Dictionary

tatum en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈtætəm/
• /ˈteɪtəm/
• /ˈtɑːtəm/

Etymology

Coined by American computer scientist Jeffrey A. Bilmes in 1993, initially as a blend of temporal + atom, but deliberately changed from tatom to tatum to honor master jazz pianist Art Tatum, who was known for his exceptional celerity.

Meanings

1. The shortest statistically significant time interval between successive notes in a rhythmic phrase or a musical piece.
   • In general, the music meter contains a nested grouping of pulses called metrical levels, where pulses on higher levels are subsets of the lower level pulses; the most salient level is known as the beat, and the lowest level is termed the tatum. 2006, Jarno Seppanen, Antti Eronen, Jarmo Hiipakka, “Joint Beat & Tatum Tracking from Music Signals”, in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2006), Victoria, Canada, 8-12 October 2006: International Society for Music Information Retrieval, →DOI, archived from the original on 19 Mar 2024, page 1:
   • A tatum represents the lowest regular pulse train that a listener intuitively infers from the timing of perceived musical events (segments). 2023, Spotify, “Reference / Tracks / Get Track's Audio Analysis”, in Spotify for Developers - Web API Reference, archived from the original on 27 Mar 2023:

Forms

wikipedia: Art Tatum · wikipedia: International Computer Music Association