A duration is an amount of time or a particular time interval. For example, an event in the common sense has a duration greater than zero (but not very long), but in certain specialized senses (such as in the theory of relativity), a duration of zero. It is often cited as one of the fundamental aspects of music, see also rhythm. Quantity is a kind of property which exists as magnitude or multitude. ... A pocket watch, a device used to tell time Look up time in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The term interval is used in the following contexts: cricket mathematics music time This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single construct called the space-time continuum. ... // Music is an art form consisting of sound and silence expressed through time. ... Rhythm (Greek = flow, or in Modern Greek, style) is the variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events. ...

Durations, and their beginnings and endings, may be described as long, short, or taking a specific amount of time. Often duration is described according to terms borrowed from descriptions of pitch. As such, the duration complement is the amount of different durations used, the duration scale is an ordering (scale) of those durations from shortest to longest, the duration range^{[disambiguation needed]} is the difference in length between the shortest and longest, and the duration hierarchy is an ordering of those durations based on frequency of use (DeLone et al. (Eds.), 1975, chap. 3). Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. ... Look up Complement in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A scale is either a device used for measurement of weights, or a series of ratios against which different measurements can be compared. ... Look up range in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A hierarchy (in Greek: , derived from — hieros, sacred, and — arkho, rule) is a system of ranking and organizing things or people, where each element of the system (except for the top element) is subordinate to a single other element. ...

Durational patterns are the foreground details projected against a background metric structure, which includes meter, tempo, and all rhythmic aspects which produce temporal regularity or structure. Duration patterns may be divided into rhythmic units and rhythmic gestures. (DeLone et al. (Eds.), 1975, chap. 3) However, they may also be described using terms borrowed from the metrical feet of poetry: iamb (weak-strong), anapest (weak-weak-strong), trochee (strong-weak), dactyl (strong-weak-weak), and amphibrach (weak-strong-weak), which may overlap to explain ambigouity (Cooper and Meyer, 1960). See: International System of Units, colloquially called the Metric System, and also metrication. ... Metre or meter (US) is the measurement of a musical line into measures of stressed and unstressed beats, indicated in Western music notation by a symbol called a time signature. ... The first two measures of Mozarts Sonata XI, which indicates the tempo as Andante grazioso and a modern editors metronome marking: = 120. “Andante” redirects here. ... A rhythmic unit is a durational pattern which occupies a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying metric level, as opposed to a rhythmic gesture. ... A rhythmic gesture is a durational pattern which, in contrast to a rhythmic unit, does not occupy a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying metric level. ... In verse, a foot is the basic unit of meter used to describe rhythm. ... An iamb is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. ... An anapaest is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ... A trochee or choree, choreus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ... A dactyl (Gr. ... An amphibrac is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ...

See also: time scale. A time scale specifies divisions (scale) of time. ...

Sources

• Cooper and Meyer (1960). The Rhythmic Structure of Music. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-11522-4. Cited in Delone directly below.
• DeLone et al. (Eds.) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-049346-5.