4. Rhythm

In Chapter 12: The Beat and Chapter 13: Rhythm we defined the beat as the steady underlying pulse of the music, which changes only gradually or at major transitions (e.g. between sections of a classical symphony), and rhythm as the pattern of notes played on top of that steady beat, featuring notes of different durations and occurring at specific times relative to the beat.

As with Pitch, this may make it seem like there isn’t much choice left to us, if we are to play a piece of music “correctly, as written”. After all, the sheet music or recording we’re learning to piece from will indicate the specific rhythms to use. But, as with Pitch, even without moving from interpreting a piece to improvising or writing our own music, in fact there is a whole world of expressive possibilities available to us.

Whenever we speak to express ourselves in words, we speed up or slow down according to the emotions we wish to communicate. When we begin to feel excited or cheerful, our speech may be faster, or when we want to get a serious point across, we may slow down and become very deliberate.

The natural cadence of our speech may be quite flexible, speeding up or slowing down expressively within the same sentence. And the exact timing of each word can significantly affect the impact it has, and therefore the emotion or even the entire meaning of the sentence.

For example, imagine the sentence “I knocked over the cup, because of the cat” spoken with the first phrase slowly, and then the second phrase very quickly, and how this would emphasise the broken cup, with the cause as a by-the-way addition. And now imagine it with the first phrase fast, the second much slower, and a clear moment’s pause before the word “cat”. Suddenly the whole point of the sentence appears to be to blame the poor cat!

Similarly in music, the overall speed as well as the exact timing of each note can have a dramatic effect. The two major ways we can add our own expression to a given rhythm are:

1. To alter the underlying beat. We can do this either through our choice of overall speed, or by varying that speed over time.
2. To adjust the exact timing of the notes, while still staying within the range that produces recognisably the rhythm as written.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

Tempo

The overall speed of our music is referred to as tempo. In traditional “staff” music notation, there is a range of Italian terms to indicate the expected tempo. These typically come at the beginning of a piece or a section of music:

Term	Meaning
Prestissimo	Very, Very Fast (> 200 B.P.M.)
Presto	Very Fast (168-200 B.P.M.)
Allegro	Fast (120-168 B.P.M.)
Moderato	Moderately (108-120 B.P.M.)
Andante	Walking Speed (76-108 B.P.M.)
Adagio	Slightly Slow (66-76 B.P.M.)
Lento	Very Slow (40-60 B.P.M.)
Grave	Slow (20-40 B.P.M.)

Some of these tempos even have their origins in emotion words. For example grave meant “serious”, and allegro originally meant “happy”—though in Classical music there are plenty of intense minor-key allegros that are less than cheerful!

Often a section of a piece may even be named after its tempo marking. For example, if you were practicing the second movement of a Handel sonata with a friend, you might say “Let’s start again at the Allegro.”

Italian tempo markings leave room for subjectivity and interpretation, including variation in your day-to-day performance. For example you can play an “Andante” at a wide range of speeds, and still be within an acceptable tempo range.

When musicians want to indicate tempo more specifically, we can choose a number measured in B.P.M. (Beats Per Minute), also shown in staff notation as “M.M.” (“Maelzel’s Metronome”, after Johann Maelzel who built the first metronome devices). Both indicate the number of beats per minute, so that the number 60 indicates one beat per second. The numeric tempo ranges corresponding to the shorthand terms are included in the table above.

In Western Classical Music and some other genres, tempo can be used as a highly expressive tool. Remember the beginner piano students who slowed down at the end of their performance? Composers, teachers, or music editors will indicate tempo changes in the music, again traditionally using a set of Italian terms:

Term	Meaning
Accelerando	Gradually getting faster
A tempo	Return to the prior speed
Ritardando	Getting a little slower
Rallentando	Getting slower
Allargando	Getting much slower
Rubato	Adjusting tempo freely for the sake of expression

As with the other tempo terms, these are also open to interpretation—especially rubato. The literal Italian translation is “stolen”, as if the time itself was stolen from the rest of the performance. Rubato indicates a very free and speech-like expressive use of tempo, which brings us more into the second way of altering Rhythm for expressive purposes.

