Week 3 — Readings & Resources · Dividing the Beat

Course: MUS 156 Music Theory I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 3 of 16 (Week 3) · two sessions per week
Your primary reading is the Week 3 chapter (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer.

How to use this page

Everything here is a link to an external resource — open it in your browser, the way you'd open any link a friend sent you. Nothing to buy, download, or sign into.

The load is light on purpose: six links, grouped by the unit's three big ideas. One item per group is plenty; all six is thorough. If a link disagrees with the course on a convention (some sites count compound meter with different syllables, or describe swing spacing loosely), the course convention in the Week 3 chapter wins — that's not the site being wrong so much as the field having dialects, and this course speaks one dialect consistently.

① Compound meter: 6/8, 9/8, 12/8 and the dotted beat

Maps to the chapter's dotted beat unit and reading 6/8, 9/8, 12/8 sections, and Session 1's Segments 3–5.

• Compound Meter and Time Signatures — Open Music Theory — the full walk through beats that divide in three: why the beat unit is dotted, how the signatures organize divisions, with notated examples and listening. The counting syllables shown differ from ours in places; our "1 la li" convention governs. (reading, ~15 min)
• Simple and Compound Meter — musictheory.net — the two division families side by side as an animated click-through lesson: short, visual, self-paced. A good first stop if the twos-versus-threes distinction still feels slippery. (interactive lesson, ~5 min)

② 6/8 against 3/4 — grouping is meter

Maps to the chapter's same pieces, different meal section and Session 1's Segment 6.

• Simple Meter and Time Signatures — Open Music Theory — the simple-meter half of the story, worth having open next to the compound chapter: seeing 3/4's 2+2+2 grouping laid out carefully is the fastest way to understand what 6/8's 3+3 is not. (reading, ~12 min)

③ Triplets, syncopation, and feel

Maps to the chapter's last three sections and the second session's mini-teach.

• Other Rhythmic Essentials — Open Music Theory — tuplets (our triplet, plus its cousins), borrowed divisions, and the other rhythm details this unit names in passing. Read the tuplet stretch even if you skip the rest. (reading, ~10 min)
• Dots and Ties — musictheory.net — the mechanics under this unit's two workhorses: the dot that builds the dotted beat unit, and the tie that builds syncopation. Five animated minutes and both tools stop feeling like fine print. (interactive lesson, ~5 min)
• A different way to visualize rhythm — John Varney, TED-Ed — rhythm drawn as a wheel instead of a timeline, including grooves built on threes. It won't use our vocabulary, and it doesn't have to — it will change how you feel the difference between duple and triple insides, which is this unit's whole game. (video, ~5 min, captioned)

Pick-one quick path (≈15 min total)

Short on time this week? You've read the chapter — then do exactly these two:

1. Watch A different way to visualize rhythm (TED-Ed) in group ③.
2. Do the Simple and Compound Meter lesson at musictheory.net in group ①.

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move pages. If a link fails, tell Professor Hemsworth and lean on the chapter in the meantime — it covers everything the quiz covers.