Beat
The steady pulse of music — not necessarily played aloud
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The beat is the steady pulse of music: the unit you tap with your foot or nod to. It is not necessarily played aloud — in much music the beat is implied, felt through where melody and harmony land.
Beat, time signature and tempo are three things: beat is the pulse unit, time signature groups beats (how many per bar), tempo decides how fast the beat goes. The usual mistake is to equate beat with note: one beat may be a quarter note or a dotted quarter, depending on metre and tempo.
Read deeper → Meter
Sources
- 拍作为脉冲单位与拍号、速度的关系，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Beat" 与 "Metre"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.