The Note Head is the circle, filled in or open, which
lies on a line or in a space. The Stem is the verticle
line extending from the note head. A Flag is the curved
line starting at the end of the stem and curving back toward the note head.
The direction of the flag is always to the right of the stem, regardless
of the direction of the stem.
The direction of the stem is dictated by its position on the staff. If the note head is on the third line or above, the stem direction is down. Any notes that are below the third line will have their stem extending upward. Two or more "flagged" notes can be combined into a beam. The direction of the stems for such a beam will be determined by the note which is farthest from the third line.
Note Values
Following are names of the various notes from largest to smallest. The breve is unfamiliar to many, but it is the the equivalent of two whole notes. Certainly there are smaller notes than the sixtyfourth note, but they are very uncommon.
As you can see by the graph below, two whole notes equal a breve; two half notes equal a whole note; two quarter notes equal a half note, etc. Also visible on the graph is the fact that three half notes equal a dotted whole note; three quarter notes equal a dotted half; three eighth notes equal a dotted quarter, etc.
For each note in the graph above there is an equivalent rest which has the same value as its corresponding note. The whole rest has the same value as the whole note; the quarter rest has the same value as the quarter note; the sixteenth rest has the same value as the sixteenth note, etc. Likewise the dotted half rest is equivalent in value to the dotted half note; the dotted eighth rest is equivalent to the dotted eighth note, etc. It should be noted that often a whole rest will represent rest for a whole measure, regardless of the required note durations for that measure.
Meter
The vast majority of our traditional music is organized into regular patterns of beats. These regular patterns consist of recurrences of two beats, three beats, or four beats. When the regular pulse is two beats, we label that Duple meter. Patterns of three beats are called Triple meter, and four beat patterns are Quadruple meter. In duple meter the first beat is a strong beat and the second is weak. In triple meter the first beat is strong and the second and third beats are weak. In quadruple meter the first is strong, second weak, third strong, and fourth weak.
Simple Meter
The beat is divided into 2 parts
In the time signature of a simple meter, the upper number directly indicates the number of beats per measure. e.g. in the middle measure above, 3 means three beats per measure. The lower number directly indicates the beat unit (the note that receives one beat). e.g. again in the middle measure above, 4 means a quarter note is the note value which receives one beat. For simple meter the number of beats per measure are usually 2, 3, or 4. The bottom number could be any number which represents a note value (16, 8, 4, 2, etc.) By implication, therefore, we can never have numbers like 3 or 6 for a bottom number, because there are no third notes or sixth notes.
2 means that there are two
beats per measure and the quarter note (4) receives one beat.
4
3 means that there
are three beats per measure and the sixteenth note receives one beat.
16
4 means that there
are four beats per measure and that the eighth note (8) receives one beat.
8