Page 252 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes and silent or "rest" pulses into the cells of a measure that may give rise to the "briefest intelligible
and self-existent musical unit", a motif or figure. This may be further organized, by repetition
and variation, into a definite phrase that may characterise an entire genre of music, dance or
poetry and that may be regarded as the fundamental formal unit of music.
4. Long:? many seconds or a minute, corresponding to a durational unit that "consists of musical
phrases" which may make up a melody, a formal section, a poetic stanza or a characteristic
sequence of dance moves and steps. Thus the temporal regularity of musical organisation
includes the most elementary levels of musical form
5. Very long:? minutes or many hours, musical compositions or subdivisions of compositions.
Curtis Roads takes a wider view by distinguishing nine time scales, this time in order of decreasing
duration. The first two, the infinite and the supramusical, encompass natural periodicities of
months, years, decades, centuries, and greater, while the last three, the sample and subsample,
which take account of digital and electronic rates "too brief to be properly recorded or perceived",
measured in millionths of seconds (microseconds), and finally the infinitesimal or infinitely brief,
are again in the extra-musical domain. Roads' Macro level, encompassing "overall musical
architecture or form" roughly corresponds to Moravcsik's "very long" division while his Meso
level, the level of "divisions of form" including movements, sections, phrases taking seconds or
minutes, is likewise similar to Moravcsik's "long" category. Roads' Sound object "a basic unit of
musical structure" and a generalization of note (Xenakis' ministructural time scale); fraction of a
second to several seconds, and his Microsound down to the threshold of audible perception;
thousands to millionths of seconds, are similarly comparable to Moravcsik's "short" and "supershort"
levels of duration.
Metric structure
Notation of a clave rhythm pattern? Each cell of the grid corresponds to a fixed duration of time
with a resolution fine enough to capture the timing of the pattern, which may be counted as two
bars of four beats in divisive (metrical or symmetrical) rhythm, each beat divided into two cells.
The first bar of the pattern may also usefully be counted additively (in measured or asymmetrical
rhythm) as 3 + 3 + 2.
The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in speech is called prosody: it is a topic in linguistics and
poetics, where it means the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line and the
arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented. Music inherited the term
"meter or metre" from the terminology of poetry.
The metric structure of music includes meter, tempo and all other rhythmic aspects that produce
temporal regularity against which the foreground details or durational patterns of the music are
projected. The terminology of western music is notoriously imprecise in this area. MacPherson
preferred to speak of "time" and "rhythmic shape", Imogen Holst of "measured rhythm".
Dance music has instantly recognizable patterns of beats built upon a characteristic tempo and
measure. The Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (1983) defines the tango, for example, as to
be danced in 2/4 time at approximately 66 beats per minute. The basic slow step forwards or
backwards, lasting for one beat, is called a "slow", so that a full "right-left" step is equal to one
2/4 measure.

"What does seem to be clear is that rhythm is useful to us in communicating: it helps us
to find our way through the confusing stream of continuous speech, enabling us to divide
speech into words or other units, to signal changes between topic or speaker, and to spot
which items in the message are the most important."

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