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Meter is the pattern of regular time units
(beats) employed for measuring music. In a score meter is
indicated by time signatures and measure bars. In time signatures,
for example, 2/4, 3/2, 6/8, or the like, the lower number
names the kind of note (quarter, half, or eighth in the signatures
shown here) that gets one beat; the upper number tells how
many such beats fall into each measure of the piece or section.
From the end of the Renaissance to the 20th century, a single
meter has usually prevailed throughout a piece. Other music
at times has had polymeters (several meters simultaneously)
and multimeters (different meters successively). Metrical
psalms employ meter in the poetic sense of measuring the number
of syllables in a line.
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