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Rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός, rhythmos, "any regular recurring motion, symmetry"[1]) generally
means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of
opposite or different conditions".[2] This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time
can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of
anything from microseconds to several seconds (as with the riff in a rock music song); to several
minutes or hours, or, at the most extreme, even over many years.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines rhythm as "The measured flow of words or phrases in
verse, forming various patterns of sound as determined by the relation of long and short or
stressed and unstressed syllables in a metrical foot or line; an instance of this".[3]

Rhythm is related to and distinguished from pulse, meter, and beats:

Rhythm may be defined as the way in which one or more unaccented beats are grouped in
relation to an accented one. ... A rhythmic group can be apprehended only when its
elements are distinguished from one another, rhythm...always involves an
interrelationship between a single, accented (strong) beat and either one or two
unaccented (weak) beats.[4]

In the performance arts, rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and
silences that occur over time, of the steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language and poetry.
In some performing arts, such as hip hop music, the rhythmic delivery of the lyrics is one of the
most important elements of the style. Rhythm may also refer to visual presentation, as "timed
movement through space"[5] and a common language of pattern unites rhythm with geometry. For
example, architects often speak of the rhythm of a building, referring to patterns in the spacing of
windows, columns, and other elements of the façade. In recent years, rhythm and meter have
become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes
books by Maury Yeston,[6] Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff,[7] Jonathan Kramer, Christopher
Hasty,[8] Godfried Toussaint,[9] William Rothstein,[10] Joel Lester,[11]Guerino Mazzola and Steffen
Krebber.[12]

Anthropology
In his television series How Music Works, Howard Goodall presents theories that human rhythm
recalls the regularity with which we walk and the heartbeat.[13] Other research suggests that it does
not relate to the heartbeat directly, but rather the speed of emotional affect, which also influences
heartbeat. Yet other researchers suggest that since certain features of human music are
widespread, it is "reasonable to suspect that beat-based rhythmic processing has ancient
evolutionary roots".[14] Justin London writes that musical metre "involves our initial perception as
well as subsequent anticipation of a series of beats that we abstract from the rhythm surface of the

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music as it unfolds in time".[15]

The "perception"
and "abstraction" of rhythmic measure is the
foundation of human instinctive musical
participation, as when we divide a series of identical
clock-ticks into "tick-tock-tick-tock".[16][17]

Joseph Jordania recently suggested that the sense

of rhythm was developed in the early stages of
hominid evolution by the forces of natural
selection.[18] Plenty of animals walk rhythmically
and hear the sounds of the heartbeat in the womb, Percussion instruments have clearly defined
but only humans have the ability to be engaged sounds that aid the creation and perception of
(entrained) in rhythmically coordinated complex rhythms.
vocalizations and other activities. According to
Jordania, development of the sense of rhythm was
central for the achievement of the specific
neurological state of the battle trance, crucial for
the development of the effective defense system of
early hominids. Rhythmic war cry, rhythmic
drumming by shamans, rhythmic drilling of the
soldiers and contemporary professional combat 0:00 / 0:04
forces listening to the heavy rhythmic rock
music[19] all use the ability of rhythm to unite A simple [quadr]duple drum pattern, which lays a
human individuals into a shared collective identity foundation of duration common in popular music

where group members put the interests of the

group above their individual interests and safety.

Some types of parrots can know rhythm.[20] Neurologist Oliver Sacks states that chimpanzees and
other animals show no similar appreciation of rhythm yet posits that human affinity for rhythm is
fundamental, so that a person's sense of rhythm cannot be lost (e.g. by stroke). "There is not a
single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck, or move in synchrony with an auditory
beat",[21] Sacks write, "No doubt many pet lovers will dispute this notion, and indeed many
animals, from the Lipizzaner horses of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna to performing circus
animals appear to 'dance' to music. It is not clear whether they are doing so or are responding to
subtle visual or tactile cues from the humans around them."[22] Human rhythmic arts are possibly
to some extent rooted in courtship ritual.[23]

