Beating time

A time signature says how many beats a measure has. To feel them, and to show them to others, musicians use the hand: each beat is a gesture, and the gestures of one measure make a figure that repeats. That is beating time, used in sight-singing study and in conducting choirs, orchestras and bands (Lacerda 1966, ch. XI).

The first and the last beat

Two gestures hold every pattern together. The first beat of each measure is a downward gesture, the downbeat, arriving at about the conductor's waist. The last beat is an upward gesture, the upbeat, arriving at about eye level (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 8). Whatever happens between them, the hand always falls on one and rises on the last.

At each beat the hand gives a small rebound. That bounce is what lets the performers see exactly where the beat is (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 8).

Two, three and four

With two beats, the downbeat and the upbeat are the whole pattern. With three and four, the beats in between go to the sides. The next-to-last beat always goes to the conductor's right; in four, the second beat goes to the left first. The beats in the middle arrive at about chest height (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 8).

In 2

In 3

In 4

Seen from the conductor's side; someone watching sees it mirrored.

Simple and compound meters are beaten with the same patterns: two-four and six-eight both in two, three-four and nine-eight both in three (Lacerda 1966, ch. XI). What changes is the subdivision inside each beat, in two or in three.

A measure of four-four, the downbeat accented, is what the four-beat pattern beats: one gesture per quarter, the accented one downward.

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Six

A duple meter with triple subdivision, such as six-eight, can be beaten with all six pulses: two primary pulses, each divided into three. Beats two and three go to the left, four and five to the right, and the hand rises on six (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 8).

In 6

Seen from the conductor's side; someone watching sees it mirrored.

Faster, slower

At slow tempos any pattern can be subdivided for clarity: the conductor adds a second stroke at each beat point, so four beats show as eight (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 8). At very fast tempos the opposite is needed, and beats are joined (Lacerda 1966, ch. XI). Music with a single beat per measure is conducted with a clear downbeat and a smooth lift, without a rhythmic upbeat (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 8).

Five and seven

Here the two books disagree. Lacerda beats five as three plus two or two plus three, and seven as four plus three or three plus four, according to the music (Lacerda 1966, ch. XI). Blatter conducts five as a two-beat pattern and seven as a three-beat pattern, with one beat longer than the others (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 8). Both describe the same thing, a measure made of uneven groups; they differ in whether the hand shows every beat or only the groups.

Try it

Choose a pattern and press play: a dot travels the gesture at the page's tempo, faster into each beat and slower out of the rebound, with a click on every beat and a higher one on the downbeat. Follow it with your hand.

Seen from the conductor's side; someone watching sees it mirrored.

Conduct4326♩ 84

What comes next

Beating time is the first step of conducting. The rest, showing the dynamics with the size of the gesture, the character with its shape, the tempo with its speed, is built on the pattern becoming automatic (Blatter 2007, part 1, art. 8).