Let's turn now to ties and dots.
Rhythms don't always
occupy complete beats or
regular subdivisions, sometimes we
want to extend the duration of a note.
We can do this by tying
one note to another,
as you can see on your screen now.
That tie or line,
connecting the crotchet to the quaver,
means that the note you are now going
to play is one and a half beats long,
rather than two separate notes of
one beat and then half a beat.
So we're not playing the note twice now,
rather we're extending the duration
by tying the two together.
In this simple case of a quarter
note tied to an eighth note,
we can use a dot to indicate
exactly the same duration.
The clue is in the fact
that the second tied note
is half the duration of the first.
If you see a note with a dot
immediately to its right, then this
means that the indicated duration is
extended by half its duration again.
So a dotted crotchet, or quarter note,
would last one and a half crotchets.
On the other hand,
you've got to be careful here.
A dot immediately above or below a note
is another matter altogether and
nothing to do with rhythm.
It indicates a staccato or
a detached type of note articulation.
Let's look at another example.
A dotted quaver or eighth note would
similarly last one and a half quavers.
So that would be the equivalent of
tying a quaver to a semiquaver, or
an eighth note to a sixteenth note.
[MUSIC]
Dotting can be further extended
by adding multiple dots.
Two dots would extend the duration of the
indicated note by half of that duration
and half of that duration again.
So a double dotted crotchet or
quarter note would actually be one and
three-quarter crotchets in length,
one plus half, plus a quarter.
Triple or even quadruple dotted notes also
exist, though they are a lot less common.
[MUSIC]
Another notational symbol related
to rhythm is the pause, or fermata.
When placed over any note or rhythm, this
symbol indicates an out of time pause.
The length of the pause is
determined by the musician, but
as a general rule of thumb, it's about
twice as long as the indicated duration.
Now when you're writing rhythms
yourself rather than just reading them,
you might ask yourself how to space them.
It would be reasonable to
assume that a crotchet or
quarter note takes up the horizontal
space of two quavers or eighth notes.
This is sometimes the case,
some composers even prefer it that way.
But most publishers tend to squash longer
durations into less horizontal space
than the requisite number
of shorter durations.
So you can adopt this approach
when writing yourselves.
The thing to bear in mind is that when
you're writing more than one part,
then coincident notes have
to vertically align so
that you can see which notes
will actually sound together.