True to its origins in social dance music (where sudden tempo changes would be dangerous!) contemporary popular music typically keeps the same tempo throughout a song. However, the tempo of one part of certain instruments or voices can change (usually by an even factor, for example slowing down by half or doubling in speed) even when the layers stay in the same tempo. Even when a song is recorded all the way through to a steady click track, these illusions of tempo changes can be quite expressive.

Exploring the Rhythm of a Note

Even with a fixed tempo (i.e. a steady, unchanging beat), we have expressive choices available in how exactly we time each note we play.

For example, a musician might play or sing “behind” or “on top of” or “ahead of” the beat. This can have a huge effect on the energy and emotion of the music: if just one member of the band lags behind the beat, the music can start to feel like it’s dragging ponderously forwards (for better or worse!) while even a single member playing ahead of the beat can make things seem like they’re hurtling forwards, slightly out of control. When these choices are intentional, and especially when applied only at particular moments, they can have a powerful impact. For example if a lead guitar riff pushes ahead of the beat in the pre-chorus section it can build anticipation for the emotional payoff of the chorus arriving. Or if the singer chooses to lag slightly behind the beat as the song draws to a close, it can produce a similar satisfying winding-down as a rallentando, even while the perceived beat remained perfectly steady.

In addition, a musician can make very flexible and expressive rhythmic choices moment-to-moment and note-to-note. This can be seen as a microcosm of the same “playing ahead of or behind the beat” idea, since ultimately you are choosing whether to play each note before, exactly on, or after its expected time.

These expressive rhythmic choices all depend on their relationship to the beat rather than the suspension of a steady beat (as happens in the case of rubato), and so they can also be combined with overall tempo changes. You often hear in the outro of a rock track, for example, a heavy rallentando, where one or more lead instruments also places each of its final notes later and later compared with the anticipated time, giving the impression that it is reluctantly agreeing to bring the song to a close.

It’s important to note that all these rhythmic possibilities do not excuse sloppy rhythm! On the contrary, they require an even greater command of rhythmic precision, knowing and feeling precisely where each note “belongs”, to be able to place it slightly before or after, as intended.

This is analogous to the principle, popularly attributed to Pablo Picasso, that one should “Learn the rules like a pro… so you can break them like an artist.” If you cannot play the rhythms precisely without adding your own expressive flourishes, there’s a great risk that the music will sound rough or unstable to the listener, rather than having the expressive effect you intend.

So be sure to make good use of the practice techniques in Chapter 6: Superlearning as well as Chapter 12: The Beat and Chapter 13: Rhythm, to dial in your “inner metronome” and rhythmic precision, and you’ll be well prepared to make use of all the rhythmic choices available to you.

You can repeat this exercise with a different tempo. Keep in mind that faster tempos will make it increasingly challenging to place notes as precisely as required, to avoid changing the perceived rhythm completely, while much slower tempos, counter-intuitively, can have exactly the same effect! This is one reason for the truism that “it can be harder to play music well at slower tempos rather than easier”: when the space is really opened up for each note to be placed, one needs a great deal of precision to place it effectively! To simply play ahead of or behind the beat is indeed easier at slower tempos, but to achieve the desired expression can actually be surprisingly tricky.

Using Rhythm to Shape a Phrase

Now that you’ve experimented with placing each note in a steady, unchanging rhythm, it’s time to use that same idea but with a musical phrase which actually has a rhythmic pattern of its own.

Bringing It All Together

Now it’s time to really have some fun! Let’s try using all four dimensions together to shape a single note, and to shape a phrase.

If you’ve been through Chapter 15: Improvisation then this “One-Note Improv” exercise will be familiar to you! Have new possibilities now opened up?

Next, do the same with a musical phrase:

By this stage you should start to feel empowered by the new “language of emotion” you have been learning, and be able to feel and hear a real difference in the expressiveness of your playing.

This activity, of applying all the expressive techniques of all four dimensions thoughtfully to a musical phrase (or whole piece) is a great one to incorporate into your practice going forwards. But that’s just one way to ingrain the musical language of emotion and help it become intuitive and instinctive for you…