W2L1: The Basics of Rhythm

The next few lessons in this module are going to deal with the drum rack and some other rhythm based operations in Live, so first we’re going to take a quick look at some of the basics about beats, bars and time signatures so that we’re all on the same page.

The above image shows how rhythm is written in traditional Western notation. With some minor exceptions, you’ll nearly never come across this notation so there’s no need to remember these symbols.

Beats & Bars

• The note at the bottom is known as a “whole note”. The U.S. and the U.K. use different names for notes: in U.K. English this would be known as a semibreve.
• Ableton uses the American system, so we’re going to stick with that and call this a whole note.
  It’s called a whole note because it takes just one of them to fill up a whole bar. We’ll get to what a bar is in just a minute.
• The note above this is called a half note, because each one lasts half a bar, meaning it takes two half notes to make a full bar.
• Above that then is, of course, a quarter note. It takes four quarter notes to make a full bar.

Time Signatures & Meter

• This is a good time to talk about Time Signatures, or meter. If you look at the top of the screen, beside the metronome button you will see the Time Signature display.
• By default this is set to 4/4 time, also known as Common Time.
• The time signature determines how many beats there will be in a bar, and what length each of these beats will be.
• 4/4 means there will be four quarter notes in a full bar, or to put it more simply, “four beats in a bar”.
• Most modern dance music is in 4/4 time, usually at a tempo between 120 and 140 beats per minute, or BPM.
• If a song is at 120BPM, this means there will be 120 quarter notes per minute. In other words, there will be 2 beats every second. So if a song was at 60BPM, there would be one beat every second – the tempo of the second hand on a clock is 60BPM.

Further Rhythmic Divisions

• Looking back at the diagram we can see that there are further rhythmic divisions after quarter notes.
• There are two 1/8 notes to every 1/4 note, and two 1/16 notes to every 1/8 note.
• If we were to change the time signature to 4/8, a full bar would now be four eighth notes long.
• If we changed the time signature to 6/8, a bar would be six 1/8 notes long.
• Change the time signature back to 4/4 for the next exercise on the drum rack.