Chapter 12

Rhythm (Notes, Rests, Dots, Ties)

While pulse describes the steady beat of a piece of music, rhythm refers to different durations of sounds and silences. Duration is the length of time a sound or silence lasts in music. For example, a quarter note has a shorter rhythmic duration than a half note. In this chapter, we will look at how to draw different rhythms and their relationships with each other.

Part I: Notes & Rests

In music, notes tell us how short or long to play a pitch. A note’s shape might include three parts: a notehead, a stem, and a flag.

The whole note, one of the longest durations we still use, is drawn with only an unfilled notehead, no stem or flag.

whole note

When we add a stem to the whole note, its duration is halved, and we call it a half note.

one whole note = two half notes

If we fill in the half note’s notehead, its duration is halved again, and it becomes a quarter note.

one half note = two quarter notes

Adding a flag to the quarter note once again halves its length and turns it into an eighth note.

one quarter note = two eighth notes

Adding another flag to the eighth note continues the trend, turning it into a sixteenth note.

one eighth note = two sixteenth notes

Notes tell us how long or short a pitch will be. Rests, on the other hand, tell us how long or short silence will be. Each note has its own corresponding rest. For example, a whole rest tells us to be quiet for as long as a whole note tells us to make sound.

soundsilence

Most rests have unique shapes, but the whole rest and half rest are easy to mix up. Here’s a trick to remember them: a whole rest looks like a hole in the ground, and a half rest looks like a hat on the staff line.

Here is a chart that shows the relationships between notes and rests:

Rhythm Tree

notes

rests

Each step down the tree halves the one above it. Every note has a rest of exactly the same length.

Part II: Dots & Ties

Sometimes composers want to write notes or rests that last just a little bit longer than a normal rhythm. When a dot appears next to a pitch or rest, it extends its rhythm by half. A normal half note, for example, is equal to two quarter notes. Since half of a half note is one quarter note, a dotted half note is equal to three quarter notes. Similarly, a dotted quarter rest is equal to three eighth rests, or a quarter rest plus an eighth rest.

half = two quarters

dotted half = three quarters

Like dots, composers will sometimes use ties to make a pitch last longer. A tie looks like a curved line between two or more identical pitches and combines the durations of these pitches. This is especially useful when a composer wants a pitch to last longer than a measure would usually allow, like in the example from Mozart’s Oboe Concerto below:

The oboe part of Mozart's Oboe Concerto: a high C held as four whole notes tied across three barlines into an eighth note, followed by a run of eighths and sixteenths. — Mozart uses multiple ties to make the oboe’s C6 last four whole notes and an eighth note—in this piece, that’s sixteen and a half beats!

The shapes of notes and rests do not tell us how long a note or rest will actually last—they only tell us how long or short a note/rest is compared to other notes and rests. In the next chapter, we will explore the musical feature that tells us how long or short a rhythm actually is: meter.

unit 1b · Foundations of Tonal Music: Time