Note values, bars and the piano roll

Listen to the same tune twice. The notes are the same in both, and not one pitch has changed.

First version Second version

This is the opening of the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The first version is the way the composer wrote it. In the second, something goes wrong right at the end: the next-to-last note arrives too early. You hear it at once, even if you have never held a page of music.

Now try to put the difference into words. "One note is a bit longer there, and the next one a bit shorter." But how much longer, and how much shorter? In chapter 6 we found the pulse, a row of even beats, and beats can measure time. In this chapter you will use them to measure notes: each note lasts so many beats, or such a fraction of one. After that, "a bit longer" becomes an exact record that a musician and a DAW both understand.

A whole note splits in two

How long a note lasts is called its note value, or simply its duration. Note values form a ladder where each rung is half as long as the one above. The longest of the everyday ones is the whole note. Two half notes last as long as one whole. Two quarter notes last as long as one half. Then come eighth notes and sixteenth notes.

Below is the whole tree. Press "Top to bottom": the metronome clicks steadily, and each row plays once. Every row has notes half as long as the row above it.

Press "All together". The five rows play at once, each at its own pitch: the whole note as one long note in the bass, the sixteenths as a fine patter at the top. Together they make a pattern in which every two notes of one row fit into one note of the row above. This is what any rhythm looks like from the inside: it is put together from these spans.

Now move the tempo. The seconds next to the names change: at 60 BPM a quarter lasts exactly one second, at 120 half a second. The ratio never changes: a half note is always twice as long as a quarter. A note value is a fraction of the pulse, not a time on the clock. How many seconds a quarter lasts is up to the tempo, and the tempo is written separately, as a number in BPM, as in chapter 6.

Notice the "Fading sound" switch. This is how a piano behaves: once struck, the string dies away by itself, and by the end of a long note you can barely hear it. The note value stays the same. A pianist holds the key for as long as the note lasts and lets go exactly when the next one begins. A synth with a high sustain in its envelope (you met it in chapter 2) keeps the sound level to the very end of the note, so you hear its full length. That is why this chapter plays mostly on a synth.

The symbols follow the same logic as the names. A whole note is a single hollow head. A half note adds a stem to the hollow head, and a quarter fills the head in. An eighth gets a flag, a sixteenth two. The more trimmings, the shorter the note. Eighths and sixteenths that sit next to each other within one beat are usually joined by a beam instead of flags, which makes them easier to read. Every widget in the course draws them that way.

Now by ear alone. A rhythm plays on a single note, with the metronome underneath. Which written rhythm matches it? A hint: don't count the notes, count how many clicks each note covers.

The bar: a box for four beats

If notes simply run on one after another, a minute later you are lost: which quarter is this, the fortieth or the forty-first? So music is cut into equal spans called bars (in American usage, measures). The boundary between two bars is drawn as a vertical bar line. In most music there are four beats to a bar, each a quarter note. This is written as 4/4 at the start of the line and called the time signature: the top number says how many beats there are in a bar, the bottom one which note value counts as a beat. Other time signatures are in chapter 8.

A 4/4 bar is a box that holds exactly one whole note. Two halves fit in it, or a half and two quarters, or four quarters, or eight eighths: any set that adds up to four beats. Build some bars yourself. The builder does not explain the rules, it simply never breaks them: try putting in a half note when the bar has one beat left, and see what happens.

The first task checks one thing: the bar must be full. An unfinished bar in the middle of a piece is a mistake in the writing, like a sentence with no verb. After that the conditions get trickier. Three notes fill a bar in only one way, if you ignore the order: a half and two quarters. Five notes already give you a choice: three quarters and two eighths, a half and four eighths, or even a half, a quarter, an eighth and two sixteenths. The "by ear" tasks at the end are a small dictation: you hear a rhythm and build it out of blocks.

The builder marks the second rule in red: a note cannot cross a bar line. If the bar ends while the note is still sounding, it is written as two notes on either side of the line, joined by a curve called a tie. That is what the Notebook does when it turns what you played into notation. Ties are covered properly in chapter 8.

