Music Meter
...without any accent at all. Next, try clapping evenly, but accent every other, so that your pattern becomes strong-weak, strong-weak. You can also accent every third or fourth beat, whatever pattern you decide. Try this with one of your favorite songs on the radio. Just clap the steady beat, then clap louder on the accented beats. You will find that there is a repeated pattern of accented (strong) and unaccented (weak) beats. What you have just done is discover the meter! Meter organizes stressed and unstressed sounds into units called measures. Each measure contains a combination of strong and weak beats that represent the underlying pulse of the music. Our nervous and muscular systems are stimulated by sound. Our bodies react spontaneously and automatically to the beat, which is usually the most noticeabl...