The establishment of a basic beat requires the perception of

a regular sequence of distinct short-duration pulses and, as
a subjective perception of loudness is relative to
background noise levels, a pulse must decay to silence
before the next occurs if it is to be really distinct. For this
Compound triple drum pattern: divides
reason, the fast-transient sounds of percussion instruments
three beats into three; contains repetition
lend themselves to the definition of rhythm. Musical on three levels
cultures that rely upon such instruments may develop
multi-layered polyrhythm and simultaneous rhythms in 0:00

more than one time signature, called polymeter. Such are

the cross-rhythms of Sub-Saharan Africa and the
interlocking kotekan rhythms of the gamelan.

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For information on rhythm in Indian music see Tala (music). For other Asian approaches to
rhythm see Rhythm in Persian music, Rhythm in Arabic music and Usul—Rhythm in Turkish
music and Dumbek rhythms.

Terminology

Pulse, beat and measure

As a piece of music unfolds, its rhythmic structure

is perceived not as a series of discrete
independent units strung together in a
mechanical, additive, way like beads [or "pulses"],
but as an organic process in which smaller
rhythmic motives, whole possessing a shape and Metric levels: beat level shown in middle
structure of their own, also function as integral with division levels above and multiple
parts of a larger ["architectonic"] rhythmic levels below.
organization.[24]

Most music, dance and oral poetry establishes and maintains an underlying "metric level", a basic
unit of time that may be audible or implied, the pulse or tactus of the mensural level,[25][7][26] or
beat level, sometimes simply called the beat. This consists of a (repeating) series of identical yet
distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time.[27] The "beat" pulse is not
necessarily the fastest or the slowest component of the rhythm but the one that is perceived as
fundamental: it has a tempo to which listeners entrain as they tap their foot or dance to a piece of
music.[28] It is currently most often designated as a crotchet or quarter note in western notation
(see time signature). Faster levels are division levels, and slower levels are multiple levels.[27]
Maury Yeston clarified "Rhythms of recurrence" arise from the interaction of two levels of motion,
the faster providing the pulse and the slower organizing the beats into repetitive groups.[29] "Once
a metric hierarchy has been established, we, as listeners, will maintain that organization as long as
minimal evidence is present".[30]

Unit and gesture

A durational pattern that synchronises with a pulse or pulses on the underlying metric level may be
called a rhythmic unit. These may be classified as:

Metric – even patterns, such as steady eighth notes or pulses;

Intrametric – confirming patterns, such as dotted eighth-sixteenth note and swing patterns;
Contrametric – non-confirming, or syncopated patterns; and
Extrametric – irregular patterns, such as tuplets.

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0:00 / 0:08

From left to right: metric, intrametric, contrametric, and extrametric rhythmic units

A rhythmic gesture is any durational pattern that, in contrast to the rhythmic unit, does not occupy
a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying metric level. It may be described
according to its beginning and ending or by the rhythmic units it contains. Rhythms that begin on
a strong pulse are thetic, those beginning on a weak pulse are anacrustic and those beginning after
a rest or tied-over note are called initial rest. Endings on a strong pulse are strong, on a weak
pulse, weak and those that end on a strong or weak upbeat are upbeat.[31]

Alternation and repetition

Rhythm is marked by the regulated succession of opposite elements: the dynamics of the strong
and weak beat, the played beat and the inaudible but implied rest beat, or the long and short note.
As well as perceiving rhythm humans must be able to anticipate it. This depends on repetition of a
pattern that is short enough to memorize.

The alternation of the strong and weak beat is fundamental to the ancient language of poetry,
dance and music. The common poetic term "foot" refers, as in dance, to the lifting and tapping of
the foot in time. In a similar way musicians speak of an upbeat and a downbeat and of the "on" and
"off" beat. These contrasts naturally facilitate a dual hierarchy of rhythm and depend on repeating
patterns of duration, accent and rest forming a "pulse-group" that corresponds to the poetic foot.
Normally such pulse-groups are defined by taking the most accented beat as the first and counting
the pulses until the next accent.[32]Scholes 1977b A rhythm that accents another beat and de-
emphasises the downbeat as established or assumed from the melody or from a preceding rhythm
is called syncopated rhythm.

