12/30/2017 Duration (music) - Wikipedia

Duration (music)

Simple [quadr]duple drum pattern, against which

duration is measured in much popular music:
divides two beats into two  Play .

In music, duration is an amount of time or a particular time interval: how

long or short a note, phrase, section, or composition lasts. "Duration is the
length of time a pitch, or tone, is sounded."[1] A note may last less than a
second, while a symphony may last more than an hour. One of the
fundamental features of rhythm, or encompassing rhythm, duration is also
central to meter and musical form. Release plays an important part in
determining the timbre of a musical instrument.

The concept of duration can be further broken down into those of beat and
meter, where beat is seen as (usually, but certainly not always) a 'constant', and
rhythm being longer, shorter or the same length as the beat. Pitch may even be
considered a part of duration. In serial music the beginning of a note may be
considered, or its duration may be (for example, is a 6 the note which begins at
the sixth beat, or which lasts six beats?).

Durations, and their beginnings and endings, may be described as long, short,
or taking a specific amount of time. Often duration is described according to
terms borrowed from descriptions of pitch. As such, the duration complement
is the amount of different durations used, the duration scale is an ordering

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(scale) of those durations from shortest to longest, the duration range is the

difference in length between the shortest and longest, and the duration
hierarchy is an ordering of those durations based on frequency of use.[2]

Durational  patterns are the foreground details projected against a

background metric structure, which includes meter, tempo, and all rhythmic
aspects which produce temporal regularity or structure. Duration patterns may
be divided into rhythmic units and rhythmic gestures (Winold, 1975, chap. 3).
However, they may also be described using terms borrowed from the metrical
feet of poetry: iamb (weak-strong), anapest (weak-weak-strong), trochee
(strong-weak), dactyl (strong-weak-weak), and amphibrach (weak-strong-
weak), which may overlap to explain ambiguity.[3]

See also
Tuplet

References
1. Benward & Saker (2003). Music: In Theory and Practice, Vol. I, p.230.
Seventh Edition. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-294262-0.
2. Winold, Allen (1975). "Rhythm in Twentieth-Century Music". Aspects of
Twentieth-Century Music. Delone and Wittlich (eds.). pp. 208-269.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-049346-5.
3. Cooper and Meyer (1960). The Rhythmic Structure of Music,. University of
Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-11522-4. Cited in Winold (1975, chapter
three).

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