Beat
In music and music theory, the beat is the basic unit of time, the pulse (regularly repeating event), of the mensural level (or beat level). The beat is often defined as the rhythm listeners would tap their toes to when listening to a piece of music, or the numbers a musician counts while performing. Rhythm in music is characterized by a repeating sequence of stressed and unstressed beats (often called "strong" and "weak") and divided into bars organized by time signature and tempo indications. -- by wikipedia
The beat is very important for AthTek Digiband users. You need to know what is the beat before you can compose music or improvise an accompaniment with AthTek DigiBand. In music composition, you will be asked to choose the BPM (beats per minute) and beat type for your music.
BPM (Beats per Minute)
In composition guide, you will be asked to choose Bpm for your music composition. Bmp stands for "Beats per Minute". It determines how many beats are there in 60 seconds. If you choose 111 in Bpm, that means there will be 111 beats in one minute. Technically, the Bpm could be in 20-240 in AthTek DigiBand. But the Bpm of most songs is around 100. If you have no idea about what Bpm to choose, you can just leave it as default and AthTek DigiBand will choose a suitable value for your sake.
Beat (3/4, 4/4)
When you are using AthTek DigiBand to compose music or improvise an accompaniment, you will be asked to choose the beat type in composition guide. Currently AthTek DigiBand supports 3/4 and 4/4 beat for music composition and actually you can take 4/4 to compose 2/4 music. Generally, 3/4 beat is usually used for creating waltz and children's songs. 4/4 beat is usually used for creating pop music.
