Reading music: weekly lessons started. How many beats?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a chart of note values to help you remember what we learned in Heather's music reading lesson before choir this week.

 Remember that the value of a note depends on the time signature: 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4/4 means there are 4 quarter notes in a bar. This is called Common Time, used for marches in particular, and common for most music. So, a whole note gets 4 beats. 
We  count 123412341234...


2/2 means there are 2 half notes in a bar. You're thinking that in 4/4 we can have 2 half notes in a bar. Right. But,  2/2 is faster. A half note gets 1 beat.  We count 121212121212...


3/4 means 3 quarter notes. This is used to give a dancing feel. So, a whole note gets 3 beats.
 We count 123123123...


2/4 means there are 2 quarter notes in a bar. And, it ends up sounding like cut time
We count 1212121212...


6/8 means 6 eighth notes (Lots of music is 6/8). A whole note gets 6 beats. 
We count 123456123456123456... 
Or, we can count 121212... 
Or, sometimes, 123123123123...
We can divide the bars in half depending on the tempo. 


Each note has a corresponding rest. Here's a chart of rest values.




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heather also taught us about dotted notes and then we had several examples in our music. Remember that a dot makes the note longer by 50%. (A second dot, which not very common, adds half of that, so another 25%.) Here's a chart to help you with dotted notes.




 

 

 

 

 

 

Often, the use of dotted notes gives a swingy feel to the music, bum ba-dum. 

There's a lot of stuff about music theory on the Internet. 

 
I'm looking forward to hearing more of Heather's music lessons. Can't wait to see what she teaches us next week. I'll follow up with a review here after each lesson. 


Yours in harmony,
Renate