How to count the duration of a note. How to explain to the child the length of notes. Notation of the duration of notes

Rhythm is the basis of musical literacy, the theory of this art form. In order to understand what a rhythm is, how it is considered and how to adhere to it, it is important to be able to determine the duration of notes and pauses, without which even the most brilliant music would be a monotonous repetition of sounds devoid of emotions, shades and feelings. Consider this section of the solfeggio in more detail, from the very beginning to the end.

The basis of the foundations of musical theory

Almost every person in his time in one degree or another studied music. Someone went purposefully to a music school, someone took private lessons from teachers. Most children receive basic knowledge in general education schools, where the teacher tells how to count to the music, beat his hand in time, pause. Therefore, almost everyone at the moment understands what the duration of a note is, how this value can vary and what it depends on. Someone understood this better, others could not get into the shares at all. Therefore, if in your childhood you did not have problems with rhythm, and music lessons seemed to you an interesting and exciting pastime, then in this article you will find many interesting and, possibly, discover a new talent. It should be noted that this material can also become your textbook in the process of teaching the child music.

General concepts in this section

In order to make it clearer to every reader what it is and how it is applied in practice, and most importantly, how it interacts with music, we will consider the basic concepts and their meanings:

• Rhythm - the alternation of weak and strong shares, which are inherent in every musical form. This is a kind of organization of sounds and their combinations.
• Size - the sequence of strokes that divides any work into equal time intervals. We call these intervals the shares.
• The tempo is the speed of the very strokes that the metronome makes - the device most often used in music. With its help, the speed of the performance of a work is determined.

The duration of a note is a concept that contains all three of the above terms. Based on the type of note written in the book, you can determine its size. And now we come to the most interesting: what are the notes, what is the duration of each sound, how they are indicated in the letter and how to read them? The answers to all these and many other questions are listed below.

Visualize the pictures

The first thing to understand when studying music is the division of the duration of sounds. The starting point for us is the duration of the whole note, since it is the entire length of the soundtrack from the whole scale. The whole note is divided into halves, or half-lengths. In one whole note, there are two halves, which, in turn, are also divided in half, thus forming quarters, or quarter-lengths. It turns out that in one half note - two quarters, and in one whole - four. So this division, a multiple of four, can occur infinitely. Quartets are divided into eight, the ones into sixteenth, then the thirty second, sixty-fourth, and so on. Proceeding from this, we come to the conclusion that for the time that one whole note lasts, eight eight-eighths or sixteen sixteenth durations can sound, which ultimately affects the virtuosity and technicality of a particular work.

How to explain the duration of notes to a child

Such a scheme, of course, is understandable to every adult person, but thoroughly it can not be grasped by a child who is not familiar with mathematics, which does not yet have such a rich imagination and a large stock of knowledge. But there is a way that can make the baby understand this part of the musical theory, and he is called "pie division". Imagine that we have a whole cake that has a certain weight. It is a whole note that lasts a certain amount of time. When we cut the pie into two halves, their total weight does not change, and they occupy the same area. In the role of analogy half-lengths appear. Now each of the halves is cut in half, we get quarters. We get four quarters, each of which can be divided into two eighths. And next time try to do it differently: cut the cake in half, divide one half into two parts (quarters), and leave the other one whole. So you will have a half and two quarters, that is, three parts, but one of them is large, and the other two are her halves.

Duration of note and beat

All musical sounds, as you know, are combined in cycles, the content of which, in turn, depends on the size. This indicator can have the following names: four quarters, two quarters, five quarters and so on. It is the size that allows us to understand how to count the lengths of notes, how many different parts can be in the cycle. The basis of the size is taken to take one quarter, which can be repeated two, three, four or more times. In the first case, this will be a size of 2/4 (two quarters), 3/4, 4/4, 5/4 (five quarters is one of the most interesting and difficult to perform). If we choose, say, 4/4, this means that in one bar there can be placed either four quarters or two halves, or one whole note. Also, there may be any other equity combinations, which in total will represent four quarters. Less often in the works you can find the sizes based on the eighth note. Most often the second indicator is a multiple of three, that is, we get a size of 3/8 (three eighths), 6/8 and so on.

Notation of the duration of notes

Now we come to how to decipher the printed note, how to determine the appearance of its duration. So, this musical sign (it can be said that he is the main one in this kind of art) always has a head, that is, a foundation. To it can be applied calm, and to calmness - a tail. How does this affect the duration? So, the whole note, that is, the largest, is a transparent (unshaded) semicircle without other details. Half durations are also not shaded, but they are attributed to stitches-sticks that point upwards (for those notes that are located at the bottom of the mill) or down (for higher sounds). Quartos also have a calm, but still their heads are completely shaded. To eight, we draw a calm, to the calmness - a tail, and the very basis of the note is painted over. As for notes of lesser duration, they are all portrayed as eighth, only they have double, triple, quadruple tails.

Rhythm, size and tempo of the music

As you have already understood, the duration of a note is the foundation of the foundations, without understanding which it is impossible to further study and understand music. The technicality of any work depends on what durations it consists of and at what speed they need to be played. It is for these indicators that professionals recognize the style of various classical composers. For example, for JS Bach it was characteristic to write more lengthy works (although met and rather fast), consisting of half and quarter parts, which should be performed at a slow pace. F. Chopin also wrote plays consisting of eighth and sixteenth (often and of thirty-second), for which a very fast tempo was characteristic.