I see that I've created a lot of confusion with my original question, so I have decided to send the author of "How to read Music in 30 Days, English 2022 Ed." a detailed question that should clearly state my concern.
As it contains quite a lot of text and sketches, these are now attached in handwritten form (I hope this doesn't lead to any forum rules being broken):
NOTE: Most of this answer makes less sense than it used to because the asker has almost completely re-written the question. The image at the bottom of this answer is the most current content here. I'm leaving the rest in case it is helpful in other ways and/or the question is reverted or re-edited in some way.
Neither 1 nor 2 is correct, but 1 is definitely wrong, while 2 is close but missing some details.
I’ve been taught, and I hear in almost all music, the following (q means quaver or 1/8 note):
Q q Q q Q q | Q q Q q Q q |
The first quaver is the strongest, and then the quavers that fall on beats 2 and 3 are weaker, but they are stronger than the quavers that make up the second half of each beat.
The emphasis may be very very slight, but to my ears it’s definitely there. A similar pattern exists in all time signatures, as in there’s a hierarchy of emphasis where the first beat gets the most and subdivisions usually have slightly less strength as the note values get smaller.
Regarding the 2/4 example, it would be similar to 3/4 but one beat shorter:
Q q Q q | Q q Q q
4/4 time can have a very slight extra emphasis on beat three:
Q q Q q Q q Q q | Q q Q q Q q Q q
Your last diagrams corrected:
Note that the big S at the start of the first beat is meant to indicate a stronger accent than the smaller s-es.
One other thought I've had: The strength of accents for a measure of music is different when the music in that measure is different - even with the same time signature. The accents I've written into the image above only apply as I've written them when the measure is filled with quavers. If other note values appear in a measure, then the accents are adjusted accordingly. It wouldn't be feasible to lay out here all of the accent patterns for all of the possible rhythms in a measure.
The word "beat" has different meanings depending on context. "Beat" sometimes refers to an entire time duration, but it also can mean the beginning of such a duration.
When speaking of meter, the metrical emphasis is presumed to apply only to the note occurring at the onset of the first beat.
When one says that a particular beat gets an emphasis, the emphasis applies to the note at the onset of that beat, not to all notes comprising the duration of that beat.
S w s w | S w s w. See also Where the accent should be when the beat is made up of different notes and How simple time and compound time signatures change the rhythm.
This all seems very confused, and I'm not sure the answers so far are helping to clarify… so let's take a different approach.
Let's start with a clock, tick-tocking in time.
Tick is always stronger than tock, so in 2/4 time, your clock would simply be going
Tick tock Tick tock
In 3/4 time it would go
Tick tock tock Tick tock tock
OK, so we don't have a real clock any more, but you can still imagine this.
If we add quavers, then we could use this instead - you can say this out loud to help. Keep your main tick tock at the same speed, but add a new sound in between.
Tick a tock a tock a Tick a tock a tock a
As we sub-divide away from our strong Tick each new element becomes weaker than the last.
I suspect you are assuming accent is only a matter of dynamics, that accent is achieved by loudness. The details of your post all look to me like "how much of the duration of the first beat should I play louder than all the rest."
The problem with that is the accent of beat one is more conceptual that just dynamics. You could play an entire phrase of music with a crescendo without undermining the idea of beat one is accented. Even more emphatically you could have rests on beat one, silence, and still maintain the beat one accent. Rhythmic concepts like syncopation and hemiola also contradict the accented beat one idea. But on "day 4" we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.
The passage of the book describes accent at a very basic level. I don't know how the rest of the book covers the topic, but I assume it doesn't go into issues of beat subdivisions and meter, or else you would not have asked this question.
Re-read that page carefully. The author does not say accent is only achieved by playing a beat strongly. The author does not say beat one is always accented.
I would look at that passage of the book like this. If you had some music which was only quarter notes with no pitch changes (that is essential what the notation shows) the obvious way to play that and achieve some sense of an accented beat one (which would then define a conceptual bar line) is to apply a (dynamic) accent on some of those notes at a regular period.
That book is probably a "fundamentals of music" type text so it isn't going to get into a deep discussion of meter. It just wants to introduce the idea of how to count beats, beat grouping, and the bar line. Do not read it too literally and apply it to performance dynamics.
How are notes weighted if the accent is on first beat?
They are weighted, dynamically accented, any way you like.
This part of the book is not trying to explain that.
I agree with Tim's answer that the onset, the very first moment, of beat one is what is accented. In that sense your example of two quavers on beat one would put a dynamic accent on the first quaver but not the second. I've never read a performance rule of thumb that was so prescriptive. It's just a literal misapplication of a metrical concept to the art of performance.
I think one practical thing should be mentioned about beat one and how its accent is typically and most obviously manifest in music. The accent of beat one is what defines the bar line and two very important things are organized around the bar line: phrase starting and ending, and chord changes. Those are structural elements rather than dynamic elements.
I've started learning music theory and have a question
It's good to have questions and use them to probe a text. But if you're working with Ellul, How to Read Music in 30 Days: Music Theory for Beginners, I would try writing those questions down and set them aside so you can work through the 30 days without getting side tracked. It will be a lot to absorb and you probably want it to flow into your mind unrestricted by questions. At least for that first "30 days." Get it in first, then question it in a second phase. Some questions may be answered within the text but not until you put all the pieces together. Other questions may lead you to other texts. And don't forget that real scores and great performance recordings are often the best textbooks. Look for answers from the great musicians.
A beat doesn't really have a duration value, it's more like a moment in time.
Consider an analogy with a clock: At what time is it noon?
If you are just looking at just the hours, you could kinda (somewhat clumsily) say that "noon is an hour long". Whereas if you are counting minutes you might think of it as only a minute long (with 11:59 being before noon, and being 12:01 being after noon). But you could also count seconds ... etc.
Really, noon is just an instantaneous moment; without any duration value at all (a single point).
(But, whatever units you are counting, surely you wouldn't say that 12:00 and 12:30 are both "at noon", would you?)
Similarly, it's more precise to say that beats don't really have durations, instead consecutive beats are separated by a duration value.
Generally, the first beat of the bar has the strongest accent, other beats get some kind of medium accent, and any other moment get a weak accent.
Further subdivisions (semiquavers) would introduce more weak/weaker moments in the gaps.
(using S for strong, M for medium, and w for weak)
A bar of 3/4 filled with crotchets:
1 2 3 |
S M M |
And now filled with quavers:
1 & 2 & 3 & |
S w M w M w |
A bar of 2/4 filled with crotchets:
1 2 |
S M |
And now filled with quavers:
1 & 2 & |
S w M w |
So, your option 2 is good, but it'd be even better if you used a mix of "Quaver"s and "quaver"s, to show the difference between the medium and the weak:
It's not the beat that's stressed as much as the first sound made in each bar. So, the 1st quaver, or even semiquaver, is the most stressed note in any bar. That's how we can determine where the beginning of each bar is, thus what the time signature will be.
EDIT: this answer is based on the question, which only gives the choice of stress between the 1st quaver, or the 1st two quavers. The comments (thus dvs) are presumably based on what else was read into its wording. It's pretty obvious that if there's no note on beat 1 there can't be emphasis there, but that's not the premise of the question, in fact, it's really a different question. Think on it!
