T-Music in Elementary Grades

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Temporal Element
of Music
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BEAT
 The basic unit of the temporal element is the beat, a regularly
recurring pulsation.
 Such as regularly recurring pulsations from the tick of a watch to
the beat of the heart
 We use the term beat to indicate duration as well as pulsation.

 A tone having a duration of “one beat” would sound from the

beginning of one beat (in the sense of pulsation) until the instant
preceding the following beat.
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METER, TEMPO, RHYTHM

 In music, beats may be organized by means of accents

into groups (meter)
 Their frequency or speed may be regulated (tempo)

 They may provide a background against which other

temporal units may be sounded (rhythm).
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METER
 The organization of beats into groups of twos, threes or
larger units is termed meter.
 This organization is accomplished by placing on the
first note of each group an accent or stress.
 Duple meter (two beats), triple meter (three beats)
quadruple (four beats)
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Conducting Patterns in Duple, Triple &
Quadruple Meter
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 The speed or frequency with which beats occur in music is referred to as

tempo and can be indicated by verbal description or more precisely, by
metronome
English markings.
Italian Fast tempos
Slow tempos fast Allegro (cheerful
broad largo Lively vivace
slow lento Very fast presto
slow adagio (at ease)
heavy grave
Moderate
tempos
Moderate Andante
(walking)
moderato
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Notes are used to indicate the relative duration
of notes. We use a parallel set of symbols called
rests to indicate the relative durations of
silences in music.
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Time Signatures

 The time signature at the beginning of a composition or

section is a double number, which indicates in the lower
figure the type of note which has a duration of one beat
and in the upper figure the number of such beats in each
measure.
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The following chart lists the most common
time signatures:
Duple Triple Quadruple

Simple 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4

2 4 8 2 4 8 2 4 8

Compound 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

4 8 16 4 8 16 4 8 16