The Beat Music is based in time. Most music has a steady, recurring pulse called the beat. It’s the steady rhythm to which you want to tap your foot or dance. Think of any music you’ve heard in a dance club and you can quickly imagine the beat of the music. The element of time in a piece of music revolves around the beat.
Bars To help keep our place in music, beats are grouped into bars, or measures as they are also called. In many songs four beats make up one bar. The steady pulse would be counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, … and so on. Beat one always marks the beginning of the bar. In other songs 3 beats will make up one bar. Any number of beats can be grouped into a bar. The structure of the song will decide how it is counted. This will be explained in later lessons concerning time signatures.
Barlines Barlines divide the musical bars. The space between two barlines is the meaasure or bar. There are several types of barlines. Most barlines are a single, vertical line. A double barline marks the end of a section of music. A final barline is a double barline with a thick second barline and marks the end of a piece of music.
Notes and Rests Rhythmically, a note will tell you two things: when to play it, and how long to hold it. How long a note lasts is called its note value. We also need to notate when, and for how long to be silent, or not play anything. For this we use rests. A rest tells you when and for how long to not play anything. Every note value has a corresponding rest value. Here are the simplest and most common rhythmic values:
The Semibreve and Semibreve Rest A semibreve lasts for 4 beats. It looks like a hollow football. This means you would play and hold the note for four beats. A semibreve rest also lasts for four beats. A semibreve rest instructs you not to play for four beats. The rest looks like an upside down hat. To remember that it's upside down just think you can hold a whole lot of stuff in an upside down hat.
The Minim and Minim Rest A minim lasts for 2 beats (half of a semibreve). A stem is added to the hollow circle to form the minim symbol. A minim rest lasts for two 2 beats. Thiszs means you don’t play for two beats. It looks like a right-side-up hat.
The Crotchet and Crotchet Rest A crotchet lasts for 1 beat (a quarter of a semibreve). The crotchet note looks like a minim with the notehead filled in. A crotchet rest lasts for 1 beat. This means don’t play for one beat. The crotchet rest looks like a squiggly line. A good way to think of how to draw it is to do a slanted letter "Z" then, keeping your pen on the paper, draw a slanted letter "C"
The Quaver and Quaver Rest A quaver lasts for half of a beat (half a crotchet). The quaver note looks like the crotchet with a flag attached to the stem. A quaver rest lasts for half of a beat. The quaver rest looks like a slash with a flag on it.
Semiquavers, Rests and Beyond Rhythms can be subdivided further by adding more flags to the note or rest. Semiquavers have two flags. 32nd notes (demisemiquavers) have 3 flags, and so on. In most music you won’t see note values much smaller than semiquavers.
Note Beaming Sometimes, to make rhythmic notation easier to read, the flags of notes are connected with beams. Beams still have the same meaning as flags: one beam across a group of notes indicates quaver notes, two beams across a group of notes indicates semiquaver notes, and so on.
Note Stem Direction You may wonder why some stems point upwards and others point downwards. This is mainly done to save space above and below the staff so more music can fit onto a page of music. Typically theee stems of notes below the middle line point upwards. Stems of notes above the middle line point downwards. Stems of notes on the middle line of the staff may point either direction.