Turning the beat around

Turning the beat around, abbreviated as TBA in some music textbooks, is a form of temporary tactus or pulse (music) in popular electronic music and electronic dance music.[1][2][3] This includes forms of syncopation that issue a challenge to dancers to find the downbeat.[4] In this terminology a "reverse TBA," involves the explicit contradiction of a previously established pulse.[5] The term is to be distinguished from downtempo.

Examples

The concept of turning the beat around can be observed in The Strokes' Automatic Stop, as well as Passion Pit's Little Secrets. Both songs begin with a melodic line that leads the listener to perceive the downbeat as being on the first beat of said melodic line, however, when ensuing lines commence, the pulse reveals itself to be elsewhere. The seminal melodies are only then clearly syncopated, relative to the true pulse.

References
  1. Victoria Malawey Temporal Process, Repetition, and Voice in Björk's "Medúlla" 2007 Page 170 "At some point, listeners may reject the entrained meter up to this point and allow this new repeated pattern of accents to assume the role of a new, temporary tactus (what Butler and others call TBA or "turning the beat around")."
  2. Anne Danielsen - Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction 2013 1409494128 "But this ambiguity can also be thrilling and highly desirable onan aesthetic level, as is the case with the 'turning the beat around' trick of electronic dance music, discussed by Butler, among others,in his book Unlocking the Groove ..."
  3. Philip Lawson Duker Following Echoes: Exploring the Reverberations Between 2008 Page 167 "Additionally, Butler notes fertile parallels with the music of Reich; see Butler, "Turning the Beat Around: Reinterpretation, Metrical Dissonance, and Asymmetry in Electronic Dance Music," Music Theory Online 116 (December 2001), 9,15.
  4. S. Alexander Reed Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music 2013 -- Page 296 0199832609 "Powernoise is often more syncopated rhythmically than futurepop and EBM-derived styles, but this syncopation's pleasure is grooveless and cerebral. ... there is a willful challenge issued to dancers: find the downbeat, if you can. This is what techno scholar Mark Butler calls “turning the beat around,” but instead of playfully refrarning rhythms, .."
  5. Mark Jonathan Butler Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music 0253346622 2006 "termed a "reverse TBA," is less dramatic than turning the beat around, which involves the explicit contradiction of a previously established pulse. A similar turn of events arises in measures 175-76 of "Communication" (not shown; 5:09-12), ..


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