Of all the topics that frightens non-music music teachers the most, it's probably reading music notation. It's a secret code, a type of literacy, that requires exposure and instruction. It's not a "fake it till you make it" type of scenario.
Luckily, every year some time is spent on notation review and it's not actually all that difficult once you understand some things. In this post, we'll examine:
- note values
- approaches to counting note values
- time signatures
Note Values
There is a popular image of note values that is triangular shaped, showing how a whole note gets broken down. The top is a single whole note (4 beats, more on that soon), then the next row is wider with two half notes, then the next row is wider with 4 quarter notes, then the next row is even wider with eight 8th notes.
While this is a great visual, it does have its drawbacks.
Music is read left to right. A whole note will never appear in the middle of a bar (more on that too). It's a good idea to start students off with this concept from the beginning. This is the biggest issue with the pyramid shaped note value chart.
Instead, let's examine this one:
There are four vertical columns--each one represents one beat (a beat is the pulse of the music). Most popular music is written with four beats in each bar (4/4 time).
The top row shows a whole note and it is stretched over all four beats. In 4/4 time, it will take up a WHOLE bar.
Skip down two rows to the half note. You can see each covers two beats, and two beats is half the bar.
The row between the whole note and the half notes shows a dotted half note. The dotted half note is taught in grade 3, but the other dotted notes (and the concept) is taught in grade 5. A dot after a note adds half the note's value to it's total. A half note is two beats, half of 2 is one, so 2+1=3 beats.
The line with the quarter notes comes next. Just like in money and math, four quarters make a whole (bar, in this case). This is the beat of the music. The dotted quarter + eighth note is also shown in that line. We know the dot adds half the value, so it's 1+1/2=1 1/2 beats. However, each bar has to equal exactly four beats, so we need to fill in the last half of beat 4 with a single eighth note. You can see how it lines up with eighth note directly below it. For Canadians, we hear this in the opening of "Oh Canada", the word Canada is sung as a dotted quarter note + eighth note + dotted half note. Whenever possible, use music the students are familiar with!
The next line is for eighth notes. There are eight of them in a bar. Each quarter note equals two eighth notes. When two eighth notes are together, they are joined at the top with a beam. When an eighth note is alone (like with the dotted quarter note), the beam falls down and becomes a flag.
Skip over beat 3 of the eighth note row for now.
The sixteenth notes row at the bottom shows there's 4 sixteenth notes per beat, or 16 per whole note. This also means that one eighth note is worth two sixteenth notes. We can combine eighth notes and sixteenth notes in a few ways, so that they add up to 1 beat. One way is shown in beat 3 of the sixteenth notes row. That's called "two sixteenths + eighth", and it can also be reversed. You can also have 1 sixteenth, 1 eighth, 1 sixteenth all joined with a beam and this will also be one beat.
Back to beat 3 of the eighth note row, which shows a "dotted eighth + sixteenth". The dot on the eighth adds half it's value, which is a sixteenth note. It becomes worth 3 sixteenth notes, and the 4th sixteenth note to make up the beat is joined to it with the beam.
When we do rhythm activities, we don't use the first three rows very much. If we're clapping, using Boomwhackers or rhythm sticks, the sound doesn't carry long enough. Rhythm gets interesting when we get to the combining of sixteenth and eighth notes!
A common rhythm combination that is not shown in this chart is the triplet. It can get complicated! It looks like three eighth notes joined, with a small 3 over top (it could also be 3 quarter notes). The three notes are played in the amount of time that two would normally take up. For more on the triplet, I recommend my Rhythm resource. As well, this blog post is not going to include rests--music isn't just about the sounds, but about the silences. They are also covered in the Rhythm resource.
Counting
Learning how to count rhythms is one of the biggest debates in music teacher circles. There are many methods and most teachers strongly prefer one over the others! Some options are:
- Kodaly
- Gordon
- Words
- Numbers
When introducing rhythms, I start with words, and "Icon Notation". This is when you take an image of something and say the word as a rhythm. For example:
"Snowman" would be spoken, and each syllable gets a clap. This would represent two eighth notes. You can do a whole theme! A quarter note could be shown with ice, and winter wonder is four sixteenth notes.
Check out "Snow Day" for a fun rhythm play along for young children.
Check out "Snow Day" for a fun rhythm play along for young children.
When I introduce rhythms to grade 4 and above, I use the Pie Family: quarter notes are pie, two eighth notes are apple, 4 sixteenths are Mississippi or alligator, 2 16ths+8th is coconut, 8th+2 16s is blueberry. Dotted eighth + 16th is shawarma or cherry (chair-ry, emphasis on the first syllable).
You might see some issues with this method:
- some kids say words differently
- the images selected might not be culturally relevant to some
- it takes a lot of space
- how would it work with more complicated rhythms
- everyone has to know the same word--rhythm connections.
Many music teachers use a system of sounds like "tiri tiri" or "takadimi". You might have heard Ta ti-ti ta ta being clapped in a classroom as a way to get the students' attention. That's representing quarter, two eighths ("paired eighths"), quarter quarter. I prefer using these syllables because it gets the student saying the notes the same way they will play them on an instrument. To show a note longer than a quarter note, we add "ah" for each beat (or "e" for a half beat), and if we're clapping, we just bounce our cupped hands for the beat. A dotted quarter note + eighth note is said "Ta-e ti". A half note is "Ta-ah".
Takadimi is often used and each syllable represents not just the 16th note, but it's position within a group of four. An 8th+2 16ths would be said as "Ta-di-mi" and 2 16ths+8th is "Taka-mi". I like how it keeps the relative position of each 16th note, but it's not one I grew up with and I haven't made the switch. If I'm counting something complicated, I will usually use my pie family, or the actual counts.
Using the actual counts is similar, but each beat is broken down into it's 4 parts (16th notes) as:
1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a
If there are groups of two eighth notes, they become:
1 +, 2 +, 3 +, 4 + (One and Two and Three and Four and)
In both these example, the numbers are actually representing the beat of the bar the note is played on. This is the system most instrumentalists use as it is easy to write into their music to remind them how a passage is played:
In this example, there are several methods used to help with the rhythms. Sometimes just the beats, sometimes the rhythms. In the third line down, you might wonder why the two eighth notes in the middle of the bar aren't joined. The eighth note + quarter note + eighth note combo that is shown twice in that bar is called "syncopation." Beat three comes on the third eighth note of that bar and is given emphasis and acknowledgement by keeping that eighth note individual. You can easily count this bar by saying "Sin-coe-paw, sin-coe-paw." This rhythm is taught in grade 4 and is also known as the papaya rhythm, after the popular song "Shake the Papaya Down".
You can see that this is a sort of progression, and can follow the sound before symbol ideology. Students in early years can say a word and clap the syllables, changing from familiar words to Ta ti-ti as they develop their skills. Getting really solid with Ta ti-ti as they start recorder will be beneficial as they move to instruments.
Time Signatures
I've briefly mentioned "4/4 time". That's a time signature. It's used to organized the beats based on their pulse of strong or weak, and so we only have to count to a number like 4 or 6, instead of counting all the beats of the song consecutively.
The top 4 represents that there are four beats in each bar. The pulse is strong weak medium weak. This is the most common, and how the names of the notes were created, as seen in the value table at the start.
The bottom 4 represents that the quarter note gets one beat. There are time signatures with an 8 for the bottom number, and these mean that the eighth note is worth one beat (so a quarter note would then be two beats, a sixteenth note is half a beat). These time signatures are more advanced, and you can learn about them in my Beat and Rhythm resources.
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