mike’s music pages

Posts Tagged ‘rhythm’

Music is written with notes that indicate a sound of a given pitch and duration. Some note names are: whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note. The names of notes indicate the relative duration or length of the sounds they represent. For example, if a whole note has a duration of 2 seconds, then a half note has a duration of 1 second, and a quarter note has a duration of 1/2 second.

The absolute length of a note depends on the tempo of the music and the time signature. The time signature defines the beat and the tempo marking tells you how fast or slow the beats are. The tempo marking may be a metronome mark, or it could be words such as andante, allegro, adagio or largo, which are all Italian words. You could also see German or English words.

Quarter notes in 3/4 time

In previous lessons we have discussed only 4/4 time. You learned that in 4/4 time there are 4 beats to a measure and a quarter note gets 1 beat. You learned that a measure is the space between two bar lines, so if there are 4 beats to a measure there must be notes and rests between the bar lines that add up to 4 beats.

Fig. 1

You learned that in 4/4 time a whole note gets 4 beats, a half note gets 2 beats, a quarter note gets 1 beat, an eighth note gets 1/2 beat, and a sixteenth note gets 1/4 beat. You also learned that there are rests that correspond to each note value: whole rests, half rests, quarter rests, eighth rests and sixteenth rests.

In this post you will learn about some other time signatures and how to count them. Read the rest of this entry »

In the previous lesson we discussed tied notes. Tied notes are a way for us to add notes together, allowing us to extend the sound of notes. In this lesson we will learn about another method of extending notes by using dot notation.

We use dot notation to extend the length of notes.

When we want to extend the length of a note, we can place a “dot” after the note to extend it. The dot increases the length of the note by one-half. This means that if you place a dot after a half note which gets two beats, then the dot adds 1 beat to the note so that a dotted half note gets 3 beats.

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In this lesson you will learn about tied notes.

We have been discussing note values in 4/4 time. In 4/4 time a whole note gets 4 beats, a half note gets 2 beats, a quarter note gets 1 beat, an eighth note gets 1/2 beat, and a sixteenth note gets 1/4 beat. The people who write the music are composers or arrangers, and being creative types, they don’t want to be limited to the note values that I have listed. They sometimes want to use notes that are 3 beats or 8 beats or 7 beats. They even want to use notes that have durations of 1 and 1/2 beats. How do they do it? Read the rest of this entry »

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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