by a slightly different sounding beat.

  3. designated by a note with what looks like a tiny flag next to the big dot at the bottom - this also taps out 120 BPM, but not 'on the beat" denoted by the sweep hand. The beat sounds when the hand is straight up rather than at either end of the sweep, so it’s kind of like it’s 180 degrees out of phase with the first style.

  4. I think this is a ‘waltz’ rhythm, the only one I can seemingly identify by name. It generates two additional beats between each ‘main’ beat.

  5. This generates two taps per sweep, one about 2/3rds or 3/4s (can’t really tell from the display) through a sweep, and a second at the end of each sweep, which is also 'accented".) So it goes tap-TAP-----tap-TAP-----tap-TAP…

  6. This generates 4 taps per sweep – Tap-tap-tap-tap-TAP-tap-tap-tap

  7. 2 taps per sweep. Like #5, but no accented taps at the end of the sweeps, only the two 2/3rds (or 3/4ths) through the sweep.

8 & 9, are latin-sounding and called ‘claves’ 1 and 2. One is Tap–tap–tap ---- taptap, the other is pretty much the opposite, 2 taps followed by 3.

2

You have to listen where the stresses are in the music, i.e. which beats are emphasised (of course a piece of music may employ syncopation, but worry about that later)

This is the time signature, which again is to do where the stresses are in music. For example in common or 4/4 time the first beat of the bar is the strongest, the 3rd the second strongest, 2nd and 4th the third strongest. Notes which do not fall on beats will be even weaker.

The rest of your post generally about identifying time sigantures.

3

I haven’t owned a metronome for years and I’m not convinced what I think you’re saying is necessarily accurate.

Basically a time signature (is usually) given by two numbers written one on top of another. The top value tells you how many notes there are in a bar and the bottom number tells you the value of those notes. E.g. 3/4 indicates there are 3 quarter notes in a bar. Both the top and bottom values on a time signature determine where the stresses are. I’m guessing you’re settings are to help you determine the bottom number (i.e. the note value) which is slightly more difficult than determining the top number.

4

No, this is not what I’m referring to when I’m talking about these styles. There are a whole different set of controls to set the stresss on various beats. I am referring mainly to the time between the beats, though some of the options I described blur the distinction.

5

Having re-read your posts, I’m not sure that I interpreted them correctly when I first responded. But, to be clear, I am talking about the timing rather than the tone (or emphasis?) of the beats.

6

Hard to explain. It’s a matter of hearing the stresses and figuring out where the “one” is and subdividing the major beats accordingly. With most pop music, this will mean you should be tapping on the snare every other beat (on the second and fourth beats of a 4/4 measure). But if it’s in half-time feel, you should hear the snare on every fourth beat (on the third beat of the measure.) This is kind of tough to explain in words. Generally, you should find your slower to mid-tempo songs at 80-120 bpm, and your more up-tempo songs up the 180 or 190 bpm. If it’s just got a simple rock beat: “boom-CRACK-boom-CRACK” those are the beats you should be tapping on.

This is a quarter note rhythm,

This is an eighth note rhythm.

This is a quarter note rhythm accenting what are normally unstressed beats for you. This is helpful in getting the feel and swing of jazz, which likes to stress off-beats and up-beats.

That’s a triplet rhythm.

Swing rhythm. (edit: I think. See #7. I’m having some difficulty understanding the description.)

16th note rhythm

Unclear what you mean, but sounds like another swing rhythm variation.

They are claves, the foundation of much Afro-Cuba music. One sounds like the “Bo Diddley beat”, the other is the reverse of this. Technically, the Bo Diddley beat is modeled after a 3-2 son clave, which is the first clave you described. The other clave is called the 2-3 son clave.

7

pulykamell,
Can you name me a couple of examples of songs with “half-time feel”? I will probably know it if it’s pop music between 1960 and 1980.

Let me give you an example hoping you are familiar with it.

At the Hop by Danny & the Juniors – seemingly a very fast paced song, if I try basing the rhythm on the piano (very rhythmic but extremely fast), I can’t tap fast enough. There’s a stressed drum beat which comes out to be about 96 BPM, whiich is the same as if I tap to another section to hand claps. But if I tap to basically every bass note, it comes out to about 195, which ‘feels’ more right in my mind. And this is about what your post says to expect from a fast pop song.

8

[QUOTE=Boyo Jim;12743682

At the Hop by Danny & the Juniors – seemingly a very fast paced song, if I try basing the rhythm on the piano (very rhythmic but extremely fast), I can’t tap fast enough. There’s a stressed drum beat which comes out to be about 96 BPM, whiich is the same as if I tap to another section to hand claps. But if I tap to basically every bass note, it comes out to about 195, which ‘feels’ more right in my mind. And this is about what your post says to expect from a fast pop song.[/QUOTE]

Yep, that’s in the 190 bpm range. That’s a normal rock beat there, with the snare on the 2 & 4 of the beat, so when you’re tapping it, every second beat should have a snare.