Normally, even the most complex of meters may be broken down into a chain of duple and triple
pulses[32][16] either by addition or division. According to Pierre Boulez, beat structures beyond
four, in western music, are "simply not natural".[33]

Tempo and duration

The tempo of the piece is the speed or frequency of the tactus, a measure of how quickly the beat
flows. This is often measured in 'beats per minute' (bpm): 60 bpm means a speed of one beat per
second, a frequency of 1 Hz. A rhythmic unit is a durational pattern that has a period equivalent to
a pulse or several pulses.[34] The duration of any such unit is inversely related to its tempo.

Musical sound may be analyzed on five different time scales, which Moravscik has arranged in
order of increasing duration.[35]

Supershort: a single cycle of an audible wave, approximately 1⁄30–1⁄10,000 second (30–

10,000 Hz or more than 1,800 bpm). These, though rhythmic in nature, are not perceived as
separate events but as continuous musical pitch.
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Short: of the order of one second (1 Hz, 60 bpm, 10–100,000 audio cycles). Musical tempo is
generally specified in the range 40 to 240 beats per minute. A continuous pulse cannot be
perceived as a musical beat if it is faster than 8–10 per second (8–10 Hz, 480–600 bpm) or
slower than 1 per 1.5–2 seconds (0.6–0.5 Hz, 40–30 bpm). Too fast a beat becomes a drone,
too slow a succession of sounds seems unconnected.[36] This time frame roughly corresponds
to the human heart rate and to the duration of a single step, syllable or rhythmic gesture.
Medium: ≥ few seconds, this median durational level "defines rhythm in music"[35] as it allows
the definition of a rhythmic unit, the arrangement of an entire sequence of accented,
unaccented and silent or "rest" pulses into the cells of a measure that may give rise to the
"briefest intelligible and self-existent musical unit",[17] a motif or figure. This may be further
organized, by repetition and variation, into a definite phrase that may characterise an entire
genre of music, dance or poetry and that may be regarded as the fundamental formal unit of
music.[37]
Long: ≥ many seconds or a minute, corresponding to a durational unit that "consists of musical
phrases"[35]—which may make up a melody, a formal section, a poetic stanza or a
characteristic sequence of dance moves and steps. Thus the temporal regularity of musical
organisation includes the most elementary levels of musical form.[38]
Very long: ≥ minutes or many hours, musical compositions or subdivisions of compositions.
Curtis Roads[39] takes a wider view by distinguishing nine-time scales, this time in order of
decreasing duration. The first two, the infinite and the supra musical, encompass natural
periodicities of months, years, decades, centuries, and greater, while the last three, the sample and
subsample, which take account of digital and electronic rates "too brief to be properly recorded or
perceived", measured in millionths of seconds (microseconds), and finally the infinitesimal or
infinitely brief, are again in the extra-musical domain. Roads' Macro level, encompassing "overall
musical architecture or form" roughly corresponds to Moravcsik's "very long" division while his
Meso level, the level of "divisions of form" including movements, sections, phrases taking seconds
or minutes, is likewise similar to Moravcsik's "long" category. Roads' Sound object: "a basic unit of
musical structure" and a generalization of note (Xenakis' mini structural time scale); fraction of a
second to several seconds, and his Microsound (see granular synthesis) down to the threshold of
audible perception; thousandths to millionths of seconds, are similarly comparable to Moravcsik's
"short" and "supershort" levels of duration.

