Lesson 5: Note Values and Rests

Music is sound organised in time, and the first thing a musician must learn to organise is how long each note lasts. Western notation does this with note values: different shapes of note that stand for different lengths of time. Once you know the five basic values, you can read the rhythm of almost any simple piece.

The longest of the common values is the semibreve, also called a whole note. It is an open oval note head with no stem, and it lasts for four beats. Cut it in half and you get a minim (half note): an open note head with a stem, lasting two beats. Cut that in half again and you get a crotchet (quarter note): a filled-in note head with a stem, lasting one beat. A quaver (eighth note) is a filled note head with a stem and one flag or beam, lasting half a beat. A semiquaver (sixteenth note) has two flags or beams and lasts a quarter of a beat. The names in brackets are the American names, which describe the fraction of a semibreve each note is worth: a crotchet is a quarter of a whole note, a quaver an eighth, and so on.

Rests: The Sound of Silence

Silence is part of music too, and every note value has a matching rest — a symbol that means "play nothing for this long". A semibreve rest hangs down from a line and lasts four beats; a minim rest sits on top of a line and lasts two beats; a crotchet rest is a distinctive zig-zag shape lasting one beat; quaver and semiquaver rests have one and two flags respectively. Rests matter as much as notes: they give the music space to breathe, create suspense, and mark the ends of phrases. A rest is not simply an absence — it is a counted silence, and a musician must count it just as carefully as a note.

Dots and Ties

Two more devices extend note lengths. A dot placed after a note increases its value by half: a dotted minim lasts three beats (two plus one), and a dotted crotchet lasts one and a half beats. A tie is a curved line joining two notes of the same pitch; the two notes are played as one long note lasting the sum of their values. Ties let composers write notes longer than a single bar, or notes that cross a bar line. Together, dots and ties let any length of note be written exactly.

Triplets and Beaming

Two more rhythmic devices appear constantly in real music. A triplet squeezes three notes into the time normally taken by two: three quaver triplets fit into one crotchet beat, and three crotchet triplets fit into one minim. Triplets are marked with a small "3" above or below the notes, and they give music a rolling, lilting feel — they are the heartbeat of the blues shuffle and of many jazz rhythms. Composers also use other tuplets: quintuplets (five in the time of four) and sextuplets (six in the time of four) appear in advanced music, but triplets are the essential one to know. The other device is beaming: quavers and semiquavers are joined together with beams instead of flags, and the beams are grouped to show the beats clearly. In 4/4 time, quavers are beamed in groups of two or four so that the player can see where each beat falls; in 6/8 they are beamed in groups of three to show the two big beats. Good beaming is a courtesy to the reader: it makes the rhythm visible at a glance, so a musician can play a passage correctly the first time they see it.