navindra I'm fairly certain that nowhere in my Alfred book is pulse mentioned. This is why I'm baffled because I don't feel like counting gives me anything more than a superficial understanding of rhythm.
I don't think pulse is usually taught, which I think is a mistake!! And I think that's what the video @rsl12 linked is saying as well, although in much more detail.
navindra What downbeat? I think I missed an entire class, because I hear the terms "upbeat" and "downbeat" but don't grasp the significance of that.
Thank you for this comment... actually I think people use these terms in different ways, so it might not be the best word, but I mean was the downbeat of each measure, which is the first beat.
This is called the downbeat because if there's a conductor, their baton goes down on that beat. So the downbeat is always the first beat of each measure. If the melody happens to have a rest there, or maybe there's a tie held over from the previous measure, there won't be a note on the downbeat, but the performer and the listener should still be able to feel the down beat.
This creates the pulse of the music.
Then there are words like upbeat and backbeat and I think they're used different in different genres.
The upbeat could be the "and" (one and two and...) or it could be beats two and four... Sometimes people say the upbeat is because four that leads into the downbeat of the next measure... And I think in jazz, the back beat is always (??) the back half of a fuller beat (i.e., in 4/4 time, the backbeat would be the and of "one and two and")
Maybe!
Anyway, the one term I do think is helpful is downbeat, that one is clear and there are as many downbeats in a piece as there are measures. Whether or not there's an actual sound on every downbeat, you should still always be able to feel it.
