But it is so ubiquitous now, that it is like a rigid Procrustean bed that all music is forced to lie on. This is a kind of syncopation in that it places the accents in an unexpected place. In rock, the 2nd and 4th beats are stressed instead. Normally the first beat is stressed, which helps to define the package. What's a backbeat? Nearly all popular music these days, certainly all that derives from rock, is in 4/4 meter, meaning that beats come in 4 beat packages. If you combine a little metronomic beat with the tyranny of the barline and add in a characteristic accentuation that comes from rock n' roll, then you get a structure that underlies an amazing amount of the music we hear every day. ![]() Daniel Gregory Mason The Tyranny of the Bar-Line Alas, it seems that skirmish, at least in some areas, is long lost. It may therefore be suggested, in conclusion, that the use of the metronome, even to determine the average rate of speed, is dangerous. A keen musical instinct revolts at playing even a single measure with the metronome: mathematical exactitude gives us a dead body in place of the living musical organism with its ebb and flow of rhythmical energy. It is notorious that to play with the metronome is to play mechanically - the reason being, of course, that we are then playing by the measure, or rather by the beat, instead of by the phrase. ![]() ![]() One writer wrote:Ī good performance is so full of these minute retardations and accelerations that hardly two measures will occupy exactly the same time. A related complaint was directed against the indiscriminate use of the metronome leading to a rigid sense of the beat. When the barline, or rather the beat associated with the downbeat, or first beat of the bar, became all-controlling, then it started to be called the "tyranny of the barline". People used to talk about the tyranny of the barline which came from the very useful invention of the barline to organize ensemble music.
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