Is there underlying beat when none is heard in piece of music or song?
Many a times I find that there are longer pauses in the song. Either in the lead music or in the vocals and at places where there’s no underlying beat in the music. A song may start with a few lines of pure vocals or a lead piece of music without any beats at all.
However is this performed at the liberty without beats or there still is an underlying rhythm that I being a novice still don’t understand.
I want to leave it as a generic question as quoting specific songs may cause this question to become very specific.
Thanks
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It's one. Or the other. Or both. Spaces in music can be anything. Sometimes they are properly counted spaces - a two or four bar gap needs to be counted so that everyone can come back in together - very impressive, and needs counting exactly. At other times the gap can be as long as someone feels - but then, someone needs to bring everyone back in again.
There's also accelerando, rallentando and rubato, where the pace changes. Often bands will do this sort of thing spontaneously, and the music takes over. After all, that's partially what music should do.
Watching one band once, it stopped in mid song, all the players froze, and picked up the song eight silent bars later. Yes, that was counted in tempo, and certainly got the audience's attention! Wouldn't have worked without the space being in the same tempo as the song...
Maybe. Maybe not. A piece of music doesn't HAVE to have a time signature, or any tempo indication other than 'freely'. Then the drums come in... and there's DEFINITELY a beat! There is a whole range of possibility in-between those extremes where the pulse can be understated, flexible and even stop for a time.
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