mike’s music pages

Posts Tagged ‘read music’

Fig. 1

This is the second lesson in a series about how to read music.

In our first lesson we learned about notes and how to count them. In this lesson you will learn more about notes, rests, and how to count.

What Are Rests?

Rests are periods of silence in music. Just as notes represent a sound of given duration, rests represent silence of a given duration. In the first lesson we learned about different types of notes. Well, for each type of note there is a corresponding type of rest. See Figure 1.

In the first lesson we talked about the time signature of 4/4. The top 4 means 4 beats in a measure, and the bottom 4 means that a quarter note gets one beat. So, in 4/4 time a quarter note gets 1 beat, a half note gets 2 beats, and a whole note gets 4 beats. An eighth note gets 1/2 beat, and a sixteenth note gets 1/4 beat. The equivalent rests are counted simularly.
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Fig. 1 Treble clef

Are you in a choir but you don’t read music? If so, then when the music is passed around you may not know what notes you should sing? Well, even if you don’t read music, it may help you to know which notes you should sing so that you know which lyrics are for you. In this lesson you will learn how to distinguish the different vocal parts so that you will know how to find your part. Read the rest of this entry »