Chapter 3

Giving It a Rest

In This Chapter

Counting out the values of rests

Dotting rests to lengthen their breaks

Mixing up notes and rests

Sometimes the most important aspects of a conversation are the things that aren’t said. Likewise, many times the notes you don’t play make all the difference in a piece of music.

These silent “notes” are called, quite fittingly, rests. When you see a rest in a piece of music, you don’t have to do anything but continue counting out the beats during it. Rests are especially important when writing down your music for other people to read — and in reading other composers’ music — because rests make the rhythm of that piece of music even more precise than musical notes alone would.

Rests work particularly well with music for multiple instruments. Rests make it easy for a performer to count out the beats and keep time with the rest of the ensemble, even if the performer’s instrument doesn’t come into play until later in the performance. Likewise, in piano music, rests tell the left or right hand — or both — to stop playing in a piece.

Don’t let the name fool you. A rest in a piece of music is anything but nap time. If you don’t continue to steadily count through the rests, just as you do when you’re playing notes, your timing will be off and eventually the piece will fall apart.

Note: You may notice in this chapter that we’ve given two different names for the notes or rests mentioned — for example, quarter (crotchet) rest. The first name (quarter) is the common U.S. name for the rest, and the second name (crotchet) is the common U.K. name for the same rest. The U.K. names are also used in medieval music and in some classical circles. After this chapter, we only use the U.S. names for notes and rests, because the U.S. usage is more globally recognized.

Getting to Know the Rests

Think of rests as the spaces between words in a written sentence. If those spaces weren’t there, you’d just be stringing one long word together into gobbledygook.

Musical rests don’t get claps (or notes from instruments or voices). You just count them out in your head. Just remember to stop playing your instrument while you’re counting.

Figure 3-1 shows the relative values of rests, ranging from a whole (semibreve) rest at the top to the sixteenth (semiquaver) rests at the bottom. At the top is the whole (semibreve) rest, below it half (minim) rests, then quarter (crotchet) rests, eighth (quaver) rests, and sixteenth (semiquaver) rests. We discuss each of these rests in the following sections.

Figure 3-1: Each level of this tree of rests lasts as many beats as every other level.

Whole (semibreve) rests

Just like a whole (semibreve) note, a whole (semibreve) rest is worth four beats (in the most common time signature, 4/4; see Chapter 4 for all you need to know about time signatures). Look at Figure 3-2 for an example of a whole (semibreve) rest.

The whole (semibreve) rest looks like an upside-down hat. You can remember what this rest looks like by imagining it’s a hat that has been taken off and set down on a table, because this rest is a long one.

Figure 3-2: A whole (semibreve) rest looks like an upside-down hat.

Even better than a double whole (breve) note for the worn-out musician is the very rare double whole (breve) rest, which you can see in Figure 3-3. When you come across one of these, usually in 4/2 music, you don’t have to play anything for eight beats.

Figure 3-3: You’ll rarely encounter the double whole (breve) rest.

Half (minim) rests

If a whole (semibreve) rest is held for four beats, then a half (minim) rest is held for two beats. Half (minim) rests look like the one in Figure 3-4.

As do whole (semibreve) rests, half (minim) rests also look like hats. However, the half (minim) rest is right side up because the wearer didn’t have time to lay it down on a table.

Figure 3-4: The half (minim) rest lasts half as long as the whole (semibreve) rest.

Take a look at the notes and rest in Figure 3-5. If you were to count out this music in 4/4 time, it would sound like this:

CLAP two three four CLAP two REST two

Figure 3-5: A whole (semibreve) note, half (minim) note, and half (minim) rest.

Quarter (crotchet) rests

Divide a whole (semibreve) rest by four or a half (minim) rest by two, and you get a quarter (crotchet) rest. A quarter (crotchet) rest, shown in Figure 3-6, lasts one-quarter as long as a whole (semibreve) rest.

Figure 3-6: A quarter (crotchet) rest, written like a kind of squiggle, is like a silent quarter (crotchet) note.

Figure 3-7 shows a whole (semibreve) note and a half (minim) note separated by two quarter (crotchet) rests. You would clap out the music in Figure 3-7 as follows:

CLAP two three four REST REST CLAP two

Figure 3-7: Two quarter (crotchet) rests tucked between notes.

