4/4 time & the "one"

Your foot taps along to almost any song and keeps landing in the same place: on the heavy beat. That tapping is the pulse, and that place is the one.

Music is organized on an even grid, and most of it counts in fours: 1-2-3-4, over and over. That grid is called 4/4 time, and it carries pop, rock, and folk. Strums and chord changes generally land on those counts. So the measure is the grid that melody and chords fit into — and what keeps the chord loop from the harmony layer moving at all.

Listen closely and the four beats aren't equally heavy: besides the one, the three usually carries a lighter weight, with two and four in between. That alternation of stressed and unstressed is what separates groove from simple counting.