A 4/4 bar already holds a half note and a quarter. What can go at the end to make the bar full?

Two eighths A half note A whole note

A half and a quarter take up three beats, so one is left. One quarter fills it, or two eighths, since an eighth is half a beat. A half or a whole note will no longer fit: they would have to cross the bar line.

Rhythm from the page: count in your head, play with your hands

To read a rhythm is to know on which beat each note starts and on which it ends. Musicians count the beats silently for this: one, two, three, four, and one again in the next bar. A half note starts on "one" and carries on through "two". A whole note takes all four counts. The counting is not spoken aloud. You keep it inside, and mark the pulse with a hand or a foot, as in chapter 6. The course helps: a bar of count-in plays before each rhythm, and the metronome keeps clicking under it.

Here is the written rhythm of the "Ode to Joy" you heard at the start. The staff shows no pitch, only note values: four bars separated by bar lines.

The rhythm of the "Ode to Joy", bars 1–4. The last bar has a dotted quarter: it lasts a beat and a half.

The first three bars are four even quarters each. The fourth is more interesting: a dotted note, an eighth and a half. A dot makes a note longer by half its own length, so a dotted quarter lasts a beat and a half. Dots are covered properly in chapter 8. For now, notice one thing: because of the dot, the next-to-last note arrives later than the ear expects. That is the note that was "moved" in the second version at the start of the chapter.

Now tap the rhythm out yourself. We start with the long values: strike each note at the moment it begins, and the long notes simply let a few clicks go by. You can tap on Space, any key or the big button on the screen.

This exercise checks only the moment you strike. But a note value is also the moment the sound stops. On keys this is especially easy to hear: play a half note and let go of the key at once, and you get a short sound followed by silence, not a half note at all. The next exercise watches both ends. Press the key with each note and hold it for as long as the note lasts. The strip under the rhythm shows how your presses line up with the notes.

Now eighths appear in the rhythm. An eighth is half a beat, so two eighths take up one click of the metronome: the first falls on the click itself, the second exactly halfway to the next one. If two eighths get mixed up with a quarter in your head, split every beat in half as you count.

Rhythms like these are worth practising a little every day. The first levels of the "Rhythm from the page" trainer come straight from this chapter: whole, half and quarter notes, then eighths. The trainer remembers which patterns give you trouble and serves them up more often.

The piano roll: time to the right, pitch upwards

Staff notation is not the only way to write note values down. Open any music program, a DAW, and create a MIDI track: you will see a grid where every note is a rectangle. This is the piano roll. Down the left side is a keyboard turned on its side: the higher the row, the higher the note. Time runs from left to right. The length of a rectangle is the note value.

Compare it with the staff above. Each quarter here is a rectangle one beat long, from one thin line to the next. In a DAW the grid is usually divided more finely, into sixteenths: a quarter takes four cells, the half note at the end eight, and the dotted quarter six, exactly a beat and a half. A piano roll needs no dot: it simply draws the length. The thin vertical lines are beats, the thick ones are bar lines, and the numbers along the top are bar numbers.

You can edit the piano roll. Drag the right edge of any note to make it longer or shorter. Drag a note to change where it starts or how high it is. Click an empty cell to add a note, double-click a note to delete it. Make the next-to-last note an ordinary quarter and listen: you get that "wrong" second version from the start of the chapter.

The name does not come from computers. Long before DAWs, music was stored on long paper rolls full of holes, and a mechanical piano played them by itself.

Here is a roll like that. Press "Run the roll": the paper moves down across the tracker bar, and each hole sounds as it passes over until it runs out. You can punch holes of your own: click the paper to make a hole of the chosen length, click a hole to tape it over. Then press "Turn it as in a DAW".

The roll turns, and you get a piano roll: the same rectangles, only now time runs to the right and pitch runs up. On a Pianola roll the low notes were on the left, and time ran from bottom to top, towards the tracker bar. A DAW lays the picture on its side so that it reads from left to right, like a line of text. The Speed knob does what the Pianola's tempo lever did: the holes stay the same, only the speed at which they pass changes.

