Musicianship : Rhythm (Riddem if you're hip and down with it)

• Beat
• Pulse
• Flow
• Time
• Style
• Syncopation

 Are all different words we associate with rhythm. Polyrhythm etc. But to make an interesting rhythm, there are a few ways. You can make a rhythm by dividing, say a semi-breve into minims, crotchets, semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, hemi-demi-semi-quavers and so on. Now you have cool sounding beat that sounds whack. You do it the other way also, you get your hemi-demi-semi-quavers and you simplify them.

Time

There are two (or more) types of ...time...

1. Simple time
2. Compound time

Simple time is simple. All it is is a rhythm split into even beats e.g. 4/4, 2/2, 2/4 etc etc.

Compound time is a little different. The only difference is that there are three beats instead of two. This makes compound full of dotted crotchets and triplets. An example of compound time in modernish music is "Sweet Baby James" by James Taylor. Some earlier Rock and Roll is compound also.

Additive

Additive rhythm is where beats are added to add a little extra coolness / edge to a rhythm. A lot of twentieth century music has additive rhythm, but it has actually been around for more than a thousand years. The African tribe "Aka" have traditionally used additive rhythms in their music for millennia. A musicologist analyzed the "Aka Timelines" to find that the two bar ostinatos made up an even number of beats. The bars are split into 11 and 13 beats adding to 24.

Examples of additive rhythm would be "Pictures at an Exhibition - Promenade" by Mussorgsky. Here the trumpet melody starts in a 5/4 time signature for one bar. It then proceeds to have a bar in 6/4 after. Another good example is from a concerto by Bartok. It is called the "Concerto for Orchestra 4th mvt". At bar 42 we have an 8 bar melody that has a different time signature at the beginning of every single bar. This is just to show how rhythms were really explored during the 20th Century. The time signatures may be very complex, but the weaving melody and hypothetical note lengths make it seem not as adventurous as it did when first looked at. Bartok probably did this as the music would have been too complicated for a performer to sight read let's say.