Note values: how long each note lasts

Each note type halves the one above it. A whole note fills four beats in common time, a half note two, a quarter note one, an eighth note half a beat, a sixteenth note a quarter of a beat. The shape on the page tells you which is which: an open head with no stem is a whole note, an open head with a stem is a half, a filled head with a stem is a quarter, and every flag or beam after that halves the value again.

This is why counting works the same in any piece. Once you know that four sixteenths fit inside one quarter, you can read a bar you have never seen before without doing arithmetic — the beams group the notes into beats for you.

A rest is a measured silence, and every note value has a matching rest. A whole rest hangs below the fourth line, a half rest sits on top of the third, a quarter rest looks like a wriggle, and eighth and sixteenth rests add flags exactly as their notes do.

Beginners often play through rests or cut them short. Counting a rest out loud — the same numbers you would use for a note of that length — fixes it faster than any rule about looking at the page.

Halving alone cannot give you three beats, so notation adds two tools. A dot after a note adds half of that note's value again: a dotted half note lasts three beats, a dotted quarter note one and a half. A tie joins two notes of the same pitch into one longer sound, and it can cross a bar line where a dot cannot.

The dotted quarter followed by an eighth is the most common rhythm in popular music. Learn to hear it as one gesture rather than two counts, and a large part of the repertoire opens up.

Note values are relative, not absolute. In 4/4 a quarter note takes one beat; in 6/8 the beat is a dotted quarter, and the eighth note becomes the unit you count. The lower number of the time signature names which note value gets the beat, so the same written note can mean different things in different meters.

Tempo is separate again. A quarter note at 60 beats per minute lasts a second; at 120 it lasts half a second. The notation fixes proportions between notes, and the tempo mark decides how fast those proportions run.

Counting aloud puts the values into the body instead of the head. Say one-and-two-and for eighths, one-e-and-a for sixteenths, and keep the syllables even while the hand plays. Sight-reading practice works on exactly this: the eye recognises a group, the voice keeps the pulse, and the fingers follow.

Clap a phrase before you play it. Rhythm read silently tends to drift on the long notes and rush the short ones, while the same phrase clapped once usually comes out right on the instrument.