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Lesson III – Very Small Note Values – Part III

This is the third and final installment of the corresponding music lessons related to our video music lesson on very small note values. Links to the previous two installments can be found at the end of the article.

Welcome back! Moving right along and continuing the mathematical process we next come to 64th notes. Once again, all you need to do notation-wise is to add one flag, so a 64th note possesses four flags. And just as a 64th note has four flags, a 64th note rest has four hooks as well. It takes sixty-four of these notes to fill up one bar in 4/4 time, so clearly we are in the realm of the very short note durations at this point. It takes twice as many of these notes to fill up your measure, and they’re half as long in duration. As the note values get shorter and shorter, we simply keep adding flags one by one and halving the duration of each note compared to the previous type.

And finally, you’ve got your 128th note, which has five flags, and is an extremely short note value to say the least. And of course in the case of a rarely seen 128th note rest, you’d be looking for five hooks as well.

Whether you’re looking at individually flagged notes, or groupings of beamed notes, the number of each is your most important bit of information in order to ensure rhythmic accuracy. Now that you know how many flags belong to each note value, and the fact that each value is twice as quick as the previous one (or half as long in duration, whichever way is easiest to conceptualize), we no longer have to stare at an inky black page full of tiny notes and rests without knowing how the heck we’re going to spit out all those notes without getting chastised by the conductor or band leader.

In upcoming music lessons on notes and notations, we’ll begin talking about triplets, and also dotted notes. You might have heard of them, if not don’t worry, we’ll talk about all that stuff in detail as continue on with our comprehensive examination of reading rhythms, approaching rhythms, and handling rhythms in any music that you happen to come across.

Thanks for checking out UpbeatRhythms.com, we hope you’re enjoying the video music lessons as well as the related blog articles and we really appreciate you stopping by. And please come back for the next series of videos, because it’s full speed ahead and you won’t want to miss anything! See ya then.

Very Small Note Values Article Part 1

Very Small Note Values Article Part 2

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UpbeatRhythms.com – the Practice Pad

Lesson III – Very Small Note Values – Part 2

This is the second installment of the corresponding music lessons related to our video music lesson on very small note values. You can find part one of the written article here.

Now we turn our attention to sixteenth notes, and you’ll notice right away the 16th note looks almost like an eighth note. The only difference is the 16th note has two flags instead of one. And the 16th note has half the value of an 8th note. And also looking here at 16th note rests, it looks almost like an eighth note rest except it has two little flags instead of the one.

Regarding rests, from eighth note rests and shorter rest durations, they also include a flag-like appendage, which is known as a hook. Eighth note rests have just one hook, just as eighth notes have just one flag, as we get into the smaller rest values you add a hook for each smaller value, just as you add a flag to the smaller and smaller notes beginning with one flag on an eighth note, two flags on a 16th note, and so on. So an eighth note rest possesses one little hook, a 16th note rest has two, a 32nd note rest has three, and so on.

You have probably started to figure out by now that when moving along to the 32nd note it is very similar in appearance to the 16th note (just as a 16th note is very similar to an eighth note), except that we now see three flags rather than two. The 32nd note rest, again, has three hooks rather than two. A 32nd note is half the value of a 16th note, and a 32nd note rest is half the silence of a 16th note rest.

Keep in mind that you won’t necessarily see an entire bar of nothing but 32nd notes, or 16th notes, or any other for that matter. Sometimes you do, sometimes it varies. You might just see one or two beats’ worth of them, or just one or two notes or rests, or some combination of 32nd notes, 32nd note rests, and other note values within a measure. We will delve deeply into discussing just how to break down a complicated measure so that you can easily distinguish even the most complex rhythms, but as a starting point you really have got to know what you’re looking for, and knowing how many flags each note is entitled to is essential in understanding these small note values as soon as you see them. In the case of a 32nd note, you’re going to be looking for three flags or three beams to let you know that what you’re looking at is, in fact, a 32nd note time value.

Thank you for checking out this installment of our series on very small note values, please check back for the third and final installment which will be posted later this week. Glad you stopped by to visit UpbeatRhythms.com, see you next time!

Very Small Note Values Article Part 1

video music tutorial for this article

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UpbeatRhythms.com – the Practice Pad

Lesson III – Very Small Note Values – Part I

Welcome, or welcome back, to UpbeatRhythms.com and our continuing series of tutorials on rhythm, this is part one of our supplemental music lessons which go together with the third video music tutorial over in the Practice Pad, and today we’re talking about very small note values. The video covers 16th notes, 32nd notes, 64th notes, and 128th notes, as well as corresponding 16th note – 128th note rests.

To start off, keep in mind that 128th notes are usually of extremely short duration, and are pretty rare in music. You do see them on occasion in very slow music that requires very quick passages, but generally you’re not going to see a whole lot of 128th notes in your musical travels. However, it’s good to be aware of them and know exactly what they look like when you see them (aside from the massive amount of black ink on your page lol), and in this article you’ll see that figuring out the difference between the various smaller note values and rest values is quick straightforward, both in terms of appearance as well as exactly how much sustain/period of rest, in other words the exact time duration, you’ll need to give to each of them, now having covered whole notes, which require at least four full beats, all the way down to 128th notes (and of course rests as well). Coming up in the next couple of videos, we’ll also examine triplets and dotted notes, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment and concentrate on these very small note durations.

In previous music lessons we talked about whole notes, and half notes which are half the value of a whole note. Quarter notes which are half the value of a half note, and eighth notes which are half the value of a quarter note. The eighth note is almost exactly the same as a quarter note in appearance, except it has one flag. It should be noted here that when we see groupings of these smaller notes within the space of one beat, the flags become “beams” and are used not only to indicate note values but also to link the groups of notes together, making it easier to distinguish which are which within a beat as well as within a measure. By beaming them together you can more easily distinguish the main beats within your measure, see how the smaller notes fit together within each beat, and know at a glance which notes belong to which beats.

That concludes the first part of our supplementary article, be sure to check out the education video music lessons if you haven’t already, the link is provided below, and be sure to come back for the next part of this written supplemental article related to our education video which will be available early next week, and we will be continuing our series of videos and articles on all things rhythm with plenty more videos and tutorials, it’s full speed ahead here at UpbeatRhythms.com and you won’t want to miss anything! Thanks for checking out UpbeatRhythms.com, we really appreciate you stopping by. Talk to you next time.

Very Small Note Values Article Part 2

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