Barlines

Barlines divide the musical bars. The space between two barlines is the measure or bar.

There are several types of barlines. Most barlines are a single, vertical line. A double barline marks the end of a section of music. A final barlineis a double barline with a thick second barline and marks the end of a piece of music.

Rhythms

Rhythms in music are based on fractions. Don’t be scared off when I say fractions. If you can cut up a pizza fairly, you know all the fractions you need for reading rhythm notation.

Since counting four beats to a bar is the most common, all rhythmic terminology is based on a bar containing 4 beats.

British-English speakers should read American-English music terminology.

Notes and Rests

Rhythmically, a note will tell you two things: when to play it, and how long to hold it. How long a note lasts is called its note value.

We also need to notate when, and for how long to be silent, or not play anything. For this we use rests. A rest tells you when and for how long tonot play anything. Every note value has a corresponding rest value. Here are the simplest and most common rhythmic values:

	Created by 13052 about 9 years ago

ncea level 1 Music Slide Set on NCEA Music theory level 1 , created by 13052 on 04/11/2015.