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Learning to Read Music

Long Or Short

Peter Nickol is an award winning music book editor, who has produced many books widely used in schools.

 

DURATION

Now you know how music symbols are used to indicate pitch-how high or low a note is.

Next, we consider duration – how long or short it is.

The different shapes used for printing notes

So far, we’ve just used note-heads on the stave, to indicate which pitch is referred to. But on a page of printed music you will see a wide variety of note-symbols. Here are some of the common ones:

These symbols indicate durations, but they do so in relative terms, not absolute terms. In other words, the symbols indicate how long the notes last relative to each other, not how long they last in seconds or fractions of a second.

NOTE-VALUES

Semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver

We can set out a simple chart of relative note-values, as shown below. Study the chart, and try to memorise the terms for the different note-shapes, as described below the chart and on the next page. ‘Whole note’, ‘half note’ (etc) is the terminology used in America, and neatly expresses the relationships between the notes, but ‘semibreve’, ‘minim’ (etc) is also a terminology you need to know, and is the usual one in Britain.

At the top you can see one whole note or semibreve.

Then two half notes or minims.

The third line has four quarter notes or crotchets.

The fourth line has eight eighth notes or quavers.

And the fifth line shows sixteen sixteenth notes or semiquavers.

The chart shows their relative values. The two minims ‘add up’ to the one semibreve. Similarly the four crotchets ‘add up’ to the two minims or one semibreve. And so on. All five lines have the same total time-value.

UNDERSTANDING RELATIVE TIME-VALUES

Do you understand how the matter of relative time-values works? Music may be fast or slow. A particular piece of music may be taken at a faster or slower tempo. A crotchet, or a minim, or a quaver, may be fast or slow. But, at any one time, whatever the tempo, a crotchet is always half as long (or twice as fast) as a minim, and a quaver is always half as long (or twice as fast) as a crotchet.

INDICATING FAST OR SLOW

Is it impossible, then, for the absolute duration of notes to be indicated? Surely composers will sometimes want to do that, to indicate how fast or slow they want their music.

Yes, it is possible, and composers use various ways of getting this information across.

Metronome marks

One normal – and quite precise – method is to place a metronome mark at the head of the score. (A metronome is a clock-like mechanism that ticks at any required speed.) Having written out their composition, with all the relative note-values notated, thecomposer then writes at the top something like this:

This means that the music should be played at 96 crotchets per minute. That is the absolute speed (or tempo). All the relative note-values – the crotchets, quavers, minims, etc. – then take place at that speed.

Setting an exact absolute tempo carries certain problems. The composer may want the tempo to fluctuate in subtle ways, or the circumstances of a performance (e.g. the size and resonance of the room) may suggest a faster or slower tempo. In any case performers don’t expect to be straightjacketed, and tempo is an area in which they normally have some interpretive leeway.

Accordingly a composer may add c. (for circa, = approximately) into a metronome mark:

Tempo marks

More commonly, there may be no metronome mark at the head of a score, but a tempo instruction in words – conventionally (though not necessarily) in Italian. For instance:

Allegro (fast)

Adagio (slow)

Andante (at walking pace)

Instructions of this sort may seem vague compared with ‘96 crotchets per minute’, but in practice they can give a good idea of the composer’s intentions.

More precise instructions have also evolved, for instance: Allegro ma non troppo (fast, but not too fast)

Some terms carry a message about expression as well as tempo, e.g. Largamente (broadly)

BEAMED NOTES

Two adjacent quavers can be beamed together, like this:

instead of

Or three quavers, or four, or even more.

Similarly, semiquavers can be beamed together:

A quaver followed by two semiquavers may be notated like this:

DOTTED NOTES

A dot written after a notehead multiplies the time-value by 11/2.

So, a dotted crotchet

=

3 quavers

A dotted minim

=

3 crotchets

A dotted quaver

=

3 semiquavers

A dotted quaver followed by a semiquaver can be beamed together, like this:

TEST YOURSELF

Time to check your knowledge of note-values. Here is one semibreve:

All but one of the following groups of notes have the same total duration as one semibreve. Check each line, adding up the time-values, and find out which line does not add up to one semibreve. (Answer on page 126.)

  • 1.This chapter is about duration – long or short.
  • 2.The different shapes used for writing notes are called by names such as crotchet, minim, quaver, semibreve. These indicate durations, but they indicaterelative durations.
  • 3.Two semiquavers add up to one quaver, two quavers to one crotchet, two crotchets to one minim and two minims to one semibreve.
  • 4.Speed is indicated by metronome marks, which indicate the speed more or less exactly, or by tempo marks, which indicate the feel required.
  • 5.Adjacent quavers or semiquavers, in various combinations, are often beamed together.
  • 6.Dotted notes are worth one-and-a-half times as much (in time-value) as the same note without the dot.

Music – existing in its own time and space

In Chapter 1 we saw that pitch is a relative matter. Within limits, the absolute pitch-standard of a performance doesn’t matter much, but it is most important that all the players are in tune with each other, Likewise, an unaccompanied singer may start a song on C, D, E or whatever, but the melody thereafter proceeds along a set path.

Now, in Chapter 2, we discover that timing in music is also relative. Performances of the standard classical repertoire vary considerably in tempo, and hence in overall duration. Even given a metronome mark, the tempo of a performance may in practice turn out slightly faster or slightly slower. Yet the internal time-relationships, of the different notes to each other, matters to the tiniest fraction of a second.

Music can connect in the most intimate way with our lives and our feelings, but a musical performance is a remarkably self-contained thing, defined by internal relationships of time and pitch.