Pulse (music) 527786 215462810 2008-05-28T09:12:35Z Hyacinth 17171 <blockquote>This pulse is typically what listeners entrain to as they tap their foot or dance along with a piece of music (Handel, 1989), and is also colloquially termed the 'beat,' or more technical In [[music]], a '''pulse''' or '''tactus''' is beat (a series of identical, yet distinct [[periodicity|periodic]] short-duration [[stimulus (physiology)|stimuli]] perceived as points in [[time]] <ref name="DeLone">DeLone et al. (Eds.) (1975). ''Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music'', chap. 3. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-049346-5.</ref> <blockquote>This pulse is typically what listeners entrain to as they tap their foot or dance along with a piece of music (Handel, 1989), and is also colloquially termed the 'beat,' or more technically the 'tactus' (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983).<ref>Fitch, W. Tecumseh and Rosenfeld, Andrew J. (2007). "Perception and Production of Syncopated Rhythms", p.44, ''Music Perception'', Vol. 25, Issue 1, pp. 43–58, ISSN 0730-7829.</ref></blockquote> Ideally, this is opposed to a series of identical but aperiodically occurring stimuli, a series of periodically occurring yet otherwise differentiated stimuli, or an uninterrupted stream of sound (such as a [[drone (music)|drone]]). A pulse may be an unheard event underlining a piece or [[metre (music)|metric]] level, thus the [[tempo]] of the piece is how fast the pulse is running, implied by the performer or listener based on context or past experience, or audible such as in [[Terry Riley]]'s ''[[In C]]''.) Non-ideal pulses varied according to strength or [[accent (music)|accents]], which produce two- or three-pulse '''pulse groups''' (anything larger being a combination), strong-weak and strong-weak-weak <ref name="DeLone"/>. In fact, given an ideal pulse, the most probable reaction for one to have is to perceptually group or differentiate the beats. A pulse which became too fast would become a drone, a pulse that is too slow becomes isolated sounds. A pulse that is regularly accented is a [[Metre (music)|meter]]. An isochronal or equally spaced pulse on one level that uses varied pulse groups (rather than just one pulse group the whole piece) create a pulse on the (slower) [[multiple level]] that is non-isochronal (a stream of 2+3... at the eighth note level would create a pulse of a quarter note+dotted quarter note as its multiple level). Pulse groups may further be distinguished as [[synchronous]], if all pulses on slower levels coincide with those on faster levels, and [[nonsynchronous]], if not. ==See also== * [[Beat (music)]] * [[Rhythm]] * [[Syncopation]] ==Sources== {{reflist}} ==External links== * [http://www.rhythm-patterns.narod.ru/ 1200 exercises for practicing pulses (notes and MIDI)] [[Category:Rhythm]]