Note values: the quarter, the eighth, and where the “and” falls
How long a note lasts, and where the “and” falls in the bar.
Adrian9 minupdated
For my first few weeks I counted “one, two, three, four” and felt rather pleased with myself. Then I was given a strumming pattern where the hand hits between the numbers, and it turned out I had nowhere to put that hit. One thing was missing: the word “and”, and the knowledge that it owns its own equal slot in the bar.
A bar is a box, and the value says how many pieces you cut it into
In four four time one box holds four beats. A whole note fills it completely, a half note fills half of it, a quarter note takes one beat, an eighth half a beat, a sixteenth a quarter. That is the entire system: every next value is twice as short as the one before, and there is nothing else to remember.
You tell them apart by how they look. A hollow head with no stem is a whole note, hollow with a stem is a half note, filled in with a stem is a quarter. One flag on the stem means an eighth, two flags a sixteenth, and when several of them stand together the flags are replaced by a beam across the top.
| value | beats | per 4/4 bar | how you count it |
|---|---|---|---|
| whole note | 4 | 1 | one note, the whole bar |
| half note | 2 | 2 | one two, three four |
| quarter note | 1 | 4 | one, two, three, four |
| eighth note | 1/2 | 8 | one and two and three and four and |
| sixteenth note | 1/4 | 16 | one e and a, two e and a |
Each of these values has its own rest, which is a silence of exactly the same length. A rest is not a break in the counting: you keep counting the same way, only nothing sounds.
You count “one and two and”, and that “and” is what the whole thing turns on
You count quarter notes “one, two, three, four”. Eighths need a syllable added between the numbers: “one and two and three and four and”. The numbers are the strong parts of the bar and the “and” are the weaker ones, sitting exactly halfway between. With sixteenths the same trick goes one level deeper: “one e and a, two e and a”, four pieces to a beat.
Fujita turns this into an exercise with no guitar at all, and it is the best thing I know for learning the “and”. Count out loud and lean your body forward on the numbers, back on the “and”. Downbeat and upbeat get a direction in space instead of being two words from a textbook.
A dot adds half, a tie glues two notes together
A dot after a note makes it half as long again. A dotted half note lasts three beats, a dotted whole note six, and a dotted quarter one and a half. Then something important happens for the right hand: the next note falls on an “and” rather than on a number.
A tie joins two notes of the same pitch. You strike the first and hold it for the sum of both, and you do not strike the second at all. The same sign carries a note across a bar line, when it has to last longer than the space left in the bar.
Note values are the same strumming arrows, written differently
And here the theory turns into a movement of the hand. Eighth notes are exactly the down and up movement: a number going down, an “and” coming up, eight movements to a bar. A strumming pattern adds no new movement, it only decides which of those eight touch the strings. The hand keeps going the whole time, including when it passes the strings without a sound.
The books come at it from the notation side and arrive at the same place. The books explain the first strumming pattern through a tie: instead of striking on “three”, you hold the note that came in on the “and” after two. Polish strumming sheets draw that same pattern with arrows and call it the harpagan. Two alphabets, one hand.
How the books practise it: you clap first, you play later
The running order is the same everywhere and the guitar comes last in it. Clap the rhythm first, then say it out loud, and only then play it. The reason is simple: if you cannot clap it, it is not in your head, and your hand will not guess what your head does not know.
What confused me
I counted the numbers only and was convinced I was counting the rhythm. Fujita names it exactly: without a clear sense of where the “and” is, you are essentially guessing, and note lengths turn vague. In my case it showed up as every pattern with an upstroke falling apart in the second bar, and I kept blaming my hand instead of my counting.
The second one: I decided note values were theory for people who read music, so they did not apply to me, because I play from chords. The pattern D DU UDU is note values written down, only with arrows. Once that landed I stopped memorising patterns and started reading them.
Do this now
Rhythm tap, pattern D DU UDU, four bars.
The exercise plays the pattern and measures every tap of yours separately, so it will tell you whether your “and” land in the same place as your numbers. A round is four bars of six strikes, which makes twenty four.
Goal: 20 of 24 strikes inside the window, which is the round the app counts as even.
Then the same thing inside a song: open Panie Janie and watch the highlight while you count out loud. It runs over the notes and the words in time, so you can see which syllable lasts two beats and which lasts half of one.
Play this
two songs, two densitiesMary Had a Little Lamb runs on quarters and eighths, so counting “one and two and” covers the whole tune. Yankee Doodle is one of the pieces Krenz brings in once eighth notes arrive, and it moves fast enough to show it.
» I play from chords and by ear, note values are no use to me.
This is not knowledge about notation, it is knowledge about time, and you have time in every stroke of your right hand. The pattern you know as D DU UDU is one bar of eighth notes with three empty slots. An empty slot has a name and a length, just like a note does. The shortest test is in Rhythm tap: four bars of that pattern, twenty four strikes. After the round you see to the millisecond which of them your hand played early.
Read more
- The Only Guitar Book You'll Ever NeedErnie Jackson and Marc Schonbrun · ch. 4 and 6This book fits the full set of values, rests, dots and ties into one chapter, and it puts the ladder “listen, count, clap, only then play” right beside them.
- Learn & Master GuitarSteve Krenz · sessions 2, 3 and 16The course shows the running order: four values and four rests first, then ties, dots and eighths, with sixteenths held back another fourteen sessions.
- Guitar WisdomTomo Fujita · “Feel Rhythm in Your Body”The author teaches the “and” with no guitar and no metronome: you count out loud, the body goes forward on the number and back on the “and”.
- Note valueWikipediaThe entry gives the values as plain fractions and the strict definition of the dot, which “adds the next briefer note value”.
- musictheory.net lessonsRicci AdamsThe site has separate lessons on note duration, on rest duration, and on dots and ties, each with a browser exercise. There are no adverts.
- StrumWikipediaThe entry sets the three ways of writing a strumming pattern side by side: arrows, D and U letters, and note symbols. They are pictures with no commentary, but you can see it is one notation in three alphabets.