Rhythm and Time

Pitch tells you which note. Rhythm tells you when, and for how long.

Clap “Happy Birthday” without singing. Your friends can probably still guess the song. That’s the power of rhythm: the pattern of long and short sounds. Written music shows rhythm with the shape of each note.

1The beat

The beat is the steady pulse under music, the thing you tap your foot to. How fast the beat goes is the tempo, often measured in beats per minute (BPM). At 60 BPM, there is exactly one beat every second, like a clock ticking.

Note lengths are counted in beats. In most music you’ll read at first, one quarter note = one beat.

2Note values: whole, half, quarter, eighth

Just like fractions, each note value is half as long as the one above it. The parts of a note give it away: a hollow head with no stem is a whole note; add a stem and it’s a half note; fill in the head for a quarter note; add a flag for an eighth note; two flags make a sixteenth. Eighth and sixteenth notes next to each other are often joined by a thick beam instead of separate flags.

One whole note = 2 half notes = 4 quarter notes = 8 eighth notes.

3Rests: silence counts too

A rest tells you to be silent for a certain length. Every note value has a matching rest. Watch the whole and half rests: they look alike, but the whole rest hangs down from a line, while the half rest sits on top of a line (think “a half rest looks like a hat”).

Note values and rests in 4/4 time
Name	Note	Rest	Beats in 4/4
Whole	Whole note	Whole rest	4
Half	Half note	Half rest	2
Quarter	Quarter note	Quarter rest	1
Eighth	Eighth note	Eighth rest	½
Sixteenth	Sixteenth note	Sixteenth rest	¼

4Counting out loud

Musicians count beats as numbers and split them into smaller pieces with syllables: “1 e & a, 2 e & a…” (say “one ee and uh”). Quarter notes land on the numbers, eighth notes on the numbers and the “&”s, and sixteenth notes on every syllable.

Pick a note value. The metronome clicks at 80 beats per minute and lights up the syllables those notes land on. Count along out loud.

5Measures and time signatures

Written music is chopped into measures (also called bars) by vertical bar lines. Every measure holds the same number of beats. The time signature at the start says how many:

The top number is how many beats in each measure.
The bottom number is which note gets one beat. A 4 on the bottom means the quarter note.

Two measures of 4/4. Add up each measure and you always get 4.

Common time signatures. 3/4 gives the “ONE two three” swing of a waltz.

6Dotted notes

A small dot after a note makes it longer by half of its own value. A dotted half note is 2 + 1 = 3 beats, which fills a whole measure of 3/4. A dotted quarter is 1 + ½ = 1½ beats, and you’ll find one near the end of “Ode to Joy.”

A dot adds half the note’s value.

7Game: Fill the Measure

Each measure is missing its last beat or beats. Look at the time signature, add up the notes and rests, and pick the note that fills the gap. Click, or press 1 to 4. Ten measures per round; best score is saved on this device.

Quick quiz

Four questions. Choose an answer for each, then check them all at once.

1. In 4/4 time, how many quarter-note beats fit in one measure? 2 3 8 4

2. How many beats does a dotted half note last in 4/4 time? 3 2½ 4 1½

3. What does a rest tell you to do? Stay silent for its length Play the next note twice as loud as the one before Hold the previous note until the end of the song Stop and start the whole piece again from the beginning

4. A measure in 3/4 time already has a half note. What single note fills the rest of it? A whole note A half note A quarter note A dotted half note

Talk About It

Discuss with a partner, your class, or your family. There are no wrong answers here.

Clap the rhythm of a song you know without singing. Can a partner guess it? What made it easy or hard?
Why do you think music is split into measures instead of being one long line of notes?
Note values work like fractions. Where else in life do you split a whole into halves and quarters?

Sources

We checked every fact on this page against these sources.

OpenLearn: An introduction to music theory, 3.1 Time values: note values and how they divide.
OpenLearn: An introduction to music theory, 3.3 Time signatures: what the top and bottom numbers of a time signature mean.
OpenLearn: An introduction to music theory, 3.5 Dotted notes: a dot adds half of the note’s value.
LilyPond Music Glossary, “Mensuration sign”: the C sign for common time comes from an old broken-circle sign, not from the word “common”.

Credits

Written by Ludwig, Jugami’s music teacher. All notation, clefs, keyboards and diagrams are original SVG drawn in code for Jugami; no images or fonts are loaded from other sites. Sounds are synthesized in your browser with the Web Audio API. Best scores are saved only in your browser’s local storage. The memory sentences (like “Every Good Boy Does Fine”) are traditional classroom aids, not rules of music.