Throb

Throb opened one eye and glanced at his pulse-tracker. The screen showed a number: 120 BPM. That stood for Beats Per Minute. The radio drummer started at 120, but now the number on Throb’s tracker was flickering. 121… 123… 119…

He let out a small sigh. The whole song was wobbling. It was like watching a friend try to ride a bike with a wobbly wheel. You just knew it was all going to fall apart.

"They forgot the clock," he whispered to a dragonfly buzzing nearby. "They forgot about the clock underneath everything."

The dragonfly tilted its head.

"I am Throb," he said, as if introducing himself for the first time. "The big idea I teach is *pulse." He tapped his chest. "The move is to find the steady clock under everything*. You have to feel it inside you. Every other rhythm just hangs from there."

He pointed a webbed finger toward the radio. "That drummer is trying to be fancy. But he doesn't have a steady pulse. It's like trying to build a house on top of jello."

Throb believed this was the most important rule in music. It was more important than anything else. His friend Snap was great at splitting the beat into faster, chattering rhythms. But you can't split a beat if there's no steady beat to split.

Then there was Hammer, who loved to hit certain beats harder to make you want to dance. But which beats do you hit? You have to know where the beats are first. And Tilt? Tilt was a genius at playing against the beat, making everything sound surprising and cool. But you can’t play against something that isn’t there.

It all came back to the clock. The steady, reliable, never-changing pulse. It could be fast or it could be slow. It could be simple or it could be tricky. But it always had to be there.