El tiempo fuerte marca el compás musical.

Yes, tiempo very often means time, and sometimes weather, but in music it can also mean beat or tempo-related time depending on context.

In el tiempo fuerte, it refers to the strong beat or accented beat. So this is a specialised musical use of tiempo, not the everyday weather/time meaning.

Here fuerte means strong or accented.

So tiempo fuerte means the strong beat, that is, the beat that receives emphasis in the rhythm. In music, this is often the beat that helps listeners feel the structure of the measure.

In Spanish, adjectives usually come after the noun, especially when they are describing a factual quality.

So:

• tiempo fuerte = strong beat

Putting fuerte before the noun would sound unusual here and would not be the normal musical expression. The standard phrase is tiempo fuerte.

Marca is the third-person singular present form of marcar, which means to mark.

So:

• marcar = to mark
• marca = marks

Because the subject is El tiempo fuerte (singular), the verb is also singular:

• El tiempo fuerte marca... = The strong beat marks...

The present tense is used here to express a general fact or general rule about music.

So El tiempo fuerte marca el compás musical means something like:

• The strong beat marks the musical meter
• The strong beat defines the rhythm/meter

Spanish often uses the present tense this way, just like English does in statements such as Water boils at 100 degrees.

Compás is a musical term that can mean several related things, depending on context:

• meter
• measure / bar
• sometimes the overall rhythmic pattern

In this sentence, el compás musical most likely refers to the musical meter or the rhythmic framework that the strong beat helps define.

So although compás can sometimes be translated as bar or measure, here meter or rhythmic pattern is probably the best idea to keep in mind.

Adding musical makes the meaning more explicit.

This helps distinguish musical compás from other meanings of compás, such as:

• compass (the drawing tool)
• a more general idea of rhythm or pacing

So compás musical specifically means musical meter / musical rhythm structure.

Spanish often uses the definite article el / la / los / las in places where English might use the, or sometimes no article at all.

Here:

• El tiempo fuerte = the strong beat
• el compás musical = the musical meter

This sounds natural in Spanish because the sentence is talking about musical concepts in a general, classifying way. Spanish commonly uses the definite article for general ideas:

• La música es importante. = Music is important.
• El piano suena bien. = The piano sounds good.

Yes. Tiempo is a masculine singular noun, so the adjective must agree with it.

In this case:

• tiempo = masculine singular
• fuerte = singular form

Notice that fuerte does not change between masculine and feminine in the singular:

• el tiempo fuerte
• la nota fuerte

But it does change in the plural:

• los tiempos fuertes
• las notas fuertes

Sometimes, yes. In musical contexts, tiempo fuerte can overlap with the idea of the downbeat or strong beat.

However, downbeat is a bit more specific in English, while tiempo fuerte more generally means the accented beat. So whether downbeat is the best translation depends on the exact musical context.

A safe general translation is:

• strong beat
• accented beat

A rough pronunciation guide is:

el TYEHM-po FWER-te MAR-ka el kom-PAS moo-see-KAL

A few useful points:

• tiempo has two syllables after the initial tie- sound: TYEHM-po
• fuerte begins with a kind of fw sound: FWER-te
• marca has a tapped Spanish r
• compás is stressed on the last syllable because of the written accent: kom-PAS
• musical is stressed on the last syllable: moo-see-KAL

The normal and most natural order is:

El tiempo fuerte marca el compás musical.

That is:

• subject: El tiempo fuerte
• verb: marca
• object: el compás musical

Spanish can sometimes change word order for emphasis, but in a neutral statement like this, the standard order is best. A different order would usually sound more literary, emphatic, or less natural for a learner.

Yes, that is grammatically correct, but it changes the perspective slightly.

• El tiempo fuerte marca... focuses on the strong beat as a concept.
• Los tiempos fuertes marcan... talks about strong beats in general, in the plural.

Both can make sense, but the singular version is very common when describing a concept in an abstract, general way.