As for songs with half time feel. Let’s see. What immediately comes to mind is Fool in The Rain. If you count it as 1-2-3-4,1-2-3-4,etc., the snare should be falling on the 3 rather than the expected 2 and 4. A song that goes from regular to half-time feel is Enter Sandman in this point. The actual tempo doesn’t change when it goes from the verse to prechorus, but the drums go from having the backbeat on the normal 2 & 4 to having it just on the 3, so it kind of elongates or slows down the feel of this section, even though the bpm remains the same.

9

Music with a 1-2-3 1-2-3 beat? I looked up “waltz tempo” and saw coments that they are normally 80-100 bpm, which I found worked out if I counted each beat (1-2-3 is 3 beats)rather than every other like in a 1-2-3-4 beat (1-2-3-4 is 2 beats). But if I count some songs with a triplet beat the same way, they count out to 160 - 170 bpm, but to my ear they sound a lot slower than a 1-2-3-4 beat with the same bpm count.

Is that just a phenomena of how you count beats, or am I doing something wrong?

10

A waltz generally has an oom-pah-pah feeling to it. The first beat of the grouping of three has a strong accent every time. In songs with triplet feels (like 12/8), it’s more like “ONE-and-uh, two-and-uh, three-and-uh, four-and-uh,” with a slight secondary accent on the three. Now, rock tends to emphasize the back beat (the two and four) so you’ll hear the accents (usually on a snare) on the two and four there. But if you’re tapping your foot along, you’re tapping on the one, two, three, four, and NOT on all the “and-uhs.” The kind of gives you a clue that this is a subdivision of the beat.

There was a recent thread on this. Here’s Elvis’s Can’t Help Falling in Love in 3/4 (waltz) time. Here it is with 12/8 (triplet) time.

The tempo of the first is generally thought of as 120 bpm, and the second as 80 bpm. However, you can notate the second example as “eighth note = 240” if you write it in 12/8 time. Beats per minute is usually given as how many quarter notes per minute in simple meter (where each beat is subdivided into two) and in how many dotted quarter notes in compound meter (where each beat is subdivided into three.)

Confused yet? Don’t be. Try to naturally clap along or tap your foot along to the music, and that should help you feel where the major beats are.

11

Thanks for sticking with me on this, pulykamell. Your examples are a good illustration of what I’m trying to get at. The first 1-2-3 beat (the oom pah pah) sounds like a much slower tempo than the second – to my ear – than the second, but in bpm terms it is 50% faster.

As to the difference between the two tempos, I can definitely hear the emphasis on the first beat in the first example, and that in the second example none of the beats are particularly emphasized in relation to the others. But other then that, I’m not hearing any significant different in the style of the beat. So what it’s boiling down to is that the bpm is as dependent on the sound intensity of the beats as it is on the actual frequency in time of them. I find that very odd.

It seems to me that if I was using the same parameters to count the beats in both tunes, that I should be counting either once for each 1-2-3, or 3 times for each 1-2-3. But obviously that’s not the case.

I do not like that.

12

Interesting. The melodies are actually exactly the same tempo–that example was recorded with the organ melody cut & pasted. The only difference was the accompaniment. Where one had three distinct beats to the measure, the other had two, hence the 120 bpm : 80 bpm (3:2) ratio.

Hmm… I don’t know how to verbalize it, then. To me, these two beats are completely different. One is a heavy “OOM-pah-pah” beat that repeats every three beats; the other is a more typical four-beat rhythm that is subdivided into three beats instead of two. Maybe when I get a chance I’ll post some drum rhythms to help you see the difference, because this is difficult to express in words.

I’m not quite following what you’re trying to say here.

13

Ok, we are having language difficulties, or more accurately, I am having language difficulties.

Yes, it did seem to me that the song lyrics of the two examples were identical, or nearly so, in terms of pacing. And this is probably one of my problems – I have been thinking of beats per minute as synonymous with tempo and clearly they are not. So there’s my problem #1.

My problem #2: let’s say that the 1-2-3 beat in sample 1 takes 1 second. Comparatively, the 1-2-3 beat in sample two takes, I dunno, maybe half the time (you probably can figure this out mathematically, but I don’t know enough to), but certainly less time because the notes are played more rapidly, i.e., closer together in time. To me that suggests a faster BPM rate because the notes are being played faster. Instead, the bpm rate is slower because I am counting the two differently.

I am counting on 1 AND 2 AND 3 in the waltz sample, but only on the 1 count in the 2nd sample.

So the second sample, which considerably seems faster to me (in fact, I can barely match the rate by finger tapping because the 3 notes are played so much quicker), has a considerably slower beat per minute count. I find that really counter intuitive.

