HitJerker Songwriting: Note Lengths

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Note Lengths

Note lengths differ. If they didn't, music would be a very boring series of notes.

Fortunately, there is an easy way to see and compare different note durations. And if you learn these, you'll almost be able to read music. Of course, you'll also need to learn about where notes are in the staff. But if you master these two things, you can read almost any sheet music.

Note Durations

Here is a chart of note lengths:

It's all basic mathematics:

⁃ Two half notes = a whole note.
⁃ Two quarter notes = a half note.
⁃ A half note + two eighth notes + a quarter note = a whole note.

By the way, there are much shorter notes than sixteenth notes but they are not used very often.

Dotted Notes

This is an example for a dotted quarter note:

The dot after a note means that you increase the note by half of its value. It's the same as if you wrote a quarter note + an eighth note. You can make any note dotted and therefore increase its value by half.

Ties

You can also increase note length by adding a tie to it:

A tie means that you have to add up the value of the notes you tie together.

Beams

Sometimes there are several quarter, eighth, sixteenth or even smaller notes next to each other. They would be hard to read. And it would look strange on the staff to write several of them next to each other. To simplify this, you can use beams to connect them inside a bar.

You can connect eighth notes with one line (beam), and sixteenth notes with two:

Direction of Stems

The line coming from the egg/circle part of a note is called a stem. You've probably noticed when looking at sheet music that sometimes the stem points up, sometimes down. How do you decide which direction to go?

• If the note is below the middle line, the stem points up.
• If it's above the middle line, the stem points down.
• If it's ON the middle line, the stem can go either way, whichever looks better to you.