Lesson 5: 音符時值 (Note duration)

This lesson will teach you about the duration (or length) of different notes. It is really important to know how long each note lasts, because these notes are the building blocks of all songs! If you do not know how long each note last, you will not be able to read the melody in the right rhythm.

Each note that looks different has a different duration in music. The first note presented is called the whole note (全音符):

The whole note usually represents 4 beats. Cases where a whole note does not represent 4 beats will be discussed in later lessons. The whole note is also known as the semibreve.

The second note presented is called the half note (二分音符):

The half note looks like a whole note with a stem attached to its side. Since a half note is literally half of the whole note, it usually represents 2 beats.

As you may guess, the next note that is presented is called the quarter note (四分音符):

The quarter note looks like the half note, but with a solid note head. The quarter note usually represents 1 beat.

If this keeps going. the next note presented would be the eighth note (八分音符):

The eighth note looks like the quarter note with a tail at the end of the stem. It usually represents half a beat.

Is there a sixteenth note (十六分音符)? YES! And it is written by simply adding an additional tail to the eighth note. So, the sixteenth note has two tails at the end of the stem as follows.

As you can see, each time a tail is added to the note, its duration is halved. Therefore, you can create thirty-second note (三十二分音符), sixty-fourth note (六十四分音符), even hundred twenty-eighth note (一百二十八分音符) by adding a tail each time you half a note. However, for the practical purpose of playing the piano for worship purposes, we almost never see anything that is thirty-second note or shorter (thank goodness!).

If all these notes seem overwhelming, just remember that they are basically math equations. In this math system, the whole note is 1, and everything else is a fraction of the whole note. Thus, as long as you can remember the name, you can remember its duration:

whole note = 2 x half (1/2) notes = 4 x quarter (1/4) notes = 8 x eighth (1/8) notes = 16 x sixteenth (1/16) notes... etc.

From now on, you should be able to calculate how many beats are there in the example below:

It is 2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1 = 4 beats.

Questions you should be able to answer at the end of this lesson:

1. Do you know how to write all the notes presented in this lesson?
2. Can you name all the different notes at sight?
3. Do you know the relative duration of all the different notes? (e.g. how many half notes equal to a whole note?)
4. Can you calculate the total duration of a string of notes?