Rhythm–tempo interaction
One difficulty in defining rhythm is the dependence of its perception on tempo, and, conversely,
the dependence of tempo perception on rhythm. Furthermore, the rhythm–tempo interaction is
context dependent, as explained by Andranik Tangian using an example of the leading rhythm of
"Promenade" from Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition:([40][41]

This rhythm is perceived as it is rather than as the first three events repeated at a double tempo
(denoted as R012 = repeat from 0, one time, twice faster):

R012

However, the motive with this rhythm in the Moussorgsky's piece

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is rather perceived as a repeat

R012

This context-dependent perception of rhythm is explained by the principle of correlative

perception, according to which data are perceived in the simplest way. From the viewpoint of
Kolmogorov's complexity theory, this means such a representation of the data that minimizes the
amount of memory.

The example considered suggests two alternative representations of the same rhythm: as it is, and
as the rhythm-tempo interaction – a two-level representation in terms of a generative rhythmic
pattern and a "tempo curve". Table 1 displays these possibilities both with and without pitch,
assuming that one duration requires one byte of information, one byte is needed for the pitch of
one tone, and invoking the repeat algorithm with its parameters R012 takes four bytes. As shown
in the bottom row of the table, the rhythm without pitch requires fewer bytes if it is "perceived" as
it is, without repetitions and tempo leaps. On the contrary, its melodic version requires fewer bytes
if the rhythm is "perceived" as being repeated at a double tempo.

Complexity of representation of time events

Rhythm only Rhythm with pitch

Complete Coding as Coding as
Complete coding
coding repeat repeat

R012 R012

Complexity of rhythmic
6 bytes 3 bytes 12 bytes 6 bytes
pattern
Complexity of its
0 bytes 4 bytes 0 bytes 4 bytes
transformation

Total complexity 6 bytes 7 bytes 12 bytes 10 bytes

Thus, the loop of interdependence of rhythm and tempo is overcome due to the simplicity
criterion, which "optimally" distributes the complexity of perception between rhythm and tempo.
In the above example, the repetition is recognized because of additional repetition of the melodic
contour, which results in a certain redundancy of the musical structure, making the recognition of
the rhythmic pattern "robust" under tempo deviations. Generally speaking, the more redundant
the "musical support" of a rhythmic pattern, the better its recognizability under augmentations and
diminutions, that is, its distortions are perceived as tempo variations rather than rhythmic
changes:

By taking into account melodic context, homogeneity of accompaniment, harmonic

pulsation, and other cues, the range of admissible tempo deviations can be extended
further, yet still not preventing musically normal perception. For example, Skrjabin's own
performance of his Poem op. 32 no. 1 transcribed from a piano-roll recording contains
tempo deviations within . = 19/119, a span of 5.5 times.[42] Such tempo deviations are
strictly prohibited, for example, in Bulgarian or Turkish music based on so-called additive
rhythms with complex duration ratios, which can also be explained by the principle of

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correlativity of perception. If a rhythm is not structurally redundant, then even minor

tempo deviations are not perceived as accelerando or ritardando but rather given an
impression of a change in rhythm, which implies an inadequate perception of musical
meaning.[43]

Metric structure
The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in speech is
called prosody (see also: prosody (music)): it is a
topic in linguistics and poetics, where it means the
Notation of a clave rhythm pattern: Each cell of number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables
the grid corresponds to a fixed duration of time in each line and the arrangement of those syllables
with a resolution fine enough to capture the timing as long or short, accented or unaccented. Music
of the pattern, which may be counted as two bars inherited the term "meter or metre" from the
of four beats in divisive (metrical or symmetrical) terminology of poetry.[16][17][44])
rhythm, each beat divided into two cells. The first
bar of the pattern may also usefully be counted
The metric structure of music includes meter,
additively (in measured or asymmetrical rhythm)
tempo and all other rhythmic aspects that produce
as 3 + 3 + 2.
temporal regularity against which the foreground
details or durational patterns of the music are
projected. [45] The terminology of western music is notoriously imprecise in this area.[16]
MacPherson preferred to speak of "time" and "rhythmic shape",[38] Imogen Holst of "measured
rhythm".[46]

Dance music has instantly recognizable patterns of beats built

upon a characteristic tempo and measure. The Imperial Society
of Teachers of Dancing defines the tango, for example, as to be
danced in 4 2 time at approximately 66 beats per minute. The

basic slow step forwards or backwards, lasting for one beat, is

2
called a "slow", so that a full "right–left" step is equal to one 4
measure.[47] (See Rhythm and dance.)

