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Capo status · Post by **Capo status** » Sat May 19, 2012 3:35 am

would anyone know anything about this ? is it important when composing melodies, Drums, etc ? if you didnt understand my question I can rewrite it but i wanted to if this topic was important in music theory ..

Capo status · Post by **Capo status** » Sat May 19, 2012 3:37 am

sorry is this is more of time signature question can someone help me out?

Doug1978 · Post by **Doug1978** » Sat May 19, 2012 4:05 am

Strong and weak beats are very important in both melodies and drums - they carry the pulse / rhythm of what you want to say.

Others may disagree, but to me EVERYTHING is an effect in music, so you should appreciate the effect that you are producing when you create strong and weak beats in rhythms (eg, perhaps you are trying to highlight a particular dub snare hit, bringing some accented jazz hits to the forefront of a song for a short time, or trying to create a 4/4 club track that dancers can adapt to easily when grooving).

Amongst other things, this (yes, Wiki!) will help you understand further:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(music)
(click on the first link in the second section 'Music and acoustics' on that page)

'Rhythm in music is characterized by a repeating sequence of stressed and unstressed beats (often called "strong" and "weak") and divided into bars organized by time signature and tempo indications.'

Also, if you can buy it, get 'Arranging Techniques for Sythesists' by Eric Turkel. It's a good book for learning about rhythms and much more.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arranging-Techn ... 291&sr=8-2

Capo status · Post by **Capo status** » Sat May 19, 2012 6:05 am

thanks a lot @Doug hope this helps someone else too

Nystul · Post by **Nystul** » Sat May 19, 2012 6:23 pm

It's interesting how music is structured and how things tend to happen in patterns and cycles. Time signature/meter is kind of acknowledging this and trying to make sense of it. Maybe a song has steady alternating hits between bass drum and snare drum, boom chick boom chick. There are a few possible time signatures that might account for this depending on tempo and other factors. But essentially you have bass drum playing the strong beats and snare drum playing the back beats. It could be 4/4 with bass drum on 1 and 3 and snare on 2 and 4. Now you might find that chord changes also happen in a very regular way (I'm using the word "regular" here to mean occuring at steady intervals of time). It might tend to be count 1 of every measure. Or maybe count 1 of every two measures. That's one aspect of what helps to define the measure and the strength of beat 1, along with having the bass note there and other things. Historically 2 and 4 are weak in a 4/4 time signature, but in pop music through the last century there tends to be things that really live on those beats and bring them out like the snare drum or claps, rhythm section instruments, etc. So there is this back and forth between the naturally strong beats on 1 and 3 and the stuff that cracks on 2 and 4. Now the main beats are subdivided and you usually have one fast note type that is very common and kind of sets the groove. Maybe and eighth note or sixteenth note, possibly with a bit of swing or perhaps not. Could also be that the beat is subdivided into 3 parts, and then we might want to consider time signature like 6/8 or 12/8 where there are 3 eighth notes per beat. But let's say it is just regular, straight eighth notes. 2 per beat. You might have a hi hat or ride cymbal, perhaps a rhythm guitar or keyboard bringing out those fast pulses. Melody, bass line, etc. will kind fit within the total groove between the strong beats and backbeats and these in between pulses. The bass is usually strong on the strong beats, but sometimes bass and melody can be syncopated and unexpectedly avoid the strong beats. And the "unexpected" can become part of the rhythmic idea of that song if you use it consistently at times in the track. In the meantime the structure often continues to expand in a regular way, perhaps with 4 measure phrases and 16 measures for the entire musical section and so on.

I'm just trying to give an example here of a common sort of meter and groove and how certain things are happening at regular intervals. When you are able to establish that kind of framework and create a sense of beat, then you can mix things up. Maybe dropping the bass out and leaving beat 1 weak, or putting a strong melody note in between beats. Sometimes grooves are based on more complicated accent patterns to begin with than just boom chick boom chick. For example the old Mission Impossible Theme has 2 long beats and then 2 short beats. We write in 5/4 time because the subdivided pulse is 10 steady eighth notes. But using this 5/4 time signature, the second strong accent actually comes between count 2 and 3. African rhythms and Latin dance rhythms have similar type of long/short accent patterns with steady subdivisions. So there are a lot of possibilities. But when you get a grasp on the basic idea and pay attention to what is going on in the music of a certain genre, you will see that maybe one groove or a few grooves are very common and really define the rhythm of that genre. That's also where drummers start by learning kind of the basic accent pattern for a certain groove and then pick up on ways to mix it up a little bit, add in drum fills and so forth.

tapper mike · Post by **tapper mike** » Sun May 20, 2012 4:42 am