Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2018-02-10 18:15
PeterB1517 wrote:
> When you start a song, foot is in the air, and it comes down,
> and when it hits, you start the music. And you continue note as
> your foot goes up, therefore it is an upbeat motion to the top
> position, then it goes down, therefore the downbeat. The first
> downbeat motion your foot does has no music.
>
For anything, including your foot, to go down, it has to go up first. In order to go down again, it must again go up. Foot tapping is an image, a way (not the only way) to teach metric pulse and the rhythmic relationships that come with it.
> I don't know for sure, but when a conductor uses his baton, I
> think he goes from top position and you start the music.
>
Yes, the conductor gives a preparatory ("prep") beat in tempo so the players will know both when to start the first note and how fast the tempo (pulse speed) will be. Although, to be accurate, he generally gives it in the correct direction (related to a standard beat pattern) for the beat before the first beat of the music, which is not in the real world always "one."
> Cutting to the point, attached is a picture from a book 1. It
> shows you starting the whole note with foot coming down which
> seems incorrect. That would mean "1" is in the air, "and" at
> the bottom, and "2" would be at the top. It's really reversed.
>
You're giving too much literal meaning to a picture that's meant to show the concept of subdividing the beats, a process that's essential to playing each note at the correct time that doesn't fall directly on a beat. It's meant to show that each beat in the meter can be divided into smaller parts and that, if you beat your foot to the metric pulse, you also can represent the half-beat subdivision as the ascending part of the foot motion.
Keep in mind that the book you scanned the page from is mostly aimed at young beginning students who don't try to think too deeply about what they're doing. For them this is a fairly concrete idea, not a theoretical exercise in Newtonian laws of motion. It's meant to illustrate that a meter consists not just of "one - two - three - etc.", but also of parts of beats "one-and-two-and-three-and etc." and later even more fine subdivisions "one-e-and-a-two-e-and-a..." (which can't be shown with up and down toe movements, so the 16th notes will be drawn as syllables between the up and down arrows).
What goes up must come down, and what comes down must at some time have gone up. Music is an aural, not a visual, art. Any visual images you run into in the learning process are meant to support, not define, the musical process they illustrate.
Karl
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The Clarinet BBoard
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