Stop-time

In tap dancing, jazz, and blues, stop-time is an accompaniment pattern interrupting, or stopping, the normal time and featuring regular accented attacks on the first beat of each or every other measure, alternating with silence or instrumental solos.

Such stop-time moments are sometimes repeated, creating an illusion of starting and stopping, as, for example, in Scott Joplin's "The Ragtime Dance" and Jelly Roll Morton's "King Porter Stomp".

The sheet music for Joplin's "Ragtime Dance" contains the direction,[6] "Notice: to get the desired effect of 'stop time', that the pianist will please stamp the heel of one foot heavily upon the floor at the word 'stamp'.

[7] Allusions to the stop-time chorus of "Cornet Chop Suey" occurs in "Oriental Strut"[8] and "Potato Head Blues."

[9] In Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin', and Slam Dunking, Gena Dagel Caponi writes: In this music [African-American spirituals] the fundamental beat chiefly maintained by the patting of one foot, while the hands clap out intricate and varying rhythmic patterns.