Tempo, Rhythm and Beat: What Is the Difference?
The beat is the steady pulse you tap your foot to. Tempo is how fast that pulse goes, measured in beats per minute (BPM). Rhythm is the pattern of long and short notes the music plays on top of the beat. Change the tempo and the same rhythm simply plays faster or slower; change the rhythm and you get a different pattern, even at the same tempo.
What is the beat?
The beat is the regular pulse underneath the music: the thing you nod to, clap to, or count “one, two, three, four” against. It is evenly spaced and it keeps going even when nobody plays a note on it. Each single pulse is called a beat.
Beats come in groups, with the first of each group felt more strongly. A march goes ONE-two, ONE-two; a waltz goes ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three. One group is a bar, also called a measure, and the number of beats in it is the meter, which the time signature at the start of a piece writes down: 4/4 for four beats, 3/4 for three.
What is tempo?
Tempo is the speed of the beat and nothing else. It is usually given in beats per minute: at 60 BPM each beat lasts one second, and at 120 BPM each beat lasts half a second.
Sheet music often gives tempo in Italian words instead of, or as well as, a number. Adagio is slow, Andante is a walking pace, Moderato is moderate, Allegro is fast and Presto is very fast. A tempo can also change on purpose: ritardando means gradually slowing down, accelerando gradually speeding up.
A tempo tells you how fast the grid runs. It tells you nothing about which notes fall on it.
What is rhythm?
Rhythm is what the notes do in time: when each one starts and how long it lasts, measured against the beat. In notation every note value is a fraction or a multiple of one beat. In 4/4, a quarter note lasts one beat, a half note two, and an eighth note half a beat. Silences count too: a rest is a measured stretch of time, not a gap.
The stomp, stomp, clap of “We Will Rock You” is a rhythm. Clap the rhythm of a song everyone knows, such as “Happy Birthday”, with no melody at all, and people can often still name it. That is how much of a tune’s identity lives in its rhythm.
Beat vs tempo vs rhythm at a glance
| Beat | Tempo | Rhythm | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | one pulse of the steady grid | the speed of the grid | the pattern of notes and rests against the grid |
| The question it answers | Where do I tap? | How fast? | What do the notes do? |
| Measured in | counts: 1, 2, 3, 4 | beats per minute, or a word like Allegro | note values: quarter, half, eighth |
| On the page | the time signature and the bars | a metronome mark or a tempo word | the notes and rests themselves |
| Stays steady? | yes, by definition | usually, unless marked to change | no, it can change every bar |
Does changing the tempo change the rhythm?
No. Speed a song up from 60 to 120 BPM and every note gets shorter in seconds, but each one keeps the same length relative to the beat. A half note still lasts twice as long as a quarter note. The rhythm is a set of proportions, and the tempo only decides how long one beat takes.
The reverse is also true, and it catches people out. A drummer who switches from quarter notes to eighth notes on the hi-hat makes a song feel faster, because twice as many notes now fall on each beat. The tempo has not moved. The rhythm got busier.
How do the beat and the rhythm relate?
Rhythm can sit on the beat or play against it. A melody that starts every note on a beat sounds square and steady. A melody that places notes between the beats, and holds them across the next one, sounds pushed and lively; that is syncopation, and much of pop, funk and Latin music is built on it. Either way, the beat is what makes the effect audible. Syncopation only sounds like syncopation because you can still feel the steady pulse it is pulling against.
How the beats group in a bar also changes how a rhythm feels. Six even notes can be heard as three groups of two or two groups of three, and that difference is what separates 3/4 from 6/8.
What does “beat” mean in hip-hop?
In hip-hop and electronic music, a “beat” is also the instrumental track a producer makes for a rapper or singer: drums, bass and samples. That is a different use of the same word. A producer’s beat contains a tempo, a rhythm and a steady beat in the theory sense, all at once.
Likewise, a band’s rhythm section (usually drums and bass, often with guitar or keyboard) is named for its job, keeping the beat and the groove, not for playing only rhythm.
Common mistakes
- Calling a song “fast” when it is busy. More notes per beat is a rhythm change. Count the beat to know the tempo.
- Drifting off the tempo. Speeding up without meaning to is called rushing, and slowing down is dragging. Both are tempo problems, not rhythm problems.
- Skipping the rests. A rest is part of the rhythm. Leave it out and every note after it lands early.
Try it
Start with the rhythm basics lesson, which separates the pulse from the notes and ends with a short round of tapping along. The mechanical metronome lesson lets you set a tempo and hear what a number in BPM sounds like. Then Tap the rhythm plays a count-in, which gives you the beat and the tempo, and asks you to tap the rhythm of the notes on top of it. It tells you whether you rushed or dragged, which is a tempo report on your own playing.