In all printed music you will find vertical lines dividing the stave as illustrated below.
Each of the separate segments thus created by the bar lines are call BARS.
The notes written between any two bar lines make up what is known as a Bar of Music.? A bar is simply a small section of the whole piece the same as a sentence is a small section of a paragraph.? It doesn't matter if some bar lines are further apart than others, that is only a matter of convenience in writing some pieces of music.? However,? each bar is equal in time value.?
The purpose of a bar is to make notes easy to follow by dividing them into small sections of equal value, or in other words, of the same number of counts.? Bars are also referred to as measures
Here is an example to make this clear.
Each bar has 3 counts made up like this.
Bar 1.? 2 counts for a minim plus 1 count for a crotchet?? = 3
Bar 2.? 3 crotchets at 1 count each????????????????????????????????? =? 3
Bar 3.? 2 quavers at half a count each plus 2 crotchets?? =? 3
?Bar 4.? same as bar 1.???????????????????????????????????????????????????? =? 3
Now try playing the 4 bars to the correct count.? You can find the notes from your fret board chart if need be but you should by now know what the notes are.
So far we have dealt with only 3 beats to the bar and much of your favorite music will have more than 3 beats.? Some may have only 2 beats.? You will learn shortly how to tell at a glance how many beats to the bar a particular piece of music has and how to count the beats.
