Clap It Out: Finding the Beat in Your Favorite Songs

Put your hand on your chest and count how many times your heart beats in ten seconds — for most kids that is about 12 to 16 beats, which means your heart is drumming along at 70 to 100 beats every minute! Songs have a heartbeat too. Musicians call it the beat, and every song you have ever danced to has one ticking away underneath the words.

Tap or clap the beat of a song without losing the pattern. Tell the difference between a fast beat and a slow beat. Explain what rhythm means using your own words. Create a simple rhythm pattern using claps and stomps.

A beat is the steady pulse that repeats over and over in a song, like the tick-tick-tick of a clock. In 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,' you can clap once on every syllable of 'Twin-kle Twin-kle Lit-tle Star' and feel the beat holding the whole song together. Drummers and DJs even give beats a number called BPM, which stands for beats per minute. A slow lullaby might be 60 BPM, which is one beat every second, while an upbeat pop song might race along at 120 BPM or faster.

Not every song moves at the same speed. 'Happy Birthday' skips along at around 130 BPM, which is why it feels bouncy and fun to sing. A quiet bedtime song might slow down to 60 BPM, matching the pace of a slow, sleepy walk. Musicians call this speed the tempo, and changing the tempo can turn the exact same tune into something that feels excited or something that feels calm.

While the beat is steady like a heartbeat, rhythm is the pattern of long and short sounds layered on top of it — like the actual words of 'Twinkle Twinkle' bouncing across the steady beat underneath. Think of the beat as the sidewalk and rhythm as your footsteps: sometimes you take big skips, sometimes tiny hops, but you are always landing somewhere on that same sidewalk.