From printed music we observe some important facts all at once.? We can recognize the note name by it's position on the stave and can therefore find it on the fret board.? And we can tell by the shape of the note what it's value is and therefore how many beats, or counts we give it before taking our finger of and passing to the next note.
?The four main types of notes.
The semibreve is often referred to as a whole note. The minim a half note.? The crotchet a quarter note and the quaver an eight note.
The stem and tails on notes can point up or down without it changing it's value.? In fact the only reason stems point up or down is to make the written music look neater.? Usually notes on the lower part of the stave point up and those on the upper part of the stave point down.? Stems going up are always drawn on the right hand side of the note and stems going down are always drawn on the left hand side of the note.
Let's just compare the 4 note values which we have just learnt
A SEMIBREVE equals four beats or counts and a MINIM equals two beats or counts.? It follows that two minims are needed to equal the value of one semibreve.
The CROTCHET equals one beat or count, so it follows that two crotchets are needed to equal the value of one minim.
The QUAVER equals half of one beat or count.? Therefore two quavers are needed to equal the value of one crotchet.
There is no mystery to note values.? Just remember:
??????????????????????????????????????????????? SEMIBREVE?? =?? 4 COUNTS.
??????????????????????????????????????????????? MINIM???????????? =?? 2 COUNTS.
??????????????????????????????????????????????? CROTCHET??? =?? 1 COUNT.
??????????????????????????????????????????????? QUAVER???????? =?? HALF A COUNT.
