Simple and Compound Beat Division

In this article, we will review the concept of meter and discuss the difference between simple and compound beat division.

Review: What is Meter?

Remember, music exists in the dimension of time, where long and short sounds and silences can be combined in myriad ways. But, behind the scenes, there is always a rhythmic pulse that you can feel  which is broken up into repeated groupings of beats. The repeated grouping of beats (called the meter) is usually based on a note length that is given at the start of the piece. Most commonly, this is a quarter note.

Additionally, some beats are stronger than others within a given meter. For example, a common meter strength pattern is strong, weak, strong, weak.

A new concept to introduce is the idea of a measure in music, which simply is one repetition of this underlying meter. In other words, every measure of music contains one grouping of beats. The exact number of beats and which note length the beat is based on is given by the meter signature. We will discuss more about the meter signature in the next section.

Beat Division

Within the measure, we have a number of beats given by the meter signature. For example, consider the above example (strong, weak, strong, weak). This would be four beats per measure. The note length of these beats could be any note value: eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes, even dotted quarter notes! For simplicity's sake, let's say these are quarter notes.

A measure in our example may look like this:

A subdivision of a beat is how that beat can be divided in the next rhythmic iteration. For example, a quarter note can be divided into 2 eighth notes. A half note can be divided into 2 quarter notes. A dotted half note can be divided into 3 quarter notes. Etc. etc.

Thus, our example measure would be subdivided into this:

Try to clap these rhythms to yourself to compare how they sound. See how the eighth notes 'fit' inside the quarter notes. This is how a beat is subdivided.

Simple Beat Division

This is an example of a simple beat division because the beat length (which is given by a quarter note) can be broken down into groups of two eighth notes.

Take a look at this song.

First, look at the chorus, which starts at 0:56. Similarly to the bass slide in Levitating, the words "take me to chu-" appear on the fourth beat of a measure, and then "-urch" lands on the downbeat (the first beat) of the next measure, signaling the start of the chorus. Now, listen to the chorus. What type of meter do you think it is?

Of course, it's a simple meter. In fact, it is the same meter that we talked about above. Listen to the crisp hi-hat cymbal that plays straight eighth notes in the background. This clearly lays out two eighth notes per beat, so this is a simple meter.

Now, listen to the beginning verse (0:00-0:45). What type of meter do you think this is?

Well, it is certainly a different meter than the chorus. But what makes it different? Is it the number of beats per measure, or the length of those beats?

In fact, it is the former. Take a listen to the piano part. The lowest note is an E. This E rings for two beats and then an A plays for one beat, leading into the next measure which starts the E again. The sheet music would look something like this:

As you can see, the length of the beat hasn't changed. The beat is still a quarter note (though the first note of the measure takes up two beats). But the number of quarter notes per measure did change. To determine whether a meter is simple or not, though, we don't care about the number of beats per measure, but simply the length of those beats. Thus, the length is still a quarter note and this section of the song is still in simple meter.

Side note: what do you think is happening when the lyrics "I was born sick, but I love it / Command me to well / Aaaa" are sung? Does the meter type change, or simply how many beats there are in the measure?Come up with an answer before looking at the vocal part below:

Once again, the number of beats per measure has changed, decreasing from three (in the previous example), to two. But to determine meter type, we do not care about this. Thus, the meter type is still simple because the quarter note (which the beat lengths are based on) can be broken down into two eighth notes. So, even though the excerpt doesn't even have any quarter notes, we can still feel the two quarter-note pulses each measure. And since a quarter note has two eighth notes as its subdivision, the meter type is simple.

Compound Beat Division

You may have guessed it by now, but what happens if the beat can't be subdivided into two sub-beats?

It can be divided into three!

This is called compound meter. It isn't as common as simple meter, but it does occur (especially in a lot of musical theater songs!).

So if we know that the beat will be divided into three sub-beats for compound meter, then that may look like this, for example:

How many beats does this measure have? How many sub-beats does each beat have?It has two beats and three sub-beats per beat! Each sub-beat is an eighth note, so we can conclude that each beat is a dotted quarter note:

Try to clap these rhythms to yourself.Now, take a look at this song:

Focus on the first verse (starting at 0:30). In particular, focus on the bass guitar. Do you think this is simple or compound meter?

Perhaps it was predictable, but yes, this is compound meter!

Here is a transcription of the bass guitar in the first four measures of the verse:

We can see that each measure is divided into 4 beats of dotted quarter notes. We know that dotted quarter notes are subdivided into three eighth notes. Thus, this excerpt must be in compound time.

Determining Simple vs Compound Meter

When you are not sure if a song is in simple or compound meter, what should you do?

For example, this beat division

has the same number of total notes as this beat division:

Thus, it can sometimes be difficult to tell these two apart. However, this can be done by focusing on the strength of each beat. If the beats feel strong, weak, weak, then it must be the second example. If they feel like two longer, stronger beats, then the first is the better option.

Practice

Here is a list of songs. Identify the meter type of each.