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musical notation questions

consectaneus

consectaneus

Sep 23, 2016
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#1
I have a basic question I hope someone can answer.

I'm used to reading quarter notes as "one and", "two and" etc.

What happens when the "one" is an 8th note to begin the bar, followed by a quarter note?

Do you count the 8th note as "one", and the quarter note following as "and two"?

I'm used to 8th notes being the upbeat, and quarter notes starting on the down beat.
 
#2
To me "one and two and" = ♫ ♫
so your verbalization is confusing

in 4/4 time I'd verbalize
| ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ | = "one, two, three, four"
| ♪ ♩ ♩ ♩. | = " one and , and, and"

So I think the answer is yes. That quarter note does fall on the "and".

That kind of notation annoys me though
I prefer an 'offbeat quarter note' notated as two tied eight notes
It makes the downbeat more explicit to me
 
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#3
Thank you for trying to understand me. If I knew how to type musical notation it would make it easier.

But yes, you got it. This was especially good, because it anticipated my next question: where do you make up the other 8th note? I see you made that last note a dotted quarter. So there it is.

| ♪ ♩ ♩ ♩. | = " one and , and, and"

BTW, the specific piece of music I was looking at is Jamerson's bass line on Contract On Love as transcribed in SITSOM.
 
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#4
First of all, you can count however you like, or even not count at all, so long as you play the rhythm correctly. ;)

Let's say however you want to count the "normal" way, how most people count. This is what I was taught:

Tap your foot on the floor with a quarter-note pulse. Each time your foot taps the floor, count: "1... 2... 3... 4..."
Now, to get the eighth note pulse, keep tapping the same tempo, and now add "and" when your foot comes up off the floor, like this: down-up-down-up-down-up, "1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &." So you are counting numbers on the downbeats, and &'s on the upbeats.

To your example, a measure consisting of an eighth note followed by a quarter note would be counted: "1 & .........."
 
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#5
^^
Yes, I had gotten stuck on the idea that quarter notes always started on the down beat. As Mambo points out, they can also start on the "and". I was seeing this sort of syncopation strictly as a function of 8th and 16th notes.
 
#6
consectaneus said:
| ♪ ♩ ♩ ♩. | = " one and , and, and"
Click to expand...

Typically this rhythm wouldn't be written like this; the third note would be written as two eighth notes tied together, not as a quarter note. @mambo4 is exactly correct that it would be counted "1 & & &" no matter how you write it.

consectaneus said:
BTW, the specific piece of music I was looking at is Jamerson's bass line on Contract On Love as transcribed in SITSOM.
Click to expand...

I have SITSOM at home. I'd be happy to take a look for you tonight if you still have questions. :)
 
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#10
Unicode fonts has a small subset of musical notaion charcaters
You can copy & paste from this wikipedia page
but not all browsers / web apps support all charcaters

consectaneus said:
where do you make up the other 8th note? I see you made that last note a dotted quarter. So there it is.
Click to expand...

because I can't do ties this method, my measure was not ideally notated.
The dotted quarter note does fill that "missing ' eight note
but in practice most often the measure ends with a tie accross the bar line to continue the syncopation
or an eight note rest, if the syncopation comes to an end.
 
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#11
^^
Yes, and actually the 8th note to begin the bar as presented in my original question is indeed carried over as a tie from an 8th note which ends the previous bar. I just didn't want to further complicate my question since it still counts as the "one" of the next bar.
 
#12
PaulJSmith said:
All correct. You are not really counting the notes, but rather the beats in the measure. You adjust that counting to accommodate the notes.
For quarter notes = 1 2 3 4
For eighth notes = 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&
For sixteenth notes 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a 3-e-&-a 4-e-&-a
(or, however you were taught to count)
Click to expand...

As you can probably tell from my first post I tend to count quarter notes in my head as "one and" because I don't have a good sense of quarter note time when the bar also contains 8th and 16th note subdivisions. It's more a timing mechanism to help me anticipate rhythmically. This may not be a good habit to develop. I don't know. Sometimes I will even count quarter notes mentally as "1 e an a 2 e an a, etc. along with the 16th notes just to keep the feel.
 
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#13
consectaneus said:
^^
Yes, I had gotten stuck on the idea that quarter notes always started on the down beat. As Mambo points out, they can also start on the "and". I was seeing this sort of syncopation strictly as a function of 8th and 16th notes.
Click to expand...
It may give more meaning to view it like this, as @mambo4 mentioned earlier.
jj.png
 
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#16
Mushroo said:
Typically this rhythm wouldn't be written like this; the third note would be written as two eighth notes tied together, not as a quarter note.
Click to expand...

I believe the word you are looking for is "Ideally" or perhaps even "Correctly".
But "Typically" I see asshats writing syncopated figures w/ a quarter note on the and of one all the time. :)
 
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#17
Mushroo said:
Typically this rhythm wouldn't be written like this; the third note would be written as two eighth notes tied together, not as a quarter note. @mambo4 is exactly correct that it would be counted "1 & & &" no matter how you write it.



I have SITSOM at home. I'd be happy to take a look for you tonight if you still have questions. :)
Click to expand...

Agreed, it's bad etiquette to write a note over the middle of the measure from beat 2 to 3, my teacher would write a dashed imaginary barline in the middle of measures to get that point across. Good readers want to see each half of the measure clearly, it helps mentally reconcile the time more quickly (even though a note can of course sustain over the midline using a tie).

This rule is of course ignored in the case of dotted half and whole notes.

A less common exception to this rule is if the rhythm is fairly simple and repeated, for instance, 8th, quarter quarter quarter 8th; or quarter half quarter. For instance, If you had 8 bars of one of those rhythms in a row, you can just write them as stated, without bothering with ties over the midline.
 
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#18
Nickweissmusic said:
Agreed, it's bad etiquette to write a note over the middle of the measure from beat 2 to 3, my teacher would write a dashed imaginary barline in the middle of measures to get that point across. Good readers want to see each half of the measure clearly, it helps mentally reconcile the time more quickly (even though a note can of course sustain over the midline using a tie).

This rule is of course ignored in the case of dotted half and whole notes.

A less common exception to this rule is if the rhythm is fairly simple and repeated, for instance, 8th, quarter quarter quarter 8th.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Most people find it easier to read bar two than bar one. It's actually quite common in my style of writing (jazz, big band).
jj2.png
 
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#19
OK, you've got some great answers with great examples here. HOWEVER be aware that not every thing is in 4/4, 3/4, or 2/4 time. You "may" run into 6/8 time. What that means is that the 8th note gets counted as 1 beat and there are 6 beats to the measure. So if you see 16th notes in 6/8 time those would be counted as "1 and" and a quarter note would get two beats (1, 2) like a half note would in 4/4 time.

Yes you could get by with cutting that in half and counting it as 3/4 time using your "1 and" counting method but that's not how it's written and sometimes it's hard to get across in 3/4 time the feeling in the music you are able to get in 6/8 time. I wouldn't sweat this a lot because you won't run into it very often, but just thought I should make you aware of it. Always check the time signature to see what note gets one beat and how many beats there are to the measure.
 

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