The general classifications of metrical rhythm, measured

rhythm, and free rhythm may be distinguished.[48] Metrical or
divisive rhythm, by far the most common in Western music
calculates each time value as a multiple or fraction of the beat. An early moving picture
Normal accents re-occur regularly providing systematical demonstrates the waltz, a dance in
grouping (measures). Measured rhythm (additive rhythm) also triple metre.
calculates each time value as a multiple or fraction of a
specified time unit but the accents do not recur regularly within
the cycle. Free rhythm is where there is neither,[48] such as in Christian chant, which has a basic
pulse but a freer rhythm, like the rhythm of prose compared to that of verse.[17] See Free time
(music).

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Finally some music, such as some graphically

scored works since the 1950s and non-European
music such as Honkyoku repertoire for shakuhachi, Notation of three measures of a clave pattern
may be considered ametric.[49] Senza misura is an preceded by one measure of steady quarter
notes. This pattern is noted in double time relative
Italian musical term for "without meter", meaning
to the one above, in one instead of two four-beat
to play without a beat, using time to measure how
measures.
long it will take to play the bar.[50]
0:11

Four beats followed by three clave

Composite rhythm patterns

A composite rhythm is the durations and

patterns (rhythm) produced by amalgamating all
sounding parts of a musical texture. In music of the
common practice period, the composite rhythm
usually confirms the meter, often in metric or even-
note patterns identical to the pulse on a specific
metric level. White defines composite rhythm as, Bach's Sinfonia in F minor BWV 795, mm. 1–3
"the resultant overall rhythmic articulation among
0:00
all the voices of a contrapuntal texture".[51] This
concept was concurrently defined as "attack point Original
rhythm" by Maury Yeston in 1976 as "the extreme
rhythmic foreground of a composition – the
0:00
absolute surface of articulated movement".[52]
With composite

Counter rhythm
From 1927 and forward the recognized definition of "Counter Rhythm[53]" is "A subordinate
rhythm acting as a counterbalance to the main rhythm" (OED[53]). Counter Rhythm is not a
common word or phrase in the English Language, appearing approximately 0.01 times per million
words in modern written English. Counter Rhythm has been on a steady decrease in usage since its
conception, with the exception of a spike in usage in the 1970s. Previous definitions that have been
phased out include, "The musical counter-rhythms which Marlowe introduced" and "Splashes of
counter-rhythms, flashing tremolos" (OED[53]).

African music
In the Griot tradition of Africa everything related to music has been passed on orally. Babatunde
Olatunji (1927–2003) developed a simple series of spoken sounds for teaching the rhythms of the
hand-drum, using six vocal sounds, "Goon, Doon, Go, Do, Pa, Ta", for three basic sounds on the
drum, each played with either the left or the right hand. The debate about the appropriateness of
staff notation for African music is a subject of particular interest to outsiders while African scholars
from Kyagambiddwa to Kongo have, for the most part, accepted the conventions and limitations of
staff notation, and produced transcriptions to inform and enable discussion and debate.[54]

John Miller[55] has argued that West African music is based on the tension between rhythms,
polyrhythms created by the simultaneous sounding of two or more different rhythms, generally
one dominant rhythm interacting with one or more independent competing rhythms. These often
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oppose or complement each other and the dominant rhythm. Moral

values underpin a musical system based on repetition of relatively
simple patterns that meet at distant cross-rhythmic intervals and on
call-and-response form. Collective utterances such as proverbs or
lineages appear either in phrases translated into "drum talk" or in the
words of songs. People expect musicians to stimulate participation by
reacting to people dancing. Appreciation of musicians is related to the
effectiveness of their upholding community values.[56]

Indian music
Indian music has also been passed on orally. Tabla players would
learn to speak complex rhythm patterns and phrases before
attempting to play them. Sheila Chandra, an English pop singer of A Griot performs at Diffa,
Niger, West Africa. The
Indian descent, made performances based on her singing these
Griot is playing a Ngoni or
patterns. In Indian classical music, the Tala of a composition is the Xalam.
rhythmic pattern over which the whole piece is structured.

