What is an upbeat?

Answer 1

When listening to a song, you may find yourself tapping your foot or moving in a regular manner. If so, you were responding to the "beats" of the music. Beats are the regular, repeated pulses underlying a piece of music.

When listening to a piece of music we usually feel some beats more strongly than others, so that we can count a recurring pattern of loud and soft, or "accented" and "unaccented" beats. (an accent is a stress placed on a note or beat). For example, in a march we could count a ONE-two pattern, the ONE being the accented note and the beginning of the bar. The accented note is a downbeat note. In a waltz the pattern would be ONE-two-three. Most songs have a ONE-two-three-four pattern.

The patterning of beats into repeated groups is called "metre". The unit of time occupied by one group of beats (that is, from one accented beat to the next) is called a bar. Metre provides a framework of bars within the sounds and silences of music occur.

Therefore, a downbeat is the start of a beat bar, the start of a metre. It is stressed or accented, like the ONE in ONE-two-three-four.

An upbeat is the end of a metre, or the notes proceeding the downbeat, and isn't stressed or accented