Repeat this pattern again and again. Try clapping two softer beats after the louder one. Try clapping groups of four, five and six. An accent of length is called an agogic accent . An accent of loudness is called a dynamic accent .
Meter is counted with Arabic numbers.
Count one is known as the downbeat. Patterns may be created in this manner with any number of numbers limited only by practical considerations. The most common meters in Western music are duple, triple and quadruple meters. Music consists of a series of measures linked together to form a phrase much the same as a series of words are linked together to form a sentence. Most music is metered with periodic beats called regular meter .