Eighth (quaver) rests and beyond

Eighth (quaver) rests, sixteenth (semiquaver) rests, and thirty-second (demisemiquaver) rests are easy to recognize because they all have little curlicue flags, a little bit like their note counterparts, as we explain in Chapter 2. Here’s the lowdown on the different numbers of flags each note and rest has:

One flag: Eighth (quaver) note and eighth (quaver) rest; see Figure 3-8

Two flags: Sixteenth (semiquaver) note and sixteenth (semiquaver) rest; see Figure 3-9

Three flags: Thirty-second (demisemiquaver) note and thirty-second (demisemiquaver) rest; see Figure 3-10

Figure 3-8: An eighth (quaver) rest has a stem and one curly flag.

As you may imagine, eighth (quaver) rests can be as tricky to count out as their note equivalents (see Chapter 2 for more on counting notes). An eighth (quaver) rest lasts half as long as a quarter (crotchet) rest, which usually means less than a whole beat. (Chapter 4 addresses time signatures, which affect just how many beats are in a note or rest.) Eight eighth (quaver) rests make up a whole (semibreve) rest.

Using a metronome to count out notes and rests may help you figure out a piece of music. You can assign the ticks of the metronome to be any portion of the beat that you want. Having a quarter (crotchet) note equal one beat may seem natural much of the time, but instead of trying to think about half beats, you can also assign an eighth (quaver) note to equal one tick. Then a quarter (crotchet) note would equal two ticks, a half (minim) note four, and a whole (semibreve) note eight ticks. The relation among the different notes and rests always stays the same no matter how many metronome ticks in a whole (semibreve) note.

A sixteenth (semiquaver) rest looks like the one in Figure 3-9. It has a note value of one-sixteenth of a whole (semibreve) rest. In other words, sixteen sixteenth (semiquaver) rests make up a whole (semibreve) rest.

Figure 3-9: A sixteenth (semi­quaver) rest has two curly flags.

You probably won’t ever encounter one, but you still need to be able to recognize a thirty-second (demisemiquaver) rest. A thirty-second (demisemi­quaver) rest, which is shown in Figure 3-10, has a value of one thirty-second of a whole (semibreve) rest. So thirty-two thirty-second (demisemiquaver) rests make up a whole (semibreve) rest.

Figure 3-10: A thirty-second (demisemiquaver) rest is very rare and has three curly flags.

Extending the Break with Dotted Rests

Unlike notes, rests are never tied together to make them longer. Rests are, however, sometimes dotted when the value of the rest needs to be extended. Just like with notes, when you see a rest followed by an augmentation dot, the rest’s value is increased by one half of its original value.

Figure 3-11 shows a dotted half (minim) rest, which you hold for a half (minim) rest plus one half of a half (minim) rest. A dotted quarter (crotchet) rest is extended by another half of a quarter (crotchet) rest.

Figure 3-11: Hold a dotted half (minim) rest for a half (minim) rest plus one half of a half (minim) rest, making it worth three quarter (crotchet) rests.

Practicing Beats with Notes and Rests

The best way to really hear the way rests affect a piece of music is to mix them up with notes. To avoid adding to the confusion, we use only quarter (crotchet) notes in the following exercises.

The five exercises shown in Figures 3-12 through 3-16 are exactly what you need to practice making a beat stick in your head and making each kind of note and rest automatically register its value in your brain. Each exercise contains three groups of four beats each.

In these exercises, with four beats in every measure (4/4 time), you clap on the notes and count the rests aloud. Start out counting and then dive in after you count four.

Exercise 1

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP | One two three four | CLAP two three CLAP

Figure 3-12: Exercise 1.

Exercise 2

One two three four | CLAP two CLAP four | CLAP two three CLAP

Figure 3-13: Exercise 2.

Exercise 3

One CLAP three CLAP | One two three four | CLAP two three CLAP

Figure 3-14: Exercise 3.

Exercise 4

One two CLAP CLAP | One two three four | CLAP CLAP CLAP four

Figure 3-15: Exercise 4.

Exercise 5

One two three four | CLAP two three CLAP | One two CLAP CLAP

Figure 3-16: Exercise 5.