Ever get lost in a rhythm? Try taking it's pulse to get back in time. Every rhythm has a pulse. Underneath the accents and syncopation's, every rhythm can be reduced to ONE. Whether it's 7/8 or 4/4, you can count it as : 1,1,1,1. That is it's pulse. The basic tempo. If you can tap your foot at a constant rate and there is a foot tap on the first beat of every measure, you have found the pulse of the rhythm and you can lock on to that like a metronome and sound exactly like you know what your doing.
In pulse playing, you are like a bass drum thumping out the basic meter or beat of the song. You can do this all with tongued notes (where do I breath?) or all with bounced breaths (when to I rest). But most commonly, you will find some combination which allows you to play all the beats without dragging or rushing the tempo. Perhaps you want to put your breath on the ONE beat. In that case, the repetitive phrase in 4/4 would be BREATH,TONGUE, TONGUE, TONGUE, BREATH, TONGUE TONGUE, TONGUE and so on. You've probably added something to the basic pulse already because that bounced breath is going to stand out from the tonguing.
Accents mark points in the pulse of the beat. They not only make the pulse more interesting, but give it organization. But it isn't always interesting to have the accent be on the first beat of the pulse or have an accent only once per measure. It might detract from the "feel" of the pulse. Try putting the accent on different parts of the pulse and see what the diagnosis is for the patient (in this case the song). An accent on the third beat is interesting. TONGUE, TONGUE, BREATH, TONGUE, and so on.
We've been treating the bounced breath as if it can always be accomplished in the same time interval as a tongued note. But what if we use a cheek squeezed breath? We could try to take those kind of breaths in the same amount of time, but chances are that it will take a bit longer to do a cheek squeeze. Especially if our pulse is fast. So we can do breath, tongue, tongue in four beats of our pulse with the breath occupying the first two beats. Or we can do tongue, tongue, breath with the breath occupying beats three and four. Try it. OK, where is that interesting accent now? Well, we can still accent the non-breath beats. The easiest way is with a short vocalization like a bark. We can put one accent in (e.g. - breath, tongue, BARK), or two (e.g. - breath, BARK, BARK). And we can alternate in a little eight beat phrase I call the "hip hop" dog. (Breath,tongue,bark, Breath, bark, bark).
These are rather simple, cute things to do with the beat. There are endless variations and techniques like playing off the beat (one,AND,two,AND,three,AND,four,AND) to make pulse playing more interesting. But next time your playing along with someone and you seem to feel lost, stop a minute and check the pulse. If you find it, lock on and ride it for all it's worth. A good pulse player can center an ensemble and keep everyone together.