Meter

This chapter presents a sketch of an analytical model of musical meter, focused on sound rather than notation. A meter is defined as a set of pulses, and classified as an ordered set of adjacent pulse pairs, or minimal meters. The model encourages a view of meter as ever-changing and form-shaping. Metric change is defined as pulse substitution. Scripts of metric change are illustrated through analyses of brief passages of Schumann, Glass, and Ghanian dance-drumming. Hypermeter and quasi-meter (that is, non-isochronous or additive meter) are conceived as complementary ways to generalize meter.