Cutting to a Soundtrack

With cutting to a soundtrack, often editors arrange cuts such that there is a recognisable synchronicity or synchronicity with the beats and rhythm of a of an accompanying music track. This is referred as cutting to a soundtrack. 

When an editor arranges cuts so that they are in synchronise with beats and rhythm of anything accompanying it like music, they are said to be cutting to the beat.
- This is where the editor will decide which beats deter where the visual cuts happen. 

In order to grant a fast editorial paced sequence you will have to cut the video clips to the beats of an uptempo piece of music. 
- An editor might use this technique to build tension or bring added intensity to action. 
An example of this would be:
Jaws - 

Soundtrack - 

An editor may choose to go against what is expected of the beat of a musical accompaniment for effect.

Sometimes the effect may make the two appear asynchronous.
The technique enable a director to achieve dramatic irony in the scene, inflecting the unfolding action with new layers of meaning.
Director Gus Van Sant elects to represent a fight between two rival groups of male youths in Good Will Hunting by slowing down the motion of the video and cutting at variance to Gerry Raggerty's Baker Street, the music accompaniment. 
The gentle, melodic, melancholic tones of the track together with the despair of the vagabond existence of its together with the despair of the vagabond existence of its subject contrast with the visuals to suggest the cyclical violence and social degradation of the fighting youths.