What is Rhythm, Time and Notation in Music?

In this first post in our “Music Theory” lesson series we’re going to go over how time in music works.

What’s a bar? What’s a beat?

How do you “count” in music?

We’ll answer all these questions right here in this guide on musical rhythm and time.

Time – BPM and Tempo

All music follows what’s called a tempo and a time signature.

The tempo of a song is how fast it moves forward. It’s described in beats – or a single unit of musical time – per minute (beats per minute, i.e. BPM).

So for something with a tempo of 60 BPM you would count one beat every second. 

A tempo of 120 BPM would be two beats every second, and so on. The total length of a song is determined by the tempo and the number of “measures” or “bars” in a song.

A measure or bar is a single phrase of music that includes a certain number of beats or notes. For example, there may be 32 measures (phrases or “bars”) in a song and each measure may have 4 beats/notes in it.

If the song gets played at 140 beats per minute, it’d be less than one minute of music.

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Rhythm

The rhythm of a song or piece of music is all about how it flows across time.

It is determined by time signatures and the types of notes/beats used in each measure.  By types of notes I mean how short or long the notes/beats used are. There are a few different types of notes that can be played, regardless of the type of instrument you’re playing.

Here’s a list:

• Whole Notes (1)
• Half Notes (1/2)
• Quarter Notes (1/4)
• Eighth Notes (1/8)
• Sixteenth Notes (1/16)

You also have thirty-second (1/32) and sixty-fourth (1/64) notes but those are rarely seen or used, except in very difficult or advanced pieces of music.

Now let’s talk about how these types of notes are used and organized with time signatures.

Time Signatures

A time signature is a measurement that tells you how many beats are in a measure. A time signature is shown at the beginning of a piece of music (if you’re reading sheet music). It normally looks like a fraction like you learned in school – for example, 4/4

The top number is the number of beats that are in each measure of music – in this case 4. So for every measure you would count out 4 beats – 1, 2, 3, 4; 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on.

The bottom number is used to describe which type of note (from above) actually gets 1 full count.

Since our example is 4/4 time this means that a quarter note (1/4) gets one full count. So you could fit 4 quarter notes, 2 half notes or 8 eighth notes in one measure.

If the time signature was 4/8 it would mean that an eighth note (1/8) would get one full count in a measure of 4 beats. You could fit 4 eighth notes, 2 quarter notes or 1 half note in a measure of music. If the time signature is 3/4, there would only be 3 beats per measure, but a quarter note would get 1 full beat.

Most of the popular music you’ll come across will be in a time signature of 4/4. This is also known as common time. I’m a producer and musician as well so for this blog, I’ll probably only (or mostly) deal with 4/4 time.

That’s it for the basics of how musical rhythm works. Some of the stuff on this page may have gone over your head, especially with timing and note types. Another great resource to learn more about this type of music theory is MusicTheory.net.

Their lessons are dope and I really recommend checking them out at some point.

Next up, you should learn about music notes, scales and modes – read more.