Time scale
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A time scale specifies divisions (scale) of time.
- A time standard is a specification of either the rate at which time passes, or points in time, or both.
- A duration is a quantity of time.
- A rhythm is a temporal pattern of events, especially in music.
- The geological time scale divides up the history of the Earth into scientifically meaningful periods.
Musical time scales
In music, Curtis Roads (2001, p.3-4) distinguishes nine time scales of music:
- Infinite: literally infinite, such as the length of sine waves in classical Fourier analysis,
- Supra: months, years, decades, and centuries; everything above the level of
- Macro: "overall musical architecture or form" or the level of the individual piece; minutes, hours, or even days,
- Meso: "Divisions of form" including movements, sections, phrases; seconds and minutes,
- Sound object (Schaeffer 1959, 1977): "a basic unit of musical structure" and a generalization of note (Xenakis' ministructural time scale); fraction of a second to several seconds,
- Micro: "sound particles" (see granular synthesis) down to the threshold of audible perception; thousands to millionths of seconds,
- Sample: sample (music), measured as are samples in millionths of a second or microseconds,
- Subsample: changes "too brief to properly recorded or perceived", billionths of a second, nanosecond, or less, and
- Infinitesimal: literally "infinitely brief" such as delta functions.
Source
- Roads, Curtis (2001). Microsound. MIT. ISBN 0262182157.
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