Once you see how note duration works, music becomes a cake walk. In fact, duration symbols can be rearranged into all sorts of patterns, so our options are wide open. We can mix quarter notes and half notes … or combine eighth notes with sixteenth notes … or play just whole notes … etc. The possibilities are endless.
A great example of how we can combine notes shows up in that classic melody, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” In this song, quarter notes and half notes are used to fill each measure. You see, while most of the beats are shown using quarter notes, a couple of the notes get two beats each. (And that’s why the words “star” and “are” are written as half notes). These different notes are used together to make the melody flow forward in a more interesting way.
In every song, musicians use what’s called a “time signature.” And it gives us a heads up on which notes to include and how many beats to count. For example, in the song “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” the time signature is placed next to the clef sign on the staff … looking like a pair of “fours” stacked on top of each other.
In a nutshell, the time signature works like this … the top number tells us how many beats are in each measure, while the bottom number tells us how long each beat lasts. So in our example here, there are four beats in each measure (top number) … while each beat lasts for just a quarter note of time (bottom number).
It’s like we’ve taken the “1/4” of the quarter note and combined with the 4 beats of the measure … to come up with the “4/4” time signature. Get it?
The 4/4 time signature is (by far) the most popular in music. And you’ll see it in a lot of the songs you play. In fact, it’s so common that many musicians simply call it “common time” … and replace the 4/4 time signature with a little “c” symbol (which stands for “common time”—not the C note.)
To see what I mean, check out the following staves. Both symbols below tell us that every measure is filled with four quarter note beats. In other words, the 4/4 time signature and the “c” sign illustrate the very same thing.
Of course, whichever symbol is used, the time signature of a song is good to know. And, again, that’s because it tells us two important things:
- How many beats are in each measure (top number), and
- How long each beat lasts (bottom number)
This means the song “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” has four beats in each measure. And that every beat gets only one quarter note count.
The nice thing about time signatures is that they’re very flexible. Which means we can always combine different types of notes in a measure. We just have to make sure that each measure includes the right number of beats.
For example, in our melody “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” we have to be careful not to include any notes that add up to more or less than four beats per measure. It’s simple, really. To see what I mean, let’s go through this same melody once again … one measure at a time:
In every measure, the notes add up to four beats … which means we are right on track. We’ve followed the time signature, and everything sounds right.
In the end, time signatures are useful because they establish the flow of a song. And as long as the notes in each measure total the number of beats allowed by the time signature, we can create all sorts of cool patterns. For example, check out the following patterns of 4/4 time. As you play (and count) each measure, you’ll get a good feel for how things work.
Seriously … who knew there were so many ways to play four simple beats?
