Rhythm & time
Pulse, subdivision and metre — read from the page and produced with your hands.
Rhythm & time
Pulse, subdivision and metre — read from the page and produced with your hands.
Level 1
Feel a steady pulse, and read and play quarter, half and whole notes in 4/4.
The beat
The pulse you tap without being asked — and why it keeps going even when nothing is playing.
4 minStart →
Beat, rhythm and tempo
Three words for three different things, used interchangeably by beginners and never by musicians.
5 minStart →
Bars, and the two numbers
Beats do not arrive in an undifferentiated stream — they come in groups, and the page says which. The difference between a march and a waltz, written down.
6 minStart →
Rests
Silence with a length. The beat keeps going through it, which is the whole idea and the thing beginners get wrong.
6 minStart →
What finishing this level means
- Know the quarter, half and whole note
- Read a time signature from a bar
- Count rests as accurately as notes
- Tap four bars in time, 80% of the beats landing
Level 2
Divide the beat. Eighth notes, their rests, and counting the half-beats out loud.
Two notes to a beat
The first subdivision, and the counting that goes with it: one and two and.
6 minStart →
Ties
Two noteheads, one sound. The first thing here that cannot be read note by note.
6 minStart →
What finishing this level means
- Read eighth notes and eighth rests at sight
- Read a tie as one held sound
Level 3
The beat divided unevenly: dotted rhythms, long-short, landing back on the beat.
What finishing this level means
- Tap two bars containing dotted-quarter figures
Level 4
Four to a beat, and the metre where the beat itself divides in three.
Sixteenth notes
Four to a beat — the same halving one more time, at a speed that punishes vagueness.
7 minStart →
Compound time
When the beat itself divides into three — and why 6/8 is not 3/4.
8 minStart →
What finishing this level means
- Tap two bars containing sixteenth notes
- Tell 6/8 from 3/4, and tap a bar of it
Level 5
Three in the time of two, and the fastest values you will meet in an ornament.
Triplets
Three in the time of two — the first division that is not a halving.
8 minStart →
Thirty-second notes
The fastest value here, and an honest word about where you meet it.
6 minStart →
What finishing this level means
- Tap two bars containing triplets
- Read thirty-second notes without losing the beat