When it comes to understand the music rhythms
the first thing we do is to think about the division of the different figures
for example the whole note divides into two half notes and every half notes
divides into too quarter notes and every quarter notes
divides into two eight notes and so on
this is a very useful way of understanding this but is not complete
I use a different method
when you listen to music you start tapping your feet
or tapping your hands. That is because we follow the pulse of the music
most music has that very steady pulse that goes always tah tah tah tah
to represent that pulse I take une of the figures as a unit
Usually the one we use is the quarter note
usually they are group into four like this
if I play this, this is going to sound tah tah tah tah
now, what happens if I merge two of them together
then, instead of hitting here I just going to extend the sound
That is going to be ta-ah tah tah
For sure the people that created the musical language started like this and then they said
This is what we call ties if we do this, instead of writing all these symbols here can we replace
By another symbol and then is when they created the half notes
So the result is going to be the same, ta-a tah tah
For sure one day they had to face the situation in which three notes had to be merged together
And this, instead of sounding tah tah tah tah will sound ta-a-a tah
Well, if we do that there should be another symbol to represent three quarter notes together.4
for example, we already use the halves notes, we cannot use it again or perhaps we can if we add a dot
a dot like this will do to substitute the three quarter notes tied together.
so this is going to sound exactly the same
One they we might need to merge all the quarter notes together so instead of sounding
tah tah tah tah this is going to sound ta-a-a-a
In that case there is another symbol for that that is going to be the whole note
and that is going to sound ta-a-a-a
One day we might, instead of merging figures together, we might need to split on of the quarter notes
for example this one, in that case there is another symbol for that. We just put two eight notes together
And that, instead of sounding tah tah tah tah will sound tah tah tata tah
We can do that with other of the quarter notes
For example this one
is going to sound tata tah tata tah
And this is going to sound tata tah tata tah
instead of tah tah tah tah
is going to sound tata tah tata tah
One day we might need something like this: tah tata tah tah
and one day we might want to join these two together
and that is going to sound ta-aa ta tah tah
I call it, for my students to understand it, the roast patatoe
Rooooaaast patatoe
this here can be replaced by something similar
For example, I take this away, and the tie, I keep the eighth note here and
I add a dot here, the dot adds half the value of the quarter.
For example if I had an apple, an apple with a dot will be equal to an apple plus half an apple
So by adding a dot to something we add half its value
That applies also if we have a half note and we add a dot we have the equivalent to one half a note plus
half of a half note which is a quarter note.
We might want to add a dot to one of the eighth notes, for example we have this
Tah tata tah tah
Perhaps we want to do this one e bit longer and this one e bit shorter
Something like tah taa-ta tah tah
To do that we have to split this eighth note into a sixteenth note and extend this eighth note
with a do
Remember the apple with the dot is equal the apple plus half an apple
So that, is going to be an eighth note and a half of an eighth note
This is going to sound as we described
Sometimes we might have to take one of the eighth note and divide it into two sixteenth notes
For example like this. That is going to sound tah tatiky tah tah
Sometimes we want these three notes here to last exactly the same
In that case we need to create a new kind of symbol which is the tripplet
Compare how this sound: [ Playing the first version}
What happens if we put this three sounds to last exactly the same [playing the example]
Ok, this is going to be the symbol for that: three eighth notes and I am going to add this little thing here
that will guarantee that these three last exactly the same, so we need to fit the length
In the space of two sixteenth notes we need to fit three sixteenth notes
Or three notes in the space of one quarter note
[playing the examples]
for many people is very difficult to actually play the triplets in a proper way
It needs a bit of practice for many people to do this if you haven't got experience playing a triplets.
[Playing the examples again]
To understand music notation, is a very good idea to be able to take a quarter note
and see in how many ways we can represent that
One way is this one, we can replace the space that a quarter note takes by this, or by this
or by three eighth notes in triples, we can replace it by this, also by this
four sixteenth notes all together taking the space of one quarter note.
Or I can take this and do the opposite of that
Or I can take this one and perhaps do this and that will equal to
the most common way of writing it like this
There many other ways you can do it, you can start splitting every single one of the notes and then
create infinitum number of cell that can take the space of one quarter note
Now we are going to test how each one of these will sound. We are going to play all of them, one by one
in order and that will be [playing all the examples one by one]