by Kirk Lorange
http://www.lorange.kirk.net

Kirks Corner returns for 2001, with this article:

TIME AND TEMPO

Hello all. Yes, I'm still kicking, fighting fit in fact, been up to here in PlainTalk, The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Video, which I'm just about to finish off. All I have to do now, is figure out how to get the 60 or so minutes (and I know every nano-second intimately) of digital, rendered video data out of my computer back onto tape. Some button, somewhere.

Time and tempo.

I've written many articles on the 'sound' aspect of Music (capital M), articles about notes and how to find the right ones and so on, but very few about the other ingredient that makes Music possible: Time.

Like films, Music is an art form that requires a chunk of time to evolve in. This has always been one of my main facinations with it. Music is something you experience, that you live through. It's even more intriguing when you find out, as I did by reading up on the subject, that science still hasn't been able to define Time. Apart from knowing that the Universe is unwinding, and that Time seems at least to have a direction, not much else is known for sure. And yet we musicians use it everytime we play a tune. Spooky.

Musically speaking, the word 'time' usually refers to the way Time is split up. 3/4 or 12/8 or 5/4 are examples. 'Time signature' is the same thing. The first number tells you how many beats per bar, the second, what kind of beats, whether quarter, eight, sixteenth...

In a nutshell, music comes in either in 3s or 4s.

ONE two three ONE two three One two three...is the sound of 3s One two three four One two three four One two three four...4s

These can be doubled, as in:

1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

tripled, as in

1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a

Or they can be quadrupled, as in

1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a

4 can be halved, as in

1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2

5 should be counted as 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2

7 should be counted as 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3

They only come up rarely, but sometimes popularly as in Dave Brubeck's Take Five, whose title alludes to the time signature.

Tempo refers to the speed of the tune, or how fast it goes.

Having been immersed in the editing of my instructional video for the past few months, I've been seeing very graphically (in Adobe Premiere, the software I'm using) the sound and time elements of music. There in the 'Timeline', I can bring up the waveforms of the audio track and see exactly how they fit. I can also see how what we call 'feel', that elusive quality which seems to be a reflection of the soul of the player, is in reality the effect of slight deviations from the mathematically 'perfect'.

Most of us come equipped with an internal metronome so that we can easily split time up according to the rules and not have to think too hard about it, but playing along to some kind of metronome or midi track or fellow musician is always good practice. Soloist tend to bend time to suit their needs and so find it very difficult to play in time when they need to. Practice is the answer!

All the best,

K i r k
http://www.lorange.kirk.net
http://www.guitarforbeginners.com

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More info on Plane Talk:
http://www.GuitarSite.com/tuition.htm#kirk

See cartoons:
http://www.GuitarSite.com/kirk-cartoon.htm

Read some of Kirk’s early Newsletter Articles:
http://www.GuitarSite.com/tuition.htm#articles

Heaps of info & chord resources here:
http://www.GuitarSite.com/chords.htm