Note lengths and rests

How long is a note?

Where a note sits tells you which note to play. Its shape tells you how long to hold it, counted in beats.

A whole note (an empty oval) lasts 4 beats. A half note (an empty oval with a stem) lasts 2. A quarter note (filled in, with a stem) lasts 1 beat. An eighth note adds a flag and lasts half a beat; a sixteenth has two flags and lasts a quarter of a beat. In real sheet music, eighths and sixteenths next to each other are often joined by a thick bar called a beam, instead of flags.

A dot after a note makes it half as long again: a dotted half note is 2 + 1 = 3 beats.

Rests, bars and counting

Silence is part of music too. Rests show when not to play, and each note length has a rest that lasts just as long: a whole rest hangs below a line, a half rest sits on top of one, and a quarter rest looks like a squiggle.

The two numbers at the start are the time signature. 4/4 means 4 beats in every bar, each one a quarter note long. Bar lines split the music into those bars.

Musicians count the beats out loud: “1, 2, 3, 4”, adding “&” for the half-beats in between (“1 & 2 &”), and “e” and “a” for the sixteenths (“1 e & a”). The builder below writes the count under every note.

Build a rhythm

Try an example and press Play to hear it with a click on every beat, counting along. Then press Clear and build your own two bars: the buttons only let you add a length that still fits in the bar.

Quick quiz