tatum

plural tatums

1. The shortest statistically significant time interval between successive notes in a rhythmic phrase or a musical piece.

   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

   1 more example

   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

1. A habitational surname from Old English.

   He had done so much to take his game to the next level, but it didn’t seem to matter. Jayson Tatum just couldn’t hit a shot.

   2022 August 8, Jared Weiss, “Jayson Tatum opens up on lessons from Celtics’ finals loss, Kevin Durant trade”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 08 Dec 2025

2. A male given name transferred from the surname.

   By the time a letter from Marcy finally came, explaining that the entire time she had been living on the South Side in a Negro neighborhood near the university, and that she had a son whom she'd named Tatum Kubiac—"Tatum" after a famous jazz pianist—it seemed to make little difference.

   c. 1988 Stuart Dybek, Chopin in Winter, The Graywolf Short Stories, Vol.45, Graywolf Press (1988), page 82

3. A female given name transferred from the surname.

   The youngest ever Oscar-winner is an actress called Tatum O'Neal, who was ten when she won Best Supporting Act for the film Paper Moon (1973).

   2009, Jan Payne, The World's Best Book, Running Press, →ISBN, page 114

4. A village in Cameroon.
5. A town in New Mexico.
6. A town in South Carolina.
7. A city in Panola County and Rusk County, Texas, named after settlers Albert and Mary Tatum.