Goal
Understand the counting system used in music theory. Be able to label rhythms, identify locations in music given beat locations, and read basic rhythms.
What is rhythm?
Funky loop with swing
Same loop no swing
The Language of Rhythm
There is a common vocabulary around rhythm that will allow you to speak very specifically about where in a song you are. We have seen that a measure must have the amount of beats the time signature dictates. This means that if a time signature says there are 4 beats then there will be 4, no more, no less.
Say we wanted to tell a band to start on the second measure. We can do that by just saying “start on measure 2”. Not only this but we could also specify what beat. We could say “Start on measure 2 beat 2”. Now we have a specific location in the music.
Let's take a look at some examples:
4/4 Example
On the bottom we see the beat number the note lands on. We see in red beat 2 of the second measure.
3/4 Example
This time beat 3 of measure 2 is red.
This also will work for time signatures where other notes get the beat, for example in 6/8 or 3/16 we can also specify the beat easily:
6/8 Example
Small aside, we are numbering the beats according the time signature here, not the meter.
This time beat 5 of measure 1 is red.
3/16 Example
This time beat 1 of measure 3 is red.
What about measures who have notes on spots that are not directly on a beat? How do we talk about the location of those notes? We do so with a thing called
Subdivisions
8th note subdivision
In this example the quarter note gets the beat, but we see we have 2 eighth notes. The first eighth note starts right when the beat starts so that is called number of the beat we are on. In this case it is 1. The second 8th note is half way through the beat since the first 8th note only takes half a quarter note and the quarter note "gets the beat". Thus we put a "+" and call it the "and of beat 1" since it's the half way point of beat 1. It's also commonly called "the and of 1" and counting out loud we would have “1 and”.
Here the measure is filled with eighth notes, 4 of them land on the start of the beat and 4 land on the "ands". It would be counted out loud as “1 and 2 and 3 and 4” and written “1 + 2 + 3 + 4”. If I asked for the “and of 2” that would mean go to beat 2 and select the note that lands on the half way point of beat 2, which is red in the picture.
If I said go to “beat 4”, that means go to the note that lands on the start of beat 4, which is the second to last 8th note.
Now we can specify up to the halfway point of a beat. Before we move on let's go over rests.
Rests
When labeling rhythms it is common to not label the rests because a rest indicates no note is played. When counting out loud we do not say the rests out loud. You may find it very helpful when you're starting out however to label the rests because the rests take up time to! Therefore, I will label the rest locations above the stave to demonstrate that they take up time but we do not usually write in their value or say their value out loud. In later lessons I will omit the rests in the written version as well.
The rhythm would be counted 1 + 3 4 + and there would be nothing said or written for the rests. They are just there to take up time. We do it this way because that is how instruments are played, if there is a rest you don't play! So we don't count them out loud either. However, counting them in your head to keep your self on track will is an important skill because long rests can be tricky to get their length right!
Being able to count out loud on a first look at the music is referred to as
Examples
BEFORE YOU HIT PLAY! - Try to count out loud with a metronome at 80bpm then check how close you were by hitting play.
Original code by: Music and Coding
More Exercises
Subdivision in other meters
Beats don't always break into 2 parts. Sometimes they break into 3, and this is referred to as
Say we are in 6/8. From the meter lesson we know 6/8 is usually compound duple where the dotted quarter note gets the beat. This means the dotted quarter note gets the beat!
Vs.
Note that this view means the 8th note does not get the beat! The dotted quarter note does! It's like there are two of them in the measure! Hence it will be counted: "1 la le 2 la le". This is the system we will use.
There is no standard system for compound counting. Some will count it as 1 2 3 4 5 6 and use "and" for the 16th's since thats half of 8th (this is the way I did it in most of my musical education). This reason we don't count it this way is that is not how the music will feel. It doesn't match the meter. The idea is there are not 6 8th notes of equal importance, rather there are 2 groups of 3 eighth notes with the first of each set of 3 being much more important! Much music written in 6/8 will follow this and so we count it like a compound meter that gives the "true" beat the number, not what the time signature necessarily says.
For 16ths, those 1/6th way points we will use the word ta, similar to how we used "and" for the half way points in simple meter. So it would be counted "1 ta la ta le ta" for a complete beat of 16th notes. Again, there is no standard way to count this and you could come up with your own sounds to use. The idea is to count it with the same emphasis on notes as the music actually has. For this class we will use this system.
Subdivision into 4
So far we have talked about locating beats and half way between beats. There is also a standard subdivision for splitting the beat into fourths.
Note: While we can split the beat up further into 8, 16, 32, ... you get the idea, I am not aware of any standard way to count these out loud or write them for such small subdivisions. As time divisions get so small it becomes impractical and its more an exercise in "fit this number of notes in this amount of time".
For example, to get 1 note in 1 second is a piece of cake. 3 notes in 1 second is easy to, but what about 9 notes in 1 second or 12 notes in a single second? At some point you just play fast and "feel it". We could break it down but such break downs are not worth our time while we are still so new to rhythm. A similar issue happens with tempo. As the tempo gets fast the time between notes shrink creating the same issue, namely, really fast notes.
To divide a beat into 4ths we use the following: 1 e + a, pronounced it sounds like “One EE and Uh”
So if we wanted the 4 16th note of beat 1 we would say “the a of beat 4”. This is the red note below.
Here the red note is on the “e of 2” and the purple note is on the “a of 3”. (If you're using dark mode the colors are blue and green respectively.)
Practice
Instructions: Try labeling the rhythm under the notes. The first several focus on just 16th notes, then the rest are mixed.
Subdivision A useful technique
We rarely deal with measures that only have one type of note. In these cases we must know how long the notes are and if they “covered up” the beat. For example consider:
Example 1
Here the half note consumes both beats 1 and 2. Counting out loud we would say “1 3 4”. In such a case it is often helpful to write in the missing beat and assign it the half note even though we don’t say it out loud, so the half note would get 1 2 and then the other two notes would get 3 4. This allows you to keep track of all the beats. This is purely visual, you would still count it as "1 3 4".
Example 2
This idea goes further. Look at the second example in the playback.
Here quarter notes are mixed with 8th notes. We would count this as “1 2 and 3 4 and”, that is how it would sound but the quarters “eat up” the “ands” of their respective beats. So we might decided to subdivide the measure to make it more clear by writing in all the “ands” even though we don’t actually say them all out loud.
This allows us to keep track of all beats and clearly see how it adds up. We subdivided down to the 8th note since that was the smallest note.
Example 3
The next natural extension is to do this for the 16th note. Look at the 3 example in the playback above. This would be counted “1 2 + a 3 4”. Here we can see many parts of the beat are not shown on the 16th level because the notes are long, such as how beat 1 is a quarter note and so it “eats” the “1 e + a” having it all assigned to beat 1. In these cases we can subdivide down to the 16th note to keep track of all the beats, it would become “1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a”.
Now it is very clear which notes took what beats. This can be very handy when breaking down a complex rhythm. When you get stuck, consider subdividing.
Pick Ups
A common term you often hear used in bands is “pick ups to measure 4” or something of that form. This simply means start playing at the notes just before measure 4.
You should now be able to count simple rhythms and read basic rhythms. Below is a quiz with a review of everything. If you can easily answer these questions then you are ready for the next section.
To support this series please consider donating via
paypalor joining the
patreon.