In Arab music a wazn (plural, awzān) is a rhythmic pattern or cycle, literally translated as "measure" (also called darb, mizan, and usul). (Touma 1996, p.210) Arab music is the music of Arabic-speaking people or countries, especially those centered around the Arabian Peninsula. ... Rhythm (Greek ρυθμός = tempo) is the variation of the duration of sounds or other events over time. ... In musical terminology, a bar or measure is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration. ...

Awzan are only used in musical genres with a fixed rhythmic-temporal organization including reoccurring measures, motifs, and meter or pulse. (ibid, p.47) Musical genres are categories which contain music which share a certain style or which have certain elements in common. ... In music, a motif is a perceivable or salient reoccurring fragment or succession of notes that may used to construct the entirety or parts of complete melodies, themes. ... Metre is the measurement of a musical line into measures of stressed and unstressed beats, indicated in Western notation by a symbol called a time signature. ... Jump to: navigation, search In medicine, a persons pulse is the throbbing of their arteries as an effect of the heart beat. ...

A wazn consists of two or more regularly reoccurring time segments, each time segment consisting of at least two beats (naqarāt, plural of naqrah). There are approximately one hundred different cycles used in the repetoire of Arab music, most shared with Turkish music. They are recorded and remembered through onomatopoetic syllables and the written symbols O and I. (ibid, p.48) Turkish music includes the music of modern Turkey, together with related musics in neighbouring regions that once lay within the former Ottoman Empire, and closely related ethnic variants in Central Asia stretching as far as the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. ... Jump to: navigation, search The sound of hitting a ball can be described as Whack. In rhetoric, linguistics and poetry, onomatopoeia is a figure of speech that employs a word, or occasionally, a grouping of words, that imitates, echoes, or suggests the object it is describing, such as bang, click...

For example, wazn wahdah sayirah (4/4), a relatively short wazn of four beats (p.50):

Wazn may be as large as 176 units of time. (p.48)

Wazn are performed on the goblet drum (tarabuka), frame drum (riqq or tar), and kettle drums (naqqarat). (ibid, p.49) The goblet drum is a goblet shaped finger drum used in Arab music, Persian music, Balkan music and Turkish music. ... The tarabuka (see also darabuka) is an hourglass-shaped drum of a medium size made from wood and animal skin. ... Jump to: navigation, search The riq (also spelled riqq or rik) is a type of tambourine used as a traditional instrument in Arabic music. ... A tar is a single-headed drum played from Turkey to Morocco. ... Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. ...

Star

Wazn is the name of the star Beta Columbae. Wazn is of the spectral class K1 and possesses a brightness of +3,2 mag. Wazn is approx.. 86 light-years away from the earth. The name (arab.) meant "weight".

• Coordinates (equinox 2000)
  • Rektaszension: 5h50m57s
  • declination: -35°46'5 "

Source

• Habib Hassan Touma (1996). The Music of the Arabs, trans. Laurie Schwartz. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press. ISBN 0931340888.