You can think of the pulse as being the heartbeat of the music, which is generally more felt than heard. For example, when you tap your foot in time to a piece of music, you're feeling the music's pulse and moving in sync with it. Now each pulse IE tap of the foot is known as one beat. I'm sure it stands to reason that a piece of music is made up of many beats from the time the music starts until it ends. So in order to make counting these beats easier, we grouped them into what are called bars. This grouping of beats into bars is known as meter.

Now, there are many different kinds of meter but by far the most common is a meter of four beats per bar. So for example, if you were listening to a song and keeping time with a pulse, you count like this 12341234 etc. From the start of the song until its end. Generally speaking, we had accentuate the first beat. It's the strongest beat of the bar. The third beat is also fairly strong but not as strong as the first beat, whereas beats two and four are generally weaker beat.

Now this particular meter four beats per bar is also known as common time, and is represented by this symbol, which is called the time signature. You would write the time signature just after the key signature if there is one. And before the music notation begins. If there are multiple lines of music and a composition, which they more often than not all, it is common practice to write the treble clef and the key signature again if there is one on every line, but the time signature is only written once on the first line. On the other stage that's left out. bars are delineated on the stage by these vertical bar lines.

So in a piece of music written in common time, each grouping of four beats would be contained between two bar lines. The speed of the song's pulse is called the tempo tempo is measured in beats per minute, and can be heard with a handy little device called a metronome, which emits a click or beep on every pulse. I've got a very simple metronome app that I just downloaded onto my phone. notice a few things, you can choose the meter, you can see that there are many different meters that we could choose from. But for now, I'm just going to say the 244 which means four beats per bar, which is exactly the same as common time. I explained for four in more depth soon.

Next, notice the word legato in the top right corner. This is an Italian word meaning to be performed at a moderately slow tempo. This practice of using Italian terms to describe slower and faster tempos is part of traditional music notation where specific tempos aren't given, but rather more approximate overall feel. You don't need to be concerned with these Italian terms. Unless you find it interesting to look into it some more. You can choose the tempo.

Notice that in this Example mine is set to 60 beats per minute, and are slow tempo. But I can set it even slower or much faster if I want to. Not that it's too important, but you can choose the metronome tone. In this instance, the sound is set to word, but I could also have chosen metal, some retro or silent. In this case, you would just use the flashing lights to keep time. The tempo is written at the beginning of a piece of music above the stage like this.

What this means is that the tempo is moving at a rate of 120 beats per minute, I'll clarify what this symbol means in the section on load values. Now you can get hold of a more old school metronome from the music store or on Amazon. Or you can simply download a metronome app on your phone or tablet like I have. Or you can even just use an online metronome like this one. Next I've included some audio examples of pieces of music in different genres and at different tempos to help you to get confident with feeling the pulse of music