There are several important rhythms in American popular music:

1. 1.Duple/quadruple: 2 or 4 beats to the bar with the accent on 1 in 2-beat plan, and on 1 and 3 in 4-beat plan.  No syncopation because the accents are on 1 and 3.
   

2. 2.Triple: 3 beats to the bar, with the accent on the first.  This is the classic waltz rhythm. There is no syncopation because the accent is on 1.
   

3. 3.Backbeat: “African-American reinterpretation of the afterbeats of a march or polka” (text, pp. 8-9), so that the accent comes on 2 and 4, rather than on 1 and 3.
   

4. 4.Syncopation: Any disruption of the normal accent pattern described above in #1 and 2 (duple/quadruple and triple), so that the backbeat is a form of syncopation.
   

5. 5.Style Beats:
   

6. Boogie-woogie: 4-beat rhythm in the left hand with each beat divided into two parts--making 8. In moderate tempo boogie-woogie, there is a shuffle rhythm, so we hear long-short-l-s-l-s-l-s. But in fast boogie-woogie, the beats sound even. So, fast boogie-woogie is an antecedent to the rock beat.
   

7. Disco: 4 beats to the bar, each one divided into 4 equal parts--so 16 beats.
   

8. Foxtrot: 2 beats to the bar, each one divided into 2 equal parts, with the accent (backbeat) on the “and”: 1 and 2 and.
   

9. Honky-tonk two-beat (a. k. a. country rock beat): 2-beat rhythm with a heavy backbeat.
   

10. Rock beat: 4 beats to the bar, each one divided into 2 equal parts--so 8 beats with backbeat.
    

11. Shuffle: long-short pattern
    

12. Swing: 4-beat rhythm, with the rhythm section keeping strict time, and the other instruments providing syncopation.
    

13. 
    

6. 6.Latin rhythms:
   

7. Clave: an instrument as well as a syncopated rhythmic pattern in Afro-Cuban music. Click on the musical notation below to hear examples. The Bo Diddley beat is a version of the clave rhythm.
   

8. 
   

9. 
   

10. 
    

11.