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 . Some music features meter comprised of patterns of beats of different lengths called irregular meter . Dance music of eastern European Balkan states is comprised mostly of irregular meters and dance music of Greece features occasional irregular meters.
Meter is a very ancient musical element and extends back into human prehistory.
Ancient poets may have borrowed the idea for metered poetry from musical meter. Say the words of your favorite pop song in rhythm and you will sense poetic meter as well as musical meter. Musical meter seems to have originated with the perception of the human heartbeat. Ancient songs were metered as well as the texts of ancient plays. Meter is a metaphor for all the periodic aspects of the human life experience.