Rhythm

Rhythm is the most basic aspect of music. To quote German musician and music educator Paul Hindemith, ‘The most primitive form of temporal action is the use of tones of different lengths’. Let's review the definitions of rhythm given in the last page:

a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound. (google)

the systematic arrangement of musical sounds, principally according to duration and periodic stress (google)

Reading these two definitions and the Hindemith quote reveals the following concepts:

duration, periodic stress, length, temporality

Putting all this together, we can come to the understanding that at its most basic, rhythm involves duration, ‘how long something lasts’. So, rhythm is the aspect of music that focuses on musical events lasting for various lengths of time, or how long or short a given musical event may be. With this understanding in place, we can start to build a framework for looking at rhythm systematically