Worksheet LR4: focus on beat groupings

The GOOD NEWS: yes, because this is a short week due to public holidays, this is a quick and easy
worksheet! Thank-you all for keeping up the work and for being diligent students!

The objectives of this worksheet are:

1) You should be able to identify what type of beat is used in a time signature.
2) You should be able to group notes according to the beat type.
3) You should be able to read standard time signatures and understand what they represent.

Wait, aren’t those the objectives of the previous worksheet? Yes, because this is a continuation of
that work. We weren’t quite done, but I decided to stop at 8 pages because I could feel the anxiety
growing on your side. (when will this ever end…?) Anyway:

What we need to develop in each of us is the skill to glance at a time signature and immediately know
how to read the rhythms that are written there. This is an intellectual recognition which we need to
partner with the sense for rhythm that we have as musicians.

When we say “having rhythm”, it means that a person has a sense for the logical order and placement
of both beats and divisions. Literally: a sense, like our other senses of touch, smell, taste and so on.
Not quite as subtle as our emotional senses, such as sadness, happiness, pride and anger but
somewhere in between. The musical sense for rhythm feels as physical to musicians as such senses as
taste and touch, but it’s not a true physical sense. That’s a wonderful thing – in a way, I feel like we’re
at superhero school and I’m teaching you all how to organise sounds using only your mind – awesome
stuff!

Rhythmic accuracy also allows us to manipulate the experience of time – even more superhero stuff!
A lot of this manipulation and control over time comes from the fact that our experience of time leads
to us having an expectation of what comes next. Predictability is the cornerstone of a rhythmic sense.
This worksheet will begin the process of us mastering rhythmic predictability.

We create a system for diving up time into predictable blocks called bars. We further divide each bar
into smaller predictable groups called beats. One step further: we chop up beats into divisions.

etc

1 and da 2 e (and) a da
This system creates a sort of grid which we can use to accurately specify WHEN a note must occur in
musical time. It’s easy to read because it naturally tells us the order that the notes occur, as well as
for how long each note must be played. The rests represent silence, but also when there must be
silence, and for how long.

It’s important that you realised that this is a proportional system of measurement. That means that a
particular note length is a musical length, not necessarily a specific number of seconds. It must be
played musically, not timed mechanically.

That was a lot of words! Let’s summarise by saying that rhythmic notation on the stave can tell us:

1) The order of the notes (also called the sequence)

2) WHEN to play (notes) or to stop playing (rests)
3) FOR HOW LONG to play (notes) or to stop playing (rests)

Reading musical rhythms is very much like learning to read words. You start off learning to say the
letters (or in music: the individual note values), then you move to small groups of letters, i.e words. In
music, words may be a handful of rhythmic values which are commonly found in that particular order.
Then, just as with learning to read groups of words as phrases and sentences, you will learn to read
rhythms in phrases too!

A good way to start is by analysing and examining music which is already printed correctly. In the
following extracts, please answer the questions about the time signature, and then draw a circle
around every group of notes which forms a beat:

Example:

What is the time signature? How many beats per bar? What is the type of beat?
12
4
8
Now encircle each beat:

You must double-check your answer, please. This is easy, of course, because you already know what
you should be looking for! Start by checking that there are the right number of beats per bar – in this
example there should be 4 beats per bar. That means that there must be 4 circles per bar. This will
cover most of the task of identifying beats, but you must still check that each circle adds up to the
right total – in this example, each beat must be equal to a dotted crotchet.

Check that you are keeping up:

Do you see how it is that each beat adds up to a dotted crotchet? Remember that a dotted crotchet is
equal in length to a crotchet tied to another note half its length? In this case, that dot would be half a
crotchet, i.e. a quaver. Therefore, please observe that a beat can comprise either a dotted crotchet in
its original form or any combination of notes which add up to the same length. Here are some
examples which add up to a dotted crotchet:

OR OR etc

original 1 + 2 OR 2 + 1 quavers group of 3 quavers various groups of 1+1+1 quavers

Before you start, get your mind focused.

Complete the following table by writing down ONE NOTE which is equal in length to the following
groups. This will help you later when you have to recognise the length of groups of notes.

Exercise 1 (the questions refer to the musical extract which follows them):

What is the time signature? How many beats per bar? What is the type of beat?

Now encircle each beat:

Exercise 2:

What is the time signature? How many beats per bar? What is the type of beat?

Now encircle each beat:

Exercise 3:

What is the time signature? How many beats per bar? What is the type of beat?

Now encircle each beat:

Exercise 4:

What is the time signature? How many beats per bar? What is the type of beat?

Now encircle each beat:

Exercise 5:

What is the time signature? How many beats per bar? What is the type of beat?

Now encircle each beat:

Exercise 6:

What is the time signature? How many beats per bar? What is the type of beat?

Now encircle each beat:

Exercise 7:

What is the time signature? How many beats per bar? What is the type of beat?

Now encircle each beat:

Bonus Challenge!!!

The same notes for Exercise 7 could be written using another, different key signature.

1) Can you figure out which is the other key signature that could be used?
2) Write the new key signature on the following stave
3) Group the notes by encircling them according to the new time signature.