Western music
In the 20th century, composers like Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich
wrote more rhythmically complex music using odd meters, and techniques such as phasing and
additive rhythm. At the same time, modernists such as Olivier Messiaen and his pupils used
increased complexity to disrupt the sense of a regular beat, leading eventually to the widespread
use of irrational rhythms in New Complexity. This use may be explained by a comment of John
Cage's where he notes that regular rhythms cause sounds to be heard as a group rather than
individually; the irregular rhythms highlight the rapidly changing pitch relationships that would
otherwise be subsumed into irrelevant rhythmic groupings.[57] La Monte Young also wrote music
in which the sense of a regular beat is absent because the music consists only of long sustained
tones (drones). In the 1930s, Henry Cowell wrote music involving multiple simultaneous periodic
rhythms and collaborated with Leon Theremin to invent the rhythmicon, the first electronic
rhythm machine, in order to perform them. Similarly, Conlon Nancarrow wrote for the player
piano.

Linguistics
In linguistics, rhythm or isochrony is one of the three aspects of prosody, along with stress and
intonation. Languages can be categorized according to whether they are syllable-timed, mora-
timed, or stress-timed. Speakers of syllable-timed languages such as Spanish and Cantonese put
roughly equal time on each syllable; in contrast, speakers of stressed-timed languages such as
English and Mandarin Chinese put roughly equal time lags between stressed syllables, with the
timing of the unstressed syllables in between them being adjusted to accommodate the stress
timing.

Narmour[58] describes three categories of prosodic rules that create rhythmic successions that are
additive (same duration repeated), cumulative (short-long), or countercumulative (long-short).
Cumulation is associated with closure or relaxation, countercumulation with openness or tension,

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while additive rhythms are open-ended and repetitive. Richard Middleton points out this method
cannot account for syncopation and suggests the concept of transformation.[59]

References
1. Liddell and Scott 1996. 30. Lester 1986, p. 77.
2. Anon. 1971, p. 2537. 31. Winold 1975, p. 239.
3. "rhythm, n." (https://oed.com/dictionary/rhyth 32. MacPherson 1930, p. 5.
m_n), Oxford English Dictionary (3 ed.), 33. Slatkin n.d., at 5:05.
Oxford University Press, 2023-03-02, 34. Winold 1975, p. 237.
doi:10.1093/oed/4307024692 (https://doi.or
g/10.1093%2Foed%2F4307024692), 35. Moravcsik 2002, p. 114.
retrieved 2024-11-11 36. Fraisse 1956; Woodrow 1951, both quoted
4. Cooper & Meyer 1960, p. 6. in Covaciu-Pogorilowski n.d.
5. Jirousek 1995. 37. MacPherson 1930, p. .
6. Yeston 1976. 38. MacPherson 1930, p. 3.
7. Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983. 39. Roads 2001.
8. Hasty 1997. 40. Tanguiane 1993.
9. Toussaint 2005. 41. Tanguiane 1994, pp. 465–502.
10. Rothstein 1989. 42. Skrjabin 1960.
11. Lester 1986. 43. Tanguiane 1994, p. 480.
12. Krebber 2023. 44. Latham 2002.
13. Goodall 2006, 0:03:10. 45. Winold 1975, pp. 209–210.
14. Patel 2014, p. 1. 46. Holst 1963, p. 17.
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17. Scholes 1977c.
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18. Jordania 2011, pp. 99–101.
50. Forney and Machlis 2007, p. .
19. Pieslak 2009, p. .
51. White 1976, p. 136.
20. Anon. 2009.
52. Yeston 1976, pp. 41–42.
21. Patel 2006, cited in Sacks 2007, pp. 239–
240 53. "Counter-Rhythm: Oxford English
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22. Sacks 2007, pp. 239–240. counter-rhythm_n?tab=meaning_and_use#8
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24. Cooper & Meyer 1960, p. 2. 54. Agawu 2003, p. 52.
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28. Handel 1989. 58. Narmour 1977, cited in Winold 1975, p.
29. Yeston 1976, p. 50–52. 59. Middleton 1990, p. .