14

Just wanted to add another note. I have been searching for sofware to scan my music files and automatically calculate BPMs for them. There’s a lot of them out there, but so far none of them I’ve tried are reliable. Many make the same mistake I’m making – they calculate a rate that’s either double or half the correct rate.

15

That’s typical. The software doesn’t necessarily know where the “beat” is or how it’s divided. I assume it typically looks for repeating volume peaks in the song and extrapolates the BPM through that. This may or may not give you an accurate result, depending on how its finding the beat.

I’ll post up a couple examples regarding your other question in a little bit. Music is a bit tricky to discuss purely in words. It comes down to this: the first example I posted you should be counting “ONE-TWO-THREE” or “ONE-and-TWO-and-THREE-and.” The second example, you’re counting “ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR” or “ONE-and-uh-TWO-and-uh-THREE-and-uh-FOUR-and-uh.” If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re counting all the subdivisions of the beat in the second example.

16

OK, here’s a very simplistic example on Garage Band drums.

First, I introduce the rock beat stripped down to its complete essentials: bass-SNARE-bass-SNARE. This beat is at 96 bpm and never changes throughout the song. Each of those hits represents one beat.

After two measures (8 beats total), I introduce a hi-hat, also on the beat. I emphasize the first beat, known as “the one” in musical parlance, with an open hi-hat sound. If you don’t know exactly what an “open hi-hat” is, just note that the sound is different than the other hi-hat sounds.

So far so good? We’re still hammering “ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR-ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR” on the drums.

Next, I subdivide the beat into two on the high-hat. The beat remains exactly the same, except now the hi-hat is playing “ONE-and-TWO-and-THREE-and-FOUR-and.” It’s playing twice as many notes, but there’s still four beats. You should be tapping your foot to the ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR, not all the subdivisions.

After two bars of the eighth-note beat, I play a triplet beat, where each beat is subdivided into three. This is like the 12/8 example of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” above. Note that the tempo hasn’t changed, the beats are still where they were before, it’s just the subdivisions are in threes instead of twos.

Finally, I conclude with a 16th-note beat on the hi-hat. This is just the 8th note beat further in two. Typically, one is taught to count this as “ONE-ee-and-uh-TWO-ee-and-uh-THREE-ee-and-uh-FOUR-ee-and-uh.” There’s still only four notes to the bar.

So now, with those basic beats down, feel free to ask questions and for clarification. Where does this start becoming confusing for you?

17

No, I’m not, in large part because it’s hard to tap my fingers that fast. But it seems (to me) that I am counting insconsistently. I hearing the two beats as essentially the same style of beat, except for the relative loudness of the beats in relation to each other.

In the waltz example, I am hearing a fairly slow and stately 1-2-3 beat. You expressed this as “ONE - and- TWO -and- THREE”. I guess this is what I’m supposed to hear, and by counting all three of those beats, I come up with a result of 120 bpm, which is what you say I should come up with.

In the second example, I am not hearing a 4th beat at all. I am hearing a very rapid 1-2-3 beat. I do hear a do hear a loudness difference – ONEtwothree ONEtwothree. The only way I come up with a bpm result of 80, which you say is the correct answer, is by counting ONLY the ONEs. If I counted all three, I would have a result of about 240 bpm.

So the waltz example seems a lot slower to me, but it has a faster bpm count. I’m having trouble with that idea. I am getting that calculating the bpm is based on more than the actual frequency of the notes played.

Ok, I see you’ve put up another post so let me look that one over.

Again, I thank you very much for your patience. I suspect the ultimate answer, though, is going to be, “You count that way because those are the counting rules.”

18

OK, you’re almost there. You’re not really counting the ones. You’re really counting like this: “ONE-and-uh-TWO-and-uh-THREE-and-uh-FOUR-and-uh” (Although, to be honest, I’m more inclined to call that 6/8 instead of 12/8, so I’d count it “ONE-and-uh-TWO-and-uh-ONE-and-uh-TWO-and-uh.” This doesn’t make any difference in terms of bpm. The beat is still the capitalized numbers. It’s just a matter of where you hear the “ONE.” It’s not always clear-cut, and the same piece of music can be notated several ways. In any case, where the beats lie are the same.)

19

Not really. It’s in how the music feels.

20

Wow, are you creating music for me as examples?? That’s very nice of you.

Ok, I see another issue (or maybe the same one better illustrated) with your drum example. When you go to the triplet beat, with the 4 beat still going alongside, I can hear that it’s three drum hits in one of the four intervals., ie, your tapping the drum 12 times in the same period your originally hit 4.

But apparently I can’t distinguish that when the triplet is not accompanied by the other beat. I just hear what amounts to a really fast waltz beat, with the first of the 3 beats a bit louder than the others. At least that is what I was getting from your second example further back up the thread.