Perimeter Rhythms Part IV: Tempo

In this lesson, students will think of the musical concept of tempo as the speed at which you hear the perimeter of a shape. They will change the tempo to make two rhythms end at the same time and to speed up or slow down their playback. Instead of changing the physical characteristics of a shape with scale (as you did in the last lesson), here students are simply traversing the perimeter of a shape more quickly, and thinking about that as a speed, like a car driving faster down a highway. In this way they can explore the concept of speed, rate, and proportionality of rates.

By Gabriel Turow