In music theory, the pulse is a series of uniformly spaced beats—either audible or implied—that sets the tempo and is the scaffolding for the rhythm. By contrast, rhythm is always audible and can depart from the pulse. So while the rhythm may become too difficult for an untrained listener to fully match, nearly any listener instinctively matches the pulse by simply tapping uniformly, despite rhythmic variations in timing of sounds alongside the pulse.
HINT:
In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: Pulse group
- Pulse group in the context of Metrical foot
Pulse group in the context of Metrical foot
The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, and is usually two, three, or four syllables in length. The most common feet in English are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, and anapaest. The foot might be compared to a bar, or a beat divided into pulse groups, in musical notation.
A metrical foot is, in classical poetry, a combination of two or more short or long syllables in a specific order; although this "does not provide an entirely reliable standard of measurement" in heavily accented Germanic languages such as English. In these languages it is defined as a combination of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables in a specific order.
View the full Wikipedia page for Metrical foot