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Further reading
Giger, Peter (1993). Die Kunst des Rhythmus, Schott Music. A theoretical approach to western
and non-western rhythms. ISBN 978-3-7957-1862-6
Gosse, Edmund William; Tovey, Donald Francis (1911). "Rhythm" (https://en.wikisource.org/wi
ki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Rhythm). In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia
Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 277–280.
Honing, H. (2002). "Structure and interpretation of rhythm and timing" (https://archive.today/20
121208235344/http://www.hum.uva.nl/mmm/abstracts/mmm-TvM.html). Tijdschrift voor
Muziektheorie [Dutch Journal of Music Theory]. 7 (3): 227–232. Archived from the original (htt
p://www.hum.uva.nl/mmm/abstracts/mmm-TvM.html) on 2012-12-08.
Humble, M. (2002). The Development of Rhythmic Organization in Indian Classical Music (http
s://www.scribd.com/doc/25227226/The-Development-of-Rhythmic-Organization-in-Indian-Class
ical-Music), MA dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Lewis, Andrew (2005). Rhythm—What it is and How to Improve Your Sense of It. San
Francisco: RhythmSource (https://archive.today/20121208135233/http://rhythmsource.com/de
v/books/) Press. ISBN 978-0-9754667-0-4.
Mazzola, Guerino (2017). The Topos of Music, Vol. I. Heidelberg: Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-
64364-9.
Percival, Harold W. (1946). Thinking and Destiny (https://archive.org/details/thinkingdestinyw00
percrich). The Word Foundation. ISBN 978-0-911650-06-8.
Palmer, John (2013). Rhythm to Go, Vision Edition and CE Books. A fast-track collection of
graded exercises from elementary to advanced level divided in four sections and including an
additional chapter with rhythmic structures used in contemporary music. ISMN 979-0-9002315-
1-2
Petersen, Peter (2013). Music and Rhythm: Fundamentals, History, Analysis. New York: Peter
Lang. ISBN 978-3-631-64393-8
Scholes, Percy (1977a). "Form", in The Oxford Companion to Music, 6th corrected reprint of
the 10th ed. (1970), revised and reset, edited by John Owen Ward. London and New York:
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-311306-6.
Williams, C. F. A., The Aristoxenian Theory of Musical Rhythm, (Cambridge Library Collection
—Music), Cambridge University Press; first edition, 2009.
Van Der, Horst F. (1963). Maat en Ritme, Broekmans & Van Poppel, ISBN 9789491906008. A
collection of graded exercises in two volumes, from elementary to advanced level.
Yeston, Maury (Autumn 1975). "Rubato and the Middleground". Journal of Music Theory. 19
(2): 286–301. JSTOR 843592 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/843592).

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External links
'Rhythm of Prose', William Morrison Patterson, Columbia University Press 1917 (https://archiv
e.org/stream/rhythmofproseexp00pattiala/rhythmofproseexp00pattiala_djvu.txt)
Melodyhound has a "Query by Tapping" search that allows users to identify music based on
rhythm (http://www.melodyhound.com/query_by_tapping.0.html)
Louis Hébert, "A Little Semiotics of Rhythm. Elements of Rhythmology", in Signo (http://www.si
gnosemio.com/semiotics-of-rhythm.asp)
'sinusoidal run rhythm', Steffen Krebber, Wolke Verlag 2023 (https://www.wolke-verlag.de/musi
kbuecher/sinusoidal-run-rhythm-steffen-krebber/)

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