ABSTRACT
Recorded musical activity relates not just to the recorded performances but to all of the musical activities that contributed to the making of a particular recording: composing, performing, arranging, editing, sequencing, organising, programming, managing, recording, producing and mixing. The teaching of popular music practice has been constricted by the hegemony of musical notation. This chapter aims to develop an analytical process based on music theory that embraces some important features of popular music. The notions of tempo and tactus are central to most forms of popular music. While the tempo may be consistent, there is often an equally consistent form of micro-timing variation—from the very obvious "long-short" swing of jazz and shuffle to the more recent stumbling rhythms of Nu-Soul and Hip Hop. Indeed, many forms of popular music rhythm are based on African-style timelines that involve an uneven pulse.
