Understanding Rhythm
The last thing we'll be talking about is Ryhthm! Rythm is the part of music that gets your body moving. It's essentially just the timing in which we hit the notes. You can play
music fast, slow, or in varying speeds. However, you will usually decide upon a speed and stick with that for the entirety of the song. The underlying speed of the song is usually refered to
as the BPM or Beats Per Minute. This is a number that can quickly give you an idea of how fast the song should be played. Once you have the speed of the song figured out the next thing to
think about would be the general feel or timing of the song. Music can be played in many different time signatures but most of the music we are used to hearing is in 4/4 or 3/4.
4/4 just means that there are 4 beats in a measure. When looking at a musical stave it will be divided and counted depending on the time signature chosen.
The above image showed basic quarter notes. The timing was 4/4 so we were able to divide both measures 4 times using quarter notes. If we were to only want to play 1 note per measure
and have a pause of 3 beats following it would look like this:
The above examples showed quarter notes and whole notes. There are also, half notes, eight notes, and sixteenths. The are named depending on how
they divide the measure. We also have something called a rest which means to not play anything during that beat. All of these differnt note sizes serve to help you
understand how long you should hold the note for. This can seem confusing at first but after looking at a few simple songs and paying attention to how long notes are being held
this concept will start to fall into place. The most important thing is to start off slow and easy and work your way up to more intricate songs. Once you really have a good idea of rhythm
you can do something like the example below! He is using a mixture of all the different notes and rests.