Musical Meter
From bib. source
Beats tend to be grouped into patterns that are consistent throughout a passage, the pattern of beats is called the meter. Groups of two, three and four beats are the most common, although other meters occur. Incidentally, a group of four beats could often also be interpreted as two groups of two beats each and vice versa.
Generally, there are large subsections of passages or tracks that include various measures or bars, that consistently follow a pattern. These patterns are called meters, and consist of groups of beats–or perhaps more accurately, groups of note durations or groups of the biggest subdivisions of the measure (itself anchored by the pulse) (Almén 2018, 25). Consequently, one could also say (Ibid):
From bib. source
[…], the groups of beats are called measures (abbreviated m. or mm.), […]
As mentioned above, the typical beat groupings are groups of two, three or four subdivisions, and each respective grouping extant within a measure or bar can also be described in terms of different types of meter (Ibid):
- A beat subdivision of two would be a duple meter
- A beat subdivision of three would be a triple meter
- A beat subdivision of four would be a quadruple meter
There are more, but those are the most common. In addition, each type of meter also has a “pattern of stresses usually found in” it called a metric accent (Ibid). The below demonstrates what metric accents typically belong to given meter types:
| meter type | metric accents |
|---|---|
| duple meter | strong – weak |
| triple meter | strong – weak – weak |
| quadruple meter | strong – weak – semi-strong – weak |
A meter can also occur at a higher level, describing not the subdivision of the measure, but the way the subdivisions of more than one measure adjoined could be described–that is it is a meter for a relationship between “a regular grouping of measures that is analogous to a meter” (Ibid). That is, a hypermeter can be described as a higher-order, “trans-measural” meter.
In music notation, “the end of a measure is always indicated by a vertical line through the staff called a bar line” (Ibid).
musical_measure musical_bar musical_meter musical_meter duple_meter triple_meter quadruple_meter metric_accent music_theory track hypermeter division mathematics mathematical_operator mathematical_operators musical_notation bar_line music_theory metrology rhythm division_operator division_operators
bibliography
- Kostka, Stefan, Dorothy Payne, and Byron Almén. Tonal Harmony: With an Introduction to Post-Tonal Music. 8th ed. New York: McGrawHill Education, 2018.