Studying Rhythm

For courses in Music Theory, Musical Skills, or Sight Singing.

A thorough, practical introduction to rhythm
Studying Rhythm introduces students to the basic processes and complexities of musical rhythm and helps them develop the ability to perform all kinds of rhythmic patterns accurately at sight. Authors Anne Hall and Timothy Urban provide students over 300 one- and two-part rhythmic studies, each with short preliminary exercises, that are intended to be sung, spoken, and tapped or clapped. The Fourth Edition offers fresh examples from the standard repertory as well as new material on structured improvisation.

Anne Hall earned B.M., M.M., and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Michigan and studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger for three years. After teaching at Mars Hill College in North Carolina and St. Olaf College in Minnesota, in 1976 she joined, as Director of Music Theory, the fledgling Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, where she taught until her retirement in 1999. For her last ten years there she served as Dean of the Faculty of Music.
 
Although she had also taught piano and music history, she focused her teaching on music theory, especially theory of twentieth-century music, and on musical skills, the importance of which had been emphasized in her study in Paris. For the B.Mus. program at Laurier she developed four-year programs in music theory and musical skills. For the latter she composed the first version of Studying Rhythm in the early 1980s.
 
She served as Co-Chair of Minnesota Women in Higher Education, and later as the first chair of the Status of Women Committee of the Society for Music Theory, and then as the first chair of the Committee on Diversity of the SMT. She also served for six years on the Board of the Canadian University Music Society, including two years as President.
 
A major project, begun in 1980, was initiating and editing Jana Skarecky’s translation of Základy Modérni Harmonie by Karel Jane ek, Czech composer and theorist. This book, Foundations of Modern Harmony, is scheduled to be published in 2017 by the AMU Press in Prague.
 
Timothy Urban has been teaching undergraduate aural skills classes at the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University for the past twenty years and gives regular clinics and workshops on aural skills pedagogy as well as advising teachers wishing to develop or enhance existing aural skills programs. He received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University after having been a Fulbright scholar at the Kodály Institute, Hungary. He holds graduate performance degrees in recorder and voice as well as an M.F.A in Early Music Performance Practice and continues to perform regularly as both singer and instrumentalist.

1. Simple Duple Meter
2. Simple Triple Meter
3. Simple Quadruple Meter
4. Dotted Quarters and Tied Notes in Simple Meter
5. Compound Dupler Duple
6. Sixteenth-Notes in Simple Meter
7. Dotted Eighths in Simple Meter
8. Sixteenth-Notes in Six-Eight Meter
9. More Rests and Syncopation in Simple Meter
10. More Rests and Syncopation in Six-Eight Meter
11. Nine-Eight and Twelve-Eight Meter
12. Triplets
13. Two Against Three
14. Half-Note Beat (Simple Meter)
15. Dotted-Half-Note Beat (Compound Meter)
16. Eighth-Note Beat
17. Dotted-Eighth-Note Beat (Compound Meter)
18. Small Subdivisions
19. Changing Simple Meter
20. Changing Compound Meter
21. Changing between Simple and Compound Meter with the Division Constant
22. Changing between Simple and Compound Meter with the Beat Constant
23. Three Notes in Two Beats; Two Notes in Three Beats
24. Four Against Three
25. Four Notes in Three Beats; Three Notes in Four Beats
26. Quintuplets and Septuplets
27. Five-Eight and Five-Four Meter
28. More Meters with Unequal Beats
29. Changing Meters with Unequal Beats
30. More Cross Rhythms
31. Tempo Modulation