What is rhythm?

Rhythm is notes or beats organized in time. They can be fast or they can be slow. Some beats might be longer than others. Some beats might be slightly stronger or more heavily accented than others.

If we take the song “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and imagine clapping the rhythm of that song we can figure out the rhythm of the song. Sing it first. Then clap every time you sing one syllable. That’s the rhythm. It should sound fairly similar to the song. As if you take away the notes and only have how those specific beats are organized. That’s rhythm.

There are also other pieces of rhythm, like tempo. Tempo is speed. How fast or slow a song is. It’s often measured in beats per minute. That’s how metronomes work. They play one sound at a specific speed over and over again.

Rhythm can also be how strong beats and weak beats are organized. Let’s say we look at these two rhythms:

strong – weak – strong – weak

strong – weak – weak – strong

They’re both the same number of beats and have two strong beats and two weak beats, but they sound completely different. That’s because of where those strong beats are. Something as simple as that changes the rhythm of a song drastically.

This can change ever more depending on how many beats you have. What if you had three beats?

strong – weak – weak

That sounds a whole lot more different than the two above it. But this also sounds different than the one above:

strong – weak – strong

Try clapping those rhythms keeping all of the claps even, just changing which claps are accented (louder) and which claps aren’t. You can feel just how much the rhythm changes depending on how many beats there are and where the strong beats and weak beats are.

You can get even crazier by adding odd numbers like 5.

strong – weak – strong – weak – weak

Trying to clap that rhythm can be tricky because it’s not symmetrical. It gets more difficult the faster you do it. Some composers like Igor Stravinsky take this to another level because they use rhythms like the one above, but constantly change it so it rarely repeats.

This is just the beginning of what rhythm is, but it can drastically change the feel of a song. Where the strong beats are. How they’re organized and how many beats there are can change a lot of things about a song.

ISJ