Reading Music: Note Values & Rhythm

Reading pitch tells you which note to play; reading rhythm tells you how long to hold it and when the next one comes. Underneath everything is the beat - the steady pulse you tap your foot to. Every note's length is measured against that beat.

The note values

Each note value in the set below lasts half as long as the one before it. The shape of the note head, its stem and any flags tell you which value it is. British and American names differ - both are worth knowing.

Rests

Silence is written too. A rest is a measured gap that carries a note value just as a note does - a crotchet rest is one beat of silence - so the beat keeps counting even when nothing sounds. Every note value has a matching rest of the same length.

Watch the top two: the semibreve rest and minim rest are the same small rectangular block, so tell them apart by where they sit on the stave. The semibreve rest hangs below the fourth line; the minim rest sits on top of the middle line. The heavier (longer) rest hangs down, the lighter one rests up.

Dots, ties and beams

• An augmentation dot after a note adds half its value again: a dotted crotchet lasts a crotchet plus a quaver, or 1½ beats.
• A tie joins two notes of the same pitch into one sustained sound across their combined values - the way to hold a note across a bar line.
• A beam is the bar that joins the stems of quavers and semiquavers into a group, replacing their individual flags so the beat grouping is easy to read.

Hear the difference

Now put it together. Pick a pattern and play it: every pattern fills one bar of four beats, so as the notes get shorter, more of them pack into the same time. Drag the tempo to feel how the pulse stays even while the values divide it.

Beats don't run on forever ungrouped - they gather into bars set by a time signature.