One rhythm, three ways

In a DAW the same rhythm can appear in three views. Notes on a staff, where the shape of the symbol shows the length. The piano roll, where the size of the rectangle shows it. And a third one we have not seen yet: the step grid of a drum machine.

A step grid splits a bar into sixteen cells. A cell that is switched on means a sound starts here. How long it lasts the grid does not store, and for drums there is no need: a drum sounds short anyway. Here is the last bar of the "Ode" in such a grid: a rimshot marks where each note starts, and a kick sits on every beat.

The hits fall on the first, seventh and ninth cells. The dotted quarter shows up only as a gap of six cells before the next hit. The grid stores the least, but it is the easiest place to put in a rhythm with your finger.

Now all three views at once. This is the "Ode to Joy" again, four bars. Edit any view and the others change with it. In the piano roll, drag the edges of the notes. On the staff, pick a note and split it in two or join it with the next. In the step grid, switch on a cell inside a long note and the note is cut there; switch off the start of a note and it joins the one before.

Try a few experiments. Split the half note at the end in two: a new hit appears in the grid, and the staff shows two quarters instead of a half. Switch off the grid cell of the second note in the first bar: two quarters merge into a half, and the piano roll shows one long rectangle where there were two. Switch on a cell in the middle of a quarter and you get two eighths. Three views are three languages telling the same story. Notation is quickest to read, the piano roll is the most precise to edit, and the grid is the easiest for putting in hits.

Play the "Ode" from the page, now that you have seen its rhythm three times over. The first two bars are a warm-up, and the second rhythm has that dotted note.

Note values by ear

Rhythmic dictation works the other way round: you hear a rhythm and choose how it is written. This matters if you work out music by ear, or want to get a tune that is running round your head into a DAW. First with eighths, on a single note.

Now it gets harder: the rhythm hides inside a melody. You hear snippets of well-known tunes, and you pick the written rhythm of each. The pitches are a distraction, so listen only for where the sound is held and where it changes quickly. The names of the tunes appear after you answer.

In a DAW piano roll with the usual grid, a note takes up eight cells. What note value is it?

A half note An eighth note A whole note

One cell is a sixteenth, four cells a quarter, eight a half, sixteen a whole. An eighth takes two cells. The "eighth" in its name means an eighth of a whole note, not eight cells.

Dictation is among the trainers too: the first level has quarters and halves, the second adds eighths.

Note values in the Notebook

Until now the Notebook remembered which notes you played, but not how long they were meant to last. Time to fix that. If you recorded a tune in chapter 3, its notes are already here: the Notebook guessed their values from how long you held the keys, and it has most likely gone wrong somewhere, because live playing is uneven. If the Notebook is empty, the notes of the "Ode to Joy" stand in for yours, all quarters for now.

Pick a note value and tap the notes. Below you can see whether the bars are full. When everything adds up, save the tune to the Notebook.

Try to rebuild the rhythm of the "Ode" from memory. There is no dotted quarter in the palette, since dots arrive in chapter 8. Make the thirteenth note a half, the fourteenth an eighth and the last one a half: the bar stops adding up, and the check shows which note crossed the line. Or make up a rhythm of your own for your own notes: short notes speed a tune up, long ones give it room to breathe, and a long last note sounds like the full stop at the end of a sentence.

Next

Now you know the note values from the whole to the sixteenth, and you understand that they are ratios, with the seconds set by the tempo. You can build full bars in 4/4, tap a rhythm from the page and hold a note on a key for as long as it lasts. The piano roll of any DAW reads just like a staff: a rectangle of eight cells is a half note, of four a quarter.

But in all our rhythms the sound never stopped for an instant: every note lasted until the next one began. Music also falls silent, and silence has to be measured too. And not all music goes in fours: a waltz is counted in three, and it will not fit into a 4/4 box. Rests, dots and other time signatures are in chapter 8.

The Notebook's notes now have values, and the tune shows up in a piano roll: you can stretch the notes, move them and check them against the grid. Chapter 8 adds rests and a choice of time signature.