Lesson 2: Rhythm, dotted notes, ties, and rests

when any of these notes are notated they create a rhythm the four quarter notes become a regular rhythm while if we mix up different note values we create a less regular rhythm for example if we listen to the opening of the Brahms academic festival overture we see a variety of note values in the first bar there are eight eighth notes then in bar two and three there's a pattern of a quarter note two eighth notes a quarter note two eighth notes in the fourth bar again we have eight eighth notes in the fifth bar we have a quarter to eight and two quarters and in the sixth bar we have two half notes sometimes we see a dot after a note here we have a dot after a half note any dot like this adds have the value of the note it follows in 4/4 or half note gets two beats as we have learned if we add a dot to that half note it will have three beats there is a second way that this can be notated this is by adding a quarter note to the half note and putting a tie above or below it a half note with the dot is the same as a half note tied to a quarter note if we look at the middle of the last movement of the Beethoven fifth symphony we see a dotted half note followed by a quarter note in the first bar and four quarter notes in the second measure this pattern repeats numerous times it is played three times by the oboes clarinets and bassoons leading to a version played loud Forte by the full orchestra you if we now look at a quarter note with a dot of course we've now learned that the dot is worth half the value of a quarter note which is an eighth note it could also be notated as a quarter note tied to an eighth note if we look and listen to the last movement of Dvorak snoo World Symphony we see a half note followed by two quarter notes in bar one a dotted quarter followed by an eighth and then a half note to complete bar to a half a quarter and two eighths in bar three and then a dotted half and a quarter in bar four to complete the beginning of this melody now let's look at the beginning of the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony to see some sixteenth notes bar one is a half note followed by a dotted quarter note and an eighth note and then the second bar is all sixteenth notes in the third bar three beats of sixteenth notes and then two eighth notes in the fourth bar we have some silence we notate these silences with what we call rests each note value has a corresponding notation for a wrist a whole note rest is a rectangular block that sits below a line a half note rest is a rectangular block that sits on top of a line this is what a quarter note wrist looks like now an eighth rest has a single flag on the stem a sixteenth note has two flags and a thirty-second note has three flags on the stem dots following a rest are also the same as dots following notes half of the value of the note