CONCEPT OF BEATS IN MUSIC

The concept of beats adds a definite structure to the music. The concept of tala or beats and the tempo/speed of the beats are important to give definition to the song. To be honest all songs have a definte structure. When you subdivide the song in to definte time intervals called beats, it assumes a defined value for human satisfaction. This helps the player to play the original song the composer intented.

In many songs we will find scripts where notes are composed of different beats, like half beat, three beats etc. In the numerical script given in this manual, the various types of beat notes are represent with colors. Each note is seperated from the other with the help of a comma.

Full beats are represented with the help of black colored number fonts. For example 5, 4, 3

Half beats are represented with blue colored number fonts. For example 5,4,3

Quater beats are represented with green colored fonts. For example 5, 4, 3

One eighth beats are represented with orange colored fonts. For example 5,4,3

one sixteenth beat are represented with red colored fonts. For example, 5, 4, 3

Two beats are represented with the number followed by comma and hypen. For example 5,- or say 6,-

Three beats are represented with the number followed by comma and two hyphens. For example 5,-,- or 6,-,-

Four beats are represented with the number followed by comma and three hyphens. For example 6,-,-,-

Rest notes, that is the notes that require you not to play sound is represent as STOP, with different font colors according to the beats. For example STOP means you pause for a quater beat

There is no end to types of beat which can range from three fourth beat, half beat, four fifth beat or any mathematical quantity you can imagine that you want to assign to beats. This book introduces you to variety of beats as and when the song requires such introduction. And the quantity of beat is visually represented by dividing the box and hence easy to understand.

 The reader should understand that he sets his own speed for playing the various songs (songs are in turn composed of a variety of beats as mentioned above). He has to have an open mind and experiment with various speeds. You can generally conclude that if you set a particular speed for one beat then you need to relatively set you time frame for two beats, half beat and so on. It’s very important to listen to the song and not be caught up to setting beat timings, which can kill the joy of playing the song. First the reader needs to enjoy the song and then remember the song well enough. Then he tries to play the song in a rough manner without overly concentrating on beat timings. Once the player gets accustomed with the script, he can slowly concentrate on the accuracy of beat timings.

There are so many music books which puts forward all quantities of beats you can imagine and teach a variety of technical definitions to explain chords, staccato, legato and so on. That is not the goal of this book. This book is simple, you just listen to the song first, enjoy it and try to remember the song after listening to it. And play the song directly without engaging yourself in to technicalities or spending time to learn a new script.