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Rhythmic Notaton
A Crash Course in Musical Notation
Note Durations
If you tried to compare music with three dimensional space, you might
think of pitch as existing on a vertical y-axis, and rhythm as existing
on a horizantal x-axis of time.
Rhythm is essentially how pitches exist in
relation to time! The first element to rhythmic notation is the duration of a
note. Below we have 5 bars (the space in the staff seperated by
vertical lines) of equal length. They're filled by notes of different durations
that end up being equal to each other.
In the following example we're shown that 1 whole note = 2 half notes =
4 quarter notes = 8 eigth notes = 16 sixteenth notes. They are notated in that order.
Dotted Rhythms
Sometimes you'll see a dot directly to the right of the written note. This means that you'll add half of the note's length to it. For example, a dotted quarter note is equal to 3 eigth notes. You add one half of the quarter note (an eigth note) to the length of the full quarter note (two eigth notes). In the following example we'll see two dotted quarter notes used to fill the final bar.
Changing the Time Signature
The two numbers on the left side of the staff make up the time signature. The bottom number represents a note duration (4 = quarter, 8 = eigth, etc...), and the top number represents how many notes of that duration fill one bar. Most of our examples so far have been in 4/4, meaning there are 4 quarter notes in a bar. The following example shows 6/8. This means there will be 6 eigth notes in a bar. Here's a few of the many ways we can fill a bar of 6/8.
