Lesson #040, Rhythm and Counting III

Hi Everyone,

Lets discuss another note used in music. The Whole note. The Whole note in 4/4 time is equal to 4 beats. We know that in 4/4 time that a measure has 4 beats associated with it. Those beats being a 1/4 note. Remember the bottom number is a 1/4 note, or one fourth of the pie. So now if we play only the Whole note in one measure we can only play the Whole note once, because it has fours beats ... or you can think of it as being the whole pie.

We also have to play the Whole note on the count of 1. Remember if we count to four....... 1 2 3 4......that being one measure, we have to start on 1 with the Whole note because just playing that one note has 4 beats associated with it. We can't use the Whole note starting on 2 because then the count would be:

1 2 (o) 3 4 5

I'm using the letter o to represent a Whole note under the number 2. So.... we cant fit a Whole note into one measure unless we play it on the number 1 in the count of 4.

David