If you find this site helpful please click "like" here...
The quarter note, eighth and sixteenth notes are part 8 and 9 of a course on musical notation and music symbols. This note when played or sung is held for 1 beat of sound. Remember pitch duration? It looks like this. The British name for this note is a crotchet.
If you think of a whole note as a dollar, then it starts to make sense how these notes are named. There are 4 quarters in a dollar, thus 4 quarter notes are equal to one whole note.Eighth notes have a little flag and look like this:
An eighth note is worth half a beat or half of a quarter. Hence 1/8 is
half of 1/4. It is called an eighth note because it is 1/8 of a whole
note. The British name is a quaver.
We count eighth notes like
this: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. You might also see it written like
this: 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+. Two eighth notes are equal to or are the same
amount of time as one quarter. When subdividing into eighth notes we
create a down beat and an up beat. The numbers (1,2,3,4,) are the down
beat. The ("and" or the +) is the upbeat.
Tap your hand on your knee. When you hit your knee, count 1. As
your hand comes off your knee, say "and" or +. Repeat this: 1 and 2 and
3 and 4 and. Make sense?
Eighth notes look like quarter notes
except they have a flag. When 2 or more eighth notes are next to each
other, they can be tied together with a beam like this:
A sixteenth note is half of an eighth note. It is 1/16 of a whole note. I apologize for not having a video on this yet. I will add one soon!
The british name for a sixteenth note is a semiquaver. They have two flags and look like this:
Just like the eight note, when more than one is tied together, we put a beam across them. Since there are two flags, we double beam them.
We count sixteenth notes like this: 1-e-and-a 2-e-and-a 3-e-and-a 4-e-and-a. There are 4 sixteenth notes in a quarter note. Funk music (a la Parliament Funk and the Red Hot Chili Peppers) has made the sixteenth note famous as it's at the heart of the groove ;0).
We can take this one step further and cut the sixteenth note in half and get a 32nd note which is blazing fast (listen to Eddie Van Halen play Eruption)! The chart below shows how everything is subdivided from the whole note all the way to the 32nd note.
Each group of music symbols is equal to 4 beats!
Ok, time for a rest……get it...rest!
Continue to parts 10 and 11, Quarter Rest and Family
Return to Top of Quarter Note and Eighth Note
Return to Musical Notation and Basic Music Theory
New! Comments
Have your say about what you just read! Leave me a comment in the box below.