Piano: Rhythm: An Open Learning Guide
There are two essential pieces to music: rhythm and pitch. Pitch refers to how high or low a note is in tone, whereas rhythm refers to the arrangement of those tones. Since pitch can get fai
There are two essential pieces to music: rhythm and pitch. Pitch refers to how high or low a note is in tone, whereas rhythm refers to the arrangement of those tones. Since pitch can get fairly complicated, let us first discuss rhythm.
A beat can have any duration, even as long as a minute. Thus, to define duration, a composer includes a tempo like allegro at the top of the sheet music.
A quarter note is 1/4 of a whole note; tempos are assigned based on the quarter note's duration, since it is 1 beat long.
A thirty-second note is 1/8 of a quarter note. It takes 32 of these to fill a whole note. Note durations keep halving with each new "flag" added.
A dotted quarter note lasts for 1.5 (1 + 1/2) beats, equivalent to a quarter note tied to an eighth note.
Source and licence
Text adapted from Piano/Rhythm by Wikibooks contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.
Sources
More in Music
Keep reading
