Rhythm
Rhythm, in music, is the placement of sounds in time. In its most general sense, rhythm (Greek rhythmos, derived from rhein, “to flow”) is an ordered alternation of contrasting elements. The notion of rhythm also occurs in other arts (e.g., poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture) as well as in nature (e.g. biological rhythms).
Rhythm is music’s pattern in time. Whatever other elements a given piece of music may have (e.g., patterns in pitch or timbre), rhythm is the one indispensable element of all music – even if the rhythm is not easily discernible. Rhythm can exist without melody, such as the drone of spiritual chanting, but melody cannot exist without some form of rhythm.
The sounds of nature; the beating of our hearts; the pulsing of the urban environment, the passing of the days and the seasons constitute the rhythms of everyday life. Tempo results from the time delineation between these pulses. The longer the time, the slower the tempo.
“Ninety beats per minute is the pulse rate of the average male adult walking at an easy pace – the musical term ‘andante’ comes from the Italian word ‘andare’, ‘walking’. Van Leeuwen quotes Tagg (1984), who writes ‘we should therefore expect tempo in music be an important parameter in determining the human/biological aspect of an affective relationship to time’.”
Unsaturated music (Uµ) is intentionally slow. One of its aims is to change physiology and emotion by helping lower the heart rate from the ‘walking’ pace of everyday life to a slower, steadier, conscious movement.
Research has demonstrated that response to rhythm and melody is part of the infant’s sensory world, even from before birth. Rhythm, dynamics, timbre, pitch and melody all embody the special language of mother and baby and set the scene, as Trevarthen puts it, for a lifetime of ‘communicative musicality’.
