Time in Music

Published August 2, 2024

Time in Music

“The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.”
- James Taylor

I love that music requires the passage of time in order to exist. To listen to a piece of music, one must invest a portion of his or her life. In a world when time is such a valued commodity, and so few things are agreed upon by the masses, it heartens me to know that just about everyone happily chooses to trade a good portion of their conscious moments to experience music. Sure, music is often aural wallpaper in the rooms of our busy lives, but whether in the background or front and center, music’s ubiquity speaks to its necessity.

The Greeks realized centuries ago that music orders and organizes that which is inside of us. We are all rhythm machines and always have been. From the time our hearts start to beat, we humans have built-in metronomes, constantly providing us with a steady pulse. Although some music is random or asymmetrical by design, most of the music we encounter has a predictable steadiness that, like a magnetic tractor beam, pulls us in and like a mother’s heartbeat, gives us comfort in an often uncomfortable world. This too has to do with the passage of time, and more accurately the controlling of the passage of time.

When I talk about rhythm to beginning music students, I often use the image of a line segment. Let’s say you break your line into six parts. You might have two groups of three beats or three groups of two beats. Or you might go back and forth between these two groupings. A lesser musician might not have exactly the same amount of space between each beat in his groupings, causing an often-imperceptible sense of not-rightness. A really fine musician spends his or her life mastering the art of time control. It is an ongoing life process, and when it happens consistently and by an ensemble of performers, it is miraculous and infectious. To hear some examples, listen to James Brown and his band play I Feel Good; Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha perform a traditional Indian raga; Frank Sinatra sing Fly Me to the Moon with the Count Basie Orchestra; or Hillary Hahn burning up the last movement of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. Different music. Different traditions. Same time.

When a person says that a piece “has a good beat,” of course they don’t mean that. A single “good beat,” a WHACK, would last for a split second and be done. A song or composition with compelling rhythm, aka “a good beat,” has many, many beats that are organized in steady, predictable, and/or interestingly organized patterns. Along the same lines, when people speak of a toe-tapping tune, they don’t elaborate to say, “Not only does this make me tap my toe, it makes me do so repeatedly in a really specific and steady way.” Why they don’t have to describe it further is another part of why music’s time passage is such a cool thing. Because we all have an internal beat maker, and no matter our politics or religion or skin color or gender, we are all in the process of passing through time. It is common denominator of being alive. Music reflects this, and we all share in the groove—whether of music or life. We all have at least this much common ground.

Scott Faulkner is the principal bassist of the Reno Phil and Reno Chamber Orchestra, and for 14 years was executive director of the RCO. For the League of American Orchestras, he serves as director of its League Alumni Network as well as the faculty director of its Essentials of Orchestra Management program, which takes place every summer at The Juilliard School.