I: Notes and Rests

A: Basic Notes

Music is basically made of different notes. These notes each have a different pitch and are held for a certain amount of time. So, in theory, that's basically what you're reading when you look at a sheet of music: what pitch to play the notes at, and how long to play them. Of course, another important factor is in music, which is volume, but I won't get into that, as that's kind of advanced.

As you can see, there are different kinds of notes:

There are also sixty-fourth notes, but we don't need to get into that. Okay, just by looking at what kind of note it is, you will be able to tell how long each note is held. The whole note is held for four beats. The half note is held for two beats. The quarter note is held for one beat, the eighth note is held for 1/2 beat, the sixteenth note is held for 1/4 beat, and the thirty-second note is held for 1/8 beat. The only time these values are different is when the bottom number of the time signature is something other than four, but you don't need to worry about that.

See how the eighth note and everything below that have flags? Whenever you have two or more notes with flags that are next to each other, you can combine their flags together. Let's say you had two eighth notes, one sixteenth note, two thirty-second notes, and one eighth note, in that order. It would look something like this:

Now, say you want something else, like you want to hold a note for three beats. Hmm...the half note is held for two beats, and the quarter note is held for one beat, but there's nothing for three beats. Fear not my people, there is a way. Just use a tie, which is a curved line that connects the two notes:

And now, when you play this, it will be held for three beats.

Even with a tie, there still is a combination you can't make...what if you want a note to hold for 1/3 beat?!?!? No, don't panic yet, there's still a way. Just change the note into a triplet. To change a note into a triplet, just put a "3" above or below the note or the group of notes. When a note becomes a triplet, it becomes 2/3 of its original value. For example, if you make a half note into a triplet, that triplet becomes worth 4/3 beats. (a half note is originally worth 2 beats, so 2 multiplied by 2/3 is 4/3.)

The most commonly used triplet is the eighth note triplet. Three eighth note triplets equal one beat. So here are three eighth note triplets:

Or, you could have put three different 3's, one over each note. It's easier to put it over the group, though. There's a problem to watch out for, though. Say you want to put one 3 over a group of notes to make them triplets. It only works when the group of notes are connected by their flags. Once again, here's a picture for you for an example:

You've got to be super-specific with these music people. If you accidentally spill some ink and put a dot to the right of a note, you could mess things up. How? Well, that's dotted notes. If you put a dot to the right of a note, then the note becomes worth more beats. It becomes worth one half of the original note plus the value of the original note. So if you put a dot to the right of a whole note, it becomes worth six beats. Instead of dotting the whole note, you could just tie together a whole note and a half note, but the dot is a feature of music you can use, just in case you get lazy. Oh, and limit two dots per note. If you put two dots, then the second dot adds one half of the value of the dot. So if you double dot a whole note, it would be worth seven beats. (4 + 2 + 1.)

B: Rests

Alright, now let's move on a bit, and start talking about rests. Whenever you see a rest, it's the opposite of a note, it tells you not to play. So then, rests have beats. Here are some kinds of rests:

Just like the notes, the whole rest is worth four beats, half rest is two beats, quarter rest is one beat, eighth rest is 1/2 beat, sixteenth rest is 1/4 beat, and thirty-second rest is 1/8 beat.

So once again, when you see a rest, you don't play for that amount of time. If you see a whole note and then a quarter rest and then a quarter note, it means play for four beats, rest one beat, then play for another beat. Soon you'll learn how to find out the pitch of the note to play, but for now let's ignore that.

For rests, basically the same rules apply as with notes. You can't use ties on rests, but you can put dots to the right of rests, and you can make them into triplets. (why would you want to tie two rests together anyway? A quarter rest tied to another quarter rest means the same as if those two weren't tied.)

Yaaay! We're done with notes and rests! Now let's go to the staff.

The Staff