Does your child love music? Help her understand rhythm

Music is one of the most popular extracurricular activities among kids. However, in order to master it, they need to have a clear understanding of rhythm. Like melody and harmony, rhythm is one of the core foundations of music. The term “rhythm” has more than one meaning. It can mean the basic, repetitive pulse of the music, or a rhythmic pattern that is repeated throughout the music. It can also refer to the pattern in time of a single small group of notes. Attempts to define rhythm in music have produced much disagreement. Unlike a painting or a piece of sculpture, which are compositions in space, a musical work is a composition dependent upon time. Rhythm is music’s pattern in time. It can exist without melody, as in the drumbeats of so-called primitive music, but melody cannot exist without rhythm. There are seven elements of rhythm. Here is what your little musician should know about them. 

Beat 
The unit division of musical time is called a beat, or the pulse. It is the regularly recurring underlying pulsation that we perceive which compels music to progress through time. All other durations are proportionally related to that fundamental background pulse. 

Tempo 
The pace of the fundamental beat is called tempo. It is the rate (or relative speed) at which the pulse flows through time. A moderate tempo is assumed to be that of a heartbeat (72 per minute). The tempo of a piece of music indicated by a composer is, however, neither absolute nor final. A change within limits does not affect the rhythmic structure of a work. 

Time signature 
A musical time signature indicates the number of beats per measure. It also indicates how long these beats last. A 4/4 time is also known as "common time", where each beat is the length of a quarter note, and every set of four beats forms a full measure. 

Metre 
Metre is a rhythmic pattern constituted by the grouping of basic temporal units, called beats, into regular measures, or bars. A time (or metre) signature, found at the beginning of a piece of music, indicates the number of beats in a measure and the value of the basic beat. 

Syncopation 
Syncopated rhythms are those that do not align with the downbeats of individual measures. Complex rhythms tend to include syncopation. While these rhythms may be more difficult for a beginner to pick up, they tend to sound more striking than non-syncopated rhythmic patterns. 

Accents 
Accent, also called stress, in music, momentary emphasis on a particular rhythmic or melodic detail. Different rhythms may share a time signature and tempo, but they stand out from one another by accenting different notes and beats. 

Polyrhythms 
A polyrhythm layers one type of rhythm on top of another. This creates a dense rhythmic stew and, when properly executed, it can yield incredibly danceable rhythm patterns. Polyrhythms originated in African drumming, and they’ve spread to all sorts of genres worldwide, from Afro-Caribbean to Indian to progressive rock, jazz, and contemporary classical.