Intro to Rhythm
Online theory lesson 1
Music notation makes it easy to understand traditional rhythm. You read from left to right in chronological fashion. The staff is composed of horizontal lines, usually five. These lines and respective spaces hold the notes. The pitch of the note depends on its vertical placement on these lines. Higher notes on the staff sound higher in real life.
The staff is also composed of the basic unit of meter, the measure. This is delimited by vertical lines on the staff.
Each measure holds a certain number of beats, which can be represented as notes which sound, and rests which do not sound.
The time signature tells the measure how many beats to hold and how long each beat is.
Below is a staff with a time signature at the beginning, then a series of notes and then their respective rests.
There are length types for each note and rest. This is based on the tempo of the piece. These are based on the most common time signature which has four beats. Therefore, a whole note gets a full measure in common time. A half note gets half a measure, and so on.
Look at the above time signature. The top number, in this case 4, tells you how many beats are in the measure. The bottom number, in this case also 4, tells you which division of a whole note gets a beat. Therefore, in the above example each measure contains the equivalent of 4 quarter notes.
Keep studying the above image. The first note looks like a circle. That's a whole note. In this case, a whole note is worth four beats, or a whole measure. The next measure has two half notes which look like ovals with stems, each worth two beats. The third measure has two quarter notes which look like filled in half notes, each worth a beat. It also has four eighth notes, each worth half a beat. They look like quarter notes with flags. Observe the rests. They correspond to the note values on the previous three measures.
Now let's put this to work! Above is two measures of notes, below which are two measures of the respective rests.