Steady Beat

Possibly the most compelling aspect of music is the beat. By "beat" I mean the steady pulse of the music-- x x x x x x x x --not the shorts and longs of the way the words go (for which I'll use the term "rhythm" instead). The beat is predictable. We take pleasure in having our predictions fulfilled from moment to moment; we also take pleasure in being surprised by the contrast of rhythms with the beat.

When our bodies respond to the beat, we are coordinating our movement to occur at the precise moment we predict the beat will happen. When we can do this, we know about music in a way that we can't know before doing it. And so in kindergarten and first grade, I spend quite a lot of time leading the children in movement (often patting) to the steady beat of music at various tempos. The goal--possibly the most important one in all of my music classes--is that children can hear the steady beat and respond to it in movement. After patting the beat, I want the students to walk to the beat, which is harder because of the balance issues.

In later grades, we move on to reading and performing rhythms with the steady beat.