Music Magic: Online Piano Lessons/Tutor

Lesson #2: Basic Rhythm

Musica

Hello, and welcome! Congratulations on your graduation from the introduction lesson. I told you you could make it. Even though it was a bit boring. I know, I know, but we need to get those things straight, especially if you're new to the web and computing.

Anyway, this is Musica again...your faithful, intelligent, artistic, humorous (stop sneering) and last but not least, musical teacher and web companion. But, enough about myself, I'm digressing. This lesson will teach you basic rhythm skills. You see, music, whether it be rock, classical, pop or even rap is based in the premise of rhythm. How else do you think those big guys in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra keep together? It's rhythm. Rhythm is extremely important in music. The difference between music and noise is that music is organized and noise is just random. This is one reason why music is always said to be mathematical.

Music, is always separated into little sections called measures. Look at the following picture of several measures.

You see how it is separated into four even sections? These are called measures. Within each of these sections are supposed to be notes, telling the musician what notes to play (in terms of intonation), how long to play them and when to play them. Within each of these measures are consistent number of beats. That is, each measure has the same number of beats. However, different pieces of music may be different number of beats. Sometimes, the same piece of music may be separated into two different parts with each measure getting different number of beats.

How then does a musician know the number of beats in a measure? Well, one way is to count the number of beats in a measure. But this may be a tedious thing for a musician to do each and every time they need to read music. That's why nearly all sheets of music have a time signature.