How to Read Sheet Music: Beats, Measures and Time Signatures

This is an authorized transmission from the ghost of Herr Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to his beloved apprentice, you.

You're addicted to learning how to read sheet music. Good, good. Let me enable you some more.

You know the names of notes. You know how to find those notes on the piano. You must be feeling pretty good about yourself. But without knowing how long to hold each key after you press it, your music still sounds like a cat walking across a piano.

You've come to the right place.

By the end of this guide, you will see the rhythm. People will see that you can see it in your eyes. They might be intimidated by your sheet music prowess. If they cross the street, that's definitely what it is.

Sheet music is a map of pitches but also a map of time and rhythm. In sheet music, note and rest (silence) durations are measured NOT in seconds but in beats.

The longest note in music is the whole note. Other notes are defined as fractions of a whole note. Get ready for some really easy math:

1 whole note or rest = 2 half notes or rests = 4 quarter notes or rests = 8 eighth notes or rests = 16 sixteenth notes or rests

A measure is a bite sized chunk of a few beats between two vertical lines on the staff. Sheet music is chopped up into measures for easy digestion and navigation, and measures are frequently numbered and labeled on the page.

Here are the first two measures of a (brilliant) piece of music you'll instantly recognize:

Remember the 4⁄4 time signature from the previous lesson? It's there to tell you two things:

• The top number: how many beats are in each measure
• The bottom number: what type of note or rest gets one beat

So 4⁄4 translates to: each measure has 4 beats, a quarter note gets a beat.

4⁄4 is the most common time signature, but you likely know pieces in 3⁄4 (waltz time) and others.

The 5 measures below have one note each in the right hand, while the left hand rests. First listen to how the held duration changes.

I'll be honest with you, apprentice, I hate rests, it's like begging for someone else to start playing. I've eliminated the rests below! We shall play all the time.

Learn to recognize the notes and rests. Then try to play them. They're all middle C's so you can focus solely on the rhythm.

• Measure 1: one whole note, drawn as an empty "circle". Hold it for 4 beats.
• Measure 2: two half notes, drawn like whole notes with a stem. Hold each for 2 beats.
• Measure 3: four quarter notes, drawn like half notes, but with the circle filled in. Hold each for 1 beat.
• Measure 4: eight eighth notes, drawn like quarter notes with a ponytail, or a single line connecting them at the top when beamed. Play two per beat. If you thought beats were indivisible like atoms, start panicking, because atoms are most definitely divisible, just like beats.
• Measure 5: sixteen sixteenth notes, drawn like quarter notes with two pony tails (see previous example), or a double line connecting them at the top when beamed, as above. Play four per beat, then fall off your chair and see your doctor for a bionic wrist.

Technically there are 32nd notes and 64th notes, but only bees can play them.

Sometimes you'll see a dot next to a note. A dot increases a note's duration by half of its regular value. For example:

• Dotted half note: A half note (2 beats) + half of that (1 beat) = 3 beats
• Dotted quarter note: A quarter note (1 beat) + half of that (1/2 beat) = 1.5 beats

Everybody loves dotted notes these days. Recognize this riff?

Notice a few things:

• The time signature is 3⁄4, so each measure has 3 quarter note beats.
• The left hand is playing dotted half notes, which are exactly 3 quarter notes long
• It's getting a littler harder to perceive the relative durations of notes in falling notes mode
• The eighth notes are "beamed" in groups of two

Remember when I said a whole note was the longest note in music? Lies. You can probably already think of one counterexample: a dotted whole note (4 beats + 2 beats = 6 beats). But what if we need something even longer? What if this is the last note of the opera and we need to hold it until everyone has safely left the theater, even the old people?

In that case we can tie notes together with a piece of string, as below. Play the whole note, hold it for 4 beats, then continue holding it for the first beat of the 2nd measure. Then play the remaining quarter notes normally.

Try to identify the rhythm of the notes below before you listen to the piece. No pressure, but if you don't recognize this song...

You now understand the time dimension and are an expert in general musical relativity. You can identify note and rest durations and understand time signatures. With practice, you'll start to see the rhythm.

Next: Now that you can read both pitch and rhythm, you can try playing some simple pieces.