Reading Music, part 4 - The Next Level of Rhythm

Now that you know all the basic symbols for rhythm, we have to organize all those symbols in a meaningful way.  

But first, let's review what the beat is and how to find it. The beat is the steady rhythm of music, just like your heartbeat. If you can match your heartbeat by tapping to it, you can match the beat of any piece of music.

From here, we organize rhythm on the staff. Bar lines divide the staff into equal sections, or measures. Measures may also be referred to as bars. A double bar line denotes the end of the piece. 

The lines make reading music easier as they divide up the all information on the page into smaller sections.  

Each measure will contain a specified number of beats. This amount is specified at the beginning of the music, after the clef symbol, in the time signature. The time signature looks like a fraction symbol at the beginning of the music. It's not a fraction! Please remember this or it will totally confuse you!

A time signature defines the amount and type of notes that each measure contains. There are a variety of different time signatures and each one specifies a different amount of beats for the measure.

4/4 is perhaps the most common so I will use it as an example. 

In the time signature, the top number represents how many beats are in one measure. Not notes, but beats. So in 4/4, there will be 4 beats. A single measure can contain one note, a whole note, but that whole notes equals 4 beats. There are infinite measure combinations to reach 4 beats but the key fact is that the measure will contain 4 beats. 

The bottom numbers defines which type of note equals one beat. When you are tapping the beat in a 4/4 time signature, you are tapping a quarter note. 

If the bottom note is a 2, the beats equals a half note; it it's an 8, eighth note. But don't worry about time signatures with 8 as the bottom number - they are slightly more complicated and make more sense once you and your child get the hang of time signatures and how it relates to rhythm and the beat. 

Just for fun, there are various types of time signatures and a single piece may have different time signatures. In other words, the time signature may change at any point in a piece. A piece may start in 4/4 but can change to 2/4 or 3/4 at any point. 

The various types of time signatures are: 

simple: 3
4 or 4
4


compound: 9
8 or 12
8

complex: 5
4 or 7
8

mixed: 5
8 & 3
8 or 6
8 & 3
4

additive: 3+2+3
8

fractional: 2½
4

irrational: 3
10 or 5
24


But keep in mind, you and your child will only really encounter simple and compound meters. And the compound meter doesn't even show in the Suzuki literature until Book 2. So don't worry about the others - I just find it neat to see all the different (crazy!) time signatures! 

Last music reading post, I outlined a number of different rhythmic values and their symbols. However, what I left out was dotted rhythms. These notes look similar to half notes, quarter notes, whole notes, eighth notes, etc., however, they have a dot attached.

This dot does impact the duration of the note. It involves a bit of math to figure out but here's how:

Add half the value of the note, to the note. For a dotted half note, you take the half note (2 beats) divide it in half (which equals 1 beat) and add that back to the half note, for a total of 3 beats.

This same rule applies to every note that is dotted. Take, for instance, a dotted quarter note:

Half of a quarter note is 1/2 a beat, or 1 eighth note. 1 quarter note plus 1 eighth note equals 1 and 1/2 beats. 

Typically, we see a dotted quarter note immediately followed by another eighth note, which equals 2 full beats.

We see this in May Song and The Happy Farmer. Look for these there! 

***

This is by no means a complete list of everything music reading related. There are many more dotted rhythms and time signatures, rhythms and rests. But these are the basics to get you started with music reading. These things are also a starting point to build on as you and your child learn more about the symbols and reading music. Also, this works so much better when you actually put it into practice and do it versus reading it on a blog. :)