This blog post focuses on how to interpret whole note, quarter note, eighth notes and sixteenth notes along with rests. To understand this better, we learn to count out different notes and use the analogy of a pizza.

Notes

1. Whole Note: In music terms, notes and rests work in a similar fashion. The first note is the whole note which is counted by clapping your hands on the 1st note and counting the rest of the notes as is. So, clap on 1 in 1-2-3-4 and repeat it a few times till you feel comfortable.
2. Half Note: A half-note is equal to two counts and two half-notes would be a whole note. If you were to count a half-note, clap on 1 and 3 in 1-2-3-4. Practise it a few more times till you get the hang of it.
3. Quarter Note: A quarter note is played at every single count of 1-2-3-4. Therefore, to count this, clap on every note, that is, on 1, 2, 3 and 4.
4. Eighth Note: By dividing a whole note into 8 parts, we get the eighth note, which is 1 out of 8. To count this, you must get comfortable with the addition of & in music terms. Therefore, an eighth note would be 1-&-2-&-3-&-4-&.
5. Sixteenth Note: Taking an eighth note and dividing it equally into two parts is a sixteenth note, which is counted as 1-e-&-a-2-e-&-a-3-e-&-a-4-e-&-a.
6. Thirty-Second Note: An additional note, as you might have guessed is the 32nd notes. These are notes when you divide the 16th Notes into two equal parts. The counting remains the same, however, in this case, you count every alternate note.

Here is a visual representation of a rhythmic sheet:

Rests

Every one of us deserves rest, don’t you think? A busy life can seem cluttered without any rest. Similarly, in music, resting notes is a great way to add an element of surprise or groove. In simple terms, rests are nothing but resting notes or not counting those notes. (Please note that the tempo or the time value remains the same)

Let’s take an example of the quarter note (1-2-3-4). Now, if we were to rest the 3rd note in a quarter note, we would count that by clapping 1, 2 and 4 and resting the 3.

In drums, every beat or a song you play would be a combination of notes or rests. Below is an illustration of how rests are represented for all the four notes we have learnt in this lesson.

Before playing any drum beat on your own, it is important that you get comfortable differentiating notes. In the next blog post, we explore warmups in drums – especially the pyramid warmup structure.