Music- Basic Notation: Pitch and Rhythm

I have written this article to serve two purposes, either to get you more confident with understanding standard notation, if you are not yet confident, or as a way in which notation can be taught to others. I will start with very broad concepts and then address more specifics or exceptions to rules.

Two of the most basic elements of music that can be represented through notation are pitch --how high and low the notes are; which can also be thought of as letter names, keys on a keyboard, finger position on a string instrument, etc-- and rhythm-- the organization of sound through time.

We will start with pitch.

Pitch

In our Western system of music, there are only 12 letter names. Each of these 12 notes is the same amount of space apart (we call this a half step). Since the letter names are only A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, the other notes in between would have the same letter name with a half step higher called a sharp (#) and a half step lower called a flat (b).

These 12 pitches can be read on the music staff, a background of 5 lines and 4 spaces. On a typical note, when the circle part of the note moves higher up on the page, the pitch goes higher, and the next letter name up would move forward in alphabetical order. From line to the next space and space to the next line, we move up by one letter. So if our bottom line is E, the rest of the spaces and lines would be F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F at the top line. It is exactly the opposite situation moving down the page, the lower the circle, the lower the pitch and we go in reverse alphabetical order. The nice thing is that the names of the lines of the spaces stay the same no matter where the notes move.

That is the basics of pitches! Knowing this, you can follow the up and down contour of a melody even if you do not know the exact letter name in the moment, you can see whether each note is higher or lower than the note before it.

Now, on to rhythm. 

Rhythm

As I said above, rhythm is the way we organize sound through time. No matter how high or low the circle part of the note is, that does not affect how the rhythm is written. You have probably noticed that when looking at music, some notes have circles that are colored in, some have a single line attached, some appear to be two notes attached together, and there are even notes with no lines. 

That’s a lot to remember. Over time, you will be able to recognize and remember how each note looks, but there is another way to figure out the basic rhythm of a phrase. When you look at a piece of music you will notice that there are lines that go down through the staff and seem to separate groups of notes. This is no accident. Depending on how many beats are in a measure of music (the space between two lines), every group of beats will be separated by one of these barlines.

But how do we know how many beats are supposed to be in a measure? Look at the very beginning of the music, the top left. You will see two numbers, that look like a fraction. For now, we will just worry about the top number. If you see a 4 on the top, it means that the quarter note gets the one beat.

If you see 4 of these in a measure, it means the counting is simply 1 2 3 4 and the next measure begins again with 1. In this way, it doesn’t matter how many notes are in the piece total, each measure starts again with 1. 

Without memorizing the names of eighth notes, half notes, whole notes and more, for well formatted music we can think of the amount of space that each note or group of notes takes up.

If you see two notes in the space of one quarter note, it means they are each half the value of the quarter note (1 2 and 3 4).

If you see a note that seems to be taking up more of the measure than one quarter note, it could be a 2 beat note (1 2 3 -) or if there is only 1 other quarter note left in the measure of 4, then it would be a 3 beat note (1 - - 4).

You don’t have to know the exact definition of each rhythm symbol, just see how many beats should be in a measure and how many notes are written in a measure. If there are very few notes in a measure, the music will sound slower. If there are quite a lot of notes in a measure, the music will sound faster.

You do not have to know everything about pitch and rhythm to be able to follow the basic structure of written notation. Hopefully these few tips can help. Please let me know if you have questions!