Note values and rhythm

The beat

Tap your foot along with a song and you are tapping its beat, the steady pulse under the music. Every note is measured against that pulse: one lasts a beat, another two beats, another half a beat. Rhythm is the pattern those long and short notes make over the beat, and reading it is what lets you play a piece you have never heard.

Note values: how long each note lasts

The shape of a note tells you how long to hold it. In 4/4 time, the most common time signature, the quarter note gets one beat and the other values are counted from it:

• Whole note: an open head with no stem, 4 beats.
• Half note: an open head with a stem, 2 beats.
• Quarter note: a filled head with a stem, 1 beat.
• Eighth note: a filled head, a stem and one flag, half a beat. Two or more in a row are usually joined by a beam instead.
• Sixteenth note: two flags or two beams, a quarter of a beat.

Each value is half of the one before, so a whole note lasts as long as two halves, four quarters or eight eighths. In Britain you will also hear the older names semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver and semiquaver. In the figures below every note sits on the middle line of the staff, because here only the shape matters, not the pitch.

Rests: measured silence

Silence is counted too. Each note value has a matching rest, a sign that tells you to lift your hand and keep counting. The whole rest hangs below the fourth line of the staff and the half rest sits on the middle line, so they are easy to mix up: the half rest looks like a hat, the whole rest like a hole. The quarter rest is a zigzag, and the eighth and sixteenth rests have one and two small hooks.

Dots, bars and time signatures

A dot after a note adds half of its value. A half note lasts 2 beats, so a dotted half lasts 3. A quarter note lasts 1 beat, so a dotted quarter lasts one and a half, and an eighth note often follows it to fill the gap to the next beat, as in bar 4 of Ode to Joy in the last lesson.

Music is divided into bars, called measures in American English, by vertical bar lines, and every bar holds the same number of beats. The time signature, two numbers stacked at the start of the piece, sets that number. The top number is how many beats there are in a bar; a 4 at the bottom means the quarter note gets the beat.

• 4/4: four beats in a bar, the time of most pop songs and of Ode to Joy.
• 3/4: three beats, the time of the waltz and of Brahms’ Lullaby.
• 2/4: two beats, the time of many marches and polkas.

The first beat of each bar is the strongest. In 4/4 you feel ONE two three four, in 3/4 ONE two three, and that lean on beat one is what makes a waltz sway.

Counting out loud, and tempo

Count out loud while you learn a piece: it is the surest way to play in time. Say one number per beat, “1 2 3 4”, and start again after each bar line. When eighth notes appear, add “and” between the numbers: “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &”. A note on a number falls on the beat, a note on an “and” exactly halfway to the next one. Long notes are held through their counts: a half note that starts on 3 lasts through “3 4”.

How fast the beats go is the tempo, measured in beats per minute, or BPM. At 60 BPM each beat lasts one second; the exercise below runs at 72, a little faster. A metronome clicks the beat for you. Practise slowly enough to play every note in time, and only then speed up.

Practise: play on the beat

The exercise is four bars of 4/4, all on middle C, so your attention can go to timing alone. Here is its rhythm with the counts to say out loud. Bars 1 and 2 each have the rhythm of “little star” in Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Press Listen to hear it first. Then press Start: four clicks count you in, one empty bar, and the clicks carry on as a metronome while you play, the higher click on beat 1. Play your first note on the next “1”. Each note is checked against the beat: within about 150 milliseconds is on the beat, a little further is close, and both count as on time. Anything else is early or late. The green key always shows middle C.

Move on when you get all 13 notes on time twice in a row. If the eighth notes rush, say the “and” out loud: it sits exactly halfway between two clicks.