How to Read Extended Notes in Music

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Eric Williams and I am here to tell you about reading music. When I was playing the 3/4 meter example on the piano, I finished off with the note where I played one single note on the piano and it lasted for 3 beats. The question may arise, how do you find a note that is equal to 3 beats? So far we know that quarter notes are equal to 1 beat, we know that half notes are equal to 2 beats and we know that a whole note is equal to 4. Where did we come up with this magical 3 kind of thing? Well this is what it would look like on manuscript paper. This is a half note which we already know and love as a 2 beat note but it has a dot after it. In this case, the dot is adding one more beat to the value of that note. So the rhythm of that note ends up being 3 beats. You have a dotted half and equals 1, 2, 3 but there is a little bit more that can be said about this dot. Whenever I explain this to students they automatically assume that anytime there is a dot after any given note, that adds 1 beat to the note. I wish it were easy and that simple but it's really not. In this case, the dot really does equal 1 beat but that is only because a dot is supposed to equal half of whatever this note is already valued at. Since this is a half note equal to 2 beats, the fact that the dot is worth half of that comes out to perfect 1 more beat. If you had something bazaar like a quarter note with a dot after it, okay. Here's where it gets dicey. If you had a quarter note with a dot after it, the only thing that would happen is that the dot is worth half the value of a quarter so what is one-half of a quarter; an eighth. So in cases a dot is only worth an eighth of a beat. You need to know that for future reference. In this case, our dotted half note has been expanded to equal 3 beats and everybody is happy. "