Lesson-9 : Timing the Time : Part-1

Hi All,

Musical Song is like a graph. Are you able to visualise that ?

Most of us having some knowledge about the graph sheet. It is the pictorial way of representation of some relationship for better understanding.

The points on the graph are drawn referring to the X-axis and Y-axis (horizontal and vertical axes) and these points are connected to get a line, curve etc…!

Whatever we covered so far, ie. the sound level of the notes, talks about only one axis say the vertical Y-axis in which the the level of notes like C, D, E etc can be plotted .

But the other horizontal X- axis is the "Time" which indicates the dynamic change of notes in every unit measurement of time..!

Alternatively, this indicates the duration of each particular note and the successive notes !

The Graph anaology I will repeat in future also; so please remember this..!

Coming back to our Score sheet format, now we have learnt that Sound level are represented in the lines and spaces of the Stave.

But how to represent the time duration of each of the notes?

This is done by denoting the Time factor by different shapes of notes like white round note, black note, black note with an attached stem etc.

Also, one more aspect in denoting the time.

How much time is one unit ???? (equivalent to ask how much time is equivalent to one second ?)

When we say time duration, we consider some unit measurement of time say similar to the Tick-Tack of a clock .

This you can say very slow as Teeeeeeeeeeek-Taaaaaaaaak,

or fast as Tick-Tack etc etc.

So there must be a definition of this unit time.

This is done by defining that in "one minute = so many notes" shall be palyed.

(There is an instrument called metronome which takes care of that aspect. You might have heard and seen that in film Punnagai Mannan!

In Orchestra, the "Conductor" perform the role of metronome, in addition to other roles!!! How the slow and speed movement of a Conductor will affect the song, is explained and show-caused to the lay man in the song "Vandhe Matharam" of "Mumbai Express"!!)

That unit-duration is pre-defined as per the music or as per composer wish etc…!

This definition of unit duration, takes care of the synchronisation aspects of BGMs in re-recording also!

But once any standard unit duration is defined for a song ( or a portion of song), you apply that uniformly through-out that song (or for that portion of the song).

That’s what the essential requirement !