Meters & Beat Patterns

Image Description. Brazilian conductor and pianist Ligia Amadio conducting the Orquesta Filarmónica de Montevideo in 2017.
(Montevideo City Hall | CC SA-4.0)

While there are many exceptions, most musical works have a consistent meter and make use of a regular pattern of accents within that meter which serve as fundamental characteristics of the piece.

Meter

In most cases, music that has a consistent meter will be felt has having two, three or four beats per measure.

Figure 1: Ragtime Oriole, a 1911 piece by American composer James Scott, performed by American pianist Scott Kirby. As with most ragtime pieces, this piece is notated and usually felt in a duple meter, but can also be heard as being in a quadruple meter.

While some pieces may be notated in a way that implies more than four beats per measure, listeners tend to group beats together — a process called chunking — to simplify measures into two, three, or four beats.

An example of a melody in six-eight time, showing subdivisions as eighth notes but the perceived beat as dotted quarter notes.
Figure 2: In 6/8 time, listeners usually perceive two beats per measure, rather than six.

Music in complex meters are also susceptible to this effect, using beats of different lengths.

An example of a melody in five-eight time, the perceived beat as an alternation of dotted quarter notes and quarter notes.
Figure 3: In 5/8 time, listeners usually perceive two unequal beats per measure.

Conducting Patterns

Large groups of musicians like orchestras, choirs, and concert bands often rely on a conductor to coordinate their performance. Whether they are using their hands or a baton, conductors will often use specific a pattern of movement for each meter. In these patterns, beats are indicated by an ictus, where the conductor appears to touch an imaginary horizontal line at the bottom of the pattern.

Diagrams showing conducting patterns in two, three, and four. In each case, the pattern starts high and drops to the ictus line for each beat, returning to the high position at the end of each measure. For a two pattern, both ictus points are slightly to the right. For a three pattern, beat one is in the middle, beat two is far right, and beat three is in between. A four pattern is like a three pattern, but adds a second beat to the left of the first beat before sweeping to the right for beats three and four.
Figure 4: Standard conducting patterns for two, three and four beats per measure. These patterns are made with the right hand, and are shown from the conductor's point of view. When two hands are used for conducting, the left hand mirrors these patterns.

In slower tempos, conductors may employ patterns where each subdivision is shown with a less pronounced ictus.

Smaller groups of musicians are usually able to coordinate their performance without the need for a conductor, coordinating entrances with exaggerated movements, verbalized countoffs, or drum beats.

Anacrusis

Musical works will sometimes begin with an incomplete measure, called an anacrusis or pick-up note (or notes). When notated, these shortened measures are not shown with a different time signature.

Older scores will often account for these missing beats by placing a correspondingly shortened measure at the end of the piece, called a catalexis, but this is only necessary for repeated sections where the meter is meant to be preserved.

Beat Patterns

Many pieces of music feature a specific pattern of accents within the overall meter that create a specific rhythmic feel, called beat patterns.

Basic Beat Patterns

Straight Beats? I dunno

The most straightforward beat pattern is one in which each beat is given an equal emphasis. This pattern is common in hymn writing.

When used in popular music in a quadruple meter, this beat pattern is often called four on the floor and features a bass drum hit on each beat.

Afterbeats

A beat pattern which accents all the beats in the measure except for the first beat is called afterbeats. The omission of the first beat creates a negative space which itself can be heard as an accent.

Offbeats and Backbeat

Placing rhythmic accents on the beats following strong beats creates a beat pattern called offbeats, which is common in styles such as polka and reggae.

When offbeats are incorporated into a drum pattern in quadruple meter, it is called a backbeat, a rhythm that is considered one of the fundamental characteristics of rock.

Syncopation

Rhythms which feature a strong contrast against the prevaling meter are called syncopations. In most case, these rhythms feature accents on weak beats or subdivisions between beats, where notes are held through the strong beats in a measure.

Beat Anticipations

A simple form of syncopation includes notes which begin on the subdivision before a beat. An example of this is a beat pattern in quadruple meter with accents on the first beat and on the subdivision between the second and third beats.

A slightly more complicated syncopation is the tresillo beat pattern, which adds a third accent on beat four.

A common beat pattern in Jamaican dancehall music uses a tresillo pattern fit into two beats.

The son clave beat pattern is a two-measure pattern that begins with a tresillo. The second measure features accents on beats two and three.

This pattern — named for a Cuban dance and music genre called son, where it is played on the claves — is extremely common in afro-cuban music.

Another variation of the tresillo is the reggaeton beat pattern, which adds an accent on the second beat.

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