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Notes Smaller than a Beat--Eight Notes
If you sing most any song while tapping your foot, you will notice that often you sing more than one note between successive taps of your foot. To notate this shorter note values, flags are added to the stem of quarter notes.
| If there are two notes in a single beat (1/8 notes), one flag is added to each stem. |  |
Because it takes 2 eight notes to complete a beat eighth notes are often "beamed" together to show the beat they share. In this case the flags are replaced by a "beam" that connects the two stems. |  |
It takes four sets of eighth notes (8) to fill up a whole measure of 4/4 time. Notice how they are beamed together to show the four beats that make up a measure in 4/4 time.
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Sixteenth Notes
Eighth notes can be divided further into two parts creating sixteenth notes which have two flags on their stems.
| Every beat can have 4 sixteenth notes. | |
Because it takes 4 sixteenth notes to complete a beat, they are often "beamed" together to show the beat they share. In this case, the flags are replaced by a double beam that connects the two stems to show that they are sixteenth notes and not merely eighth notes. |
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It takes four sets of sixteenth notes (16) to fill up a whole measure of 4/4 time. Notice that they are beamed to show the four beats in the 4/4 measure.
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Please continue with the next section of this lesson.
2.1 The Time Signature & The Measure » 2.2 Notes Larger Than A Beat
» 2.3 Time Signature Revisited
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