LESSON 2: counting quarter notes

This lesson is going to teach you to count quarter notes in 4/4 time. This is the basics, the foundation, to learning the eighth notes, eighth note triplets, sixteenth notes, sixteenth note triplets, and 32nd notes.

Now starting at the first exercise of sheet music, there are four quarter notes in one measure. So, each quarter note is taking 1/4 or one quarter of the measure. The counts are on the top of each note. So, you just count : one, two, three, four (and then going back again to one at the end of the measure).




1)
















The second diagram has two measures of quarter notes. You can tell a measure apart by the vertical line which shows you where it begins and ends. Counting these quarter notes are as simple as counting one, two, three, four out loud and then restarting at each measure, as i mentioned above. Now, for this next example you would count both measures as: one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.




2)

The third exercise has got four measures of quarter notes. This is almost the same as the other exercises, only that the notes are indicating the various drum set sounds. As I explained in lesson one, the notes in there various vertical places represent the different sounds (parts) of a drum kit.

Even though these notes are placed differently on the staff, they are still quarter notes. A quarter note is a solid note (meaning one in which the circle in the middle is filled) in the measure with a single stem (line) coming up from it.  

3)

Go over this a couple times until it all makes sense to you, until you FULLY understand it. The next lesson will incorporate quarter and eighth notes to help you to count and get used to both.