Accent (music) in the context of "Bo Diddley"

Articulation is a musical parameter that determines how a single note or other discrete event is sounded. Articulations primarily structure an event's start and end, determining the length of its sound and the shape of its attack and decay. They can also modify an event's timbre, dynamics, and pitch. Musical articulation is analogous to the articulation of speech, and during the Baroque and Classical periods it was taught by comparison to oratory.

Western music has a set of traditional articulations that were standardized in the 19th century and remain widely used. Composers are not limited to these, however, and may invent new articulations as a piece requires. When writing electronic and computer music, composers can design articulations from the ground up.

An unpitched percussion instrument is a percussion instrument played in such a way as to produce sounds of indeterminate pitch, or an instrument normally played in this fashion.

Unpitched percussion is typically used to maintain a rhythm or to provide accents, and its sounds are unrelated to the melody and harmony of the music. Within the orchestra, unpitched percussion is termed auxiliary percussion, and this subsection of the percussion section includes all unpitched instruments of the orchestra however they are played, for example the pea whistle and siren.

Marcato (short form: Marc.; Italian for marked) is a musical instruction indicating a note, chord, or passage is to be played louder or more forcefully than the surrounding music. The instruction may involve the word marcato itself written above or below the staff or it may take the form of the symbol ∧, an open vertical wedge. The marcato is essentially a louder and often shorter version of the regular accent > (an open horizontal wedge).

Like the regular accent, however, the marcato is often interpreted to suggest a sharp attack tapering to the original dynamic, an interpretation which applies only to instruments capable of altering the dynamic level of a single sustained pitch. According to author James Mark Jordan, "the marcato sound is characterized by a rhythmic thrust followed by a decay of the sound."

In tap dancing, jazz, and blues, stop-time is an accompaniment pattern interrupting, or stopping, the normal time and featuring regular accented attacks on the first beat of each or every other measure, alternating with silence or instrumental solos. Stop-time occasionally appears in ragtime music. The characteristics of stop-time are heavy accents, frequent rests, and a stereotyped cadential pattern. Stop-timing may create the impression that the tempo has changed, though it has not, as the soloist continues without accompaniment. Stop-time is common in African-American popular music including R&B, soul music, and led to the development of the break in hip hop.

Stop-time is, according to Samuel A. Floyd Jr., "a musical device in which the forward flow of the music stops, or seems to stop, suspended in a rhythmic unison, while in some cases an improvising instrumentalist or singer continues solo with the forward flow of the meter and tempo. Such stop-time moments are sometimes repeated, creating an illusion of starting and stopping, as, for example, in Scott Joplin's "The Ragtime Dance" and Jelly Roll Morton's "King Porter Stomp"."

The Mazurka (Polish: mazurek, GEN. mazurka) is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, with character defined mostly by the prominent mazur's "strong accents unsystematically placed on the second or third beat". The Mazurka, alongside the polka dance, became popular at the ballrooms and salons of Europe in the 19th century, particularly through the notable works by Frédéric Chopin. The mazurka (in Polish mazur, the same word as the mazur) and mazurek (rural dance based on the mazur) are often confused in Western literature as the same musical form.

A rimshot is a percussion technique used to produce an accented snare drum stroke. The sound is produced by simultaneously hitting the rim and head of the drum with a drum stick.

The ride cymbal is a cymbal of material sustain used to maintain a beat in music. A standard in most drum kits, the ride's function is to maintain a steady pattern, sometimes called a ride pattern, rather than provide the accent of a crash cymbal. It is normally placed on the extreme right (or dominant hand) of a drum set, above the floor tom. It is often described as delivering a "shimmering" sound when struck soundly with a drumstick, and a clear ping when struck atop its bell.

The ride can fulfill any function or rhythm the hi-hat cymbal does, with the exception of an open and closed sound.