Lesson 5: Note Durations, Part 2

In the previous lesson you saw the relationships between different notes. For example, you learned that four quarter notes equal one whole note. You learned that two eighth notes equal one quarter note. You also learned that adding a dot to a note increases its time duration by one half of the original note value. For example, adding a dot to a 2-beat note (half note) results in a note that is three beats long (2+1=3)

In a similar fashion, adding a flag to a note makes a note half as long.

Remember the eighth note?   Without the flag, it would look like a quarter note - one beat. By adding the flag it becomes a note of half that value - an eighth note. By adding another flag, it becomes half as long as an eighth note - a sixteenth note: 

It takes two sixteenth notes to equal one eighth note. It takes four sixteenth notes to equal one quarter note. How many sixteenth notes does it take to make one half note? Eight! One whole note? Sixteen!

Many times when two or more eighth notes are written side-by-side, the flag is replaced with a beam: These two beamed eighths are exactly the same as if the writer had written: 

Same thing for sixteenths: is the same as:  Using the beam in place of the flags simply makes it look a little "tidier", and a little easier for a performer to read. It also indicates beat duration, but we'll leave that for another lesson.

Concerning the direction of stems, it is important to know that sometimes stems can point upward, as in the examples above. But stems can also point downward, if the note is above the middle line of the staff:   If the note is on the middle line, the stem may point either upward or downward.

RESTS

For every note, there is a corresponding rest of the same length. For example, the whole note () is a note that gets four beats. The whole rest also gets four beats:    As you can see, it looks like a small black rectangle that hangs from the fourth line. It hangs from that line no matter which clef you use.

The half note gets two beats, and so does the half rest: 

Here are the "rest" of the rests!

The quarter rest (1 beat): 

The eighth rest (0.5 beat): 

The sixteenth rest (0.25 beat): 

Take a look at the following table. It shows the relationship between all of the notes and rests that you will use for the next several lessons*:

* You can continue to add flags to sixteenth notes and get progressively smaller note values: three flags = 32nd note; four flags = 64th note; five flags = 128th note (!)

TIES

A tie is a slur (curved line) that joins two notes together so that they are played as one long note. Example: