Piano for Beginners 6th ED - 2016 UK

Understanding theory

T

o properly understand what notes that

use dots and ties mean, you first need to

brush up on signatures and note duration.

The pace of a piece of music is governed

by its time signature. You can see this symbol at the

start of any stave, right next to the treble or bass clef.

It is usually two numbers such as 4/4 placed on top

of one another, but it can differ. The stave is divided

up into bars, and so the time signature defines the

type and amount of notes (so how many beats) that

each bar contains.

Different notes have different durations. A 4/4

time signature means that a bar needs to contain

note values in each bar that combine to equal 4

beats, for example four crotchets/quarter notes.

This is where dots and ties come in. Both work

to alter the length of a specific type of note. An

‘augmentation dot’ is, rather neatly, a small dot that

appears next to a note and instructs you to increase

that note’s duration by half. For example, if you saw

a dotted crotchet/quarter note, you would need to

play the length of the crotchet/quarter note plus

half of that duration again (so a half of a crotchet/

quarter note would be an eighth of a semibreve/

whole note).

Ties, on the other hand, work to merge notes of

the same pitch. They appear as curved lines which

link notes together and can let the duration of notes

travel across barriers, such as bars.

Change note lengths

Learn how the duration of notes can be modified with dots and ties,

and how they fit within multiple time signatures

Dots and ties examples

A more in-depth look at duration, dots and ties

01 Remember note duration

First is a semibreve/whole note. Two minims/half notes make a semibreve/

whole note, so two crotchets/quarter notes make a minim/half note. Notes

smaller than crotchets/quarter notes have flags, and each flag halves the value.

03 Tied notes

You can see how the tie joins the two notes over a bar. You play tied notes as

one long note instead of separately. This example features two crotchets/quarter

notes tied together – this enables notes to carry on across bars.

02 Dotted notes

Here is a dotted minim/half note, which lasts three beats, as the dot extends a

minim’s value by half. Another crotchet/quarter note is added in to complete the

bar’s four beats for the 4/4 time signature.

04 Different time signatures

This example shows dots and ties in 4/4 and 6/8 time signatures. Notice how the

dots and ties extend a note’s length and then the note durations add up in the

bars according to the specific signature.

“Dots and ties work to alter the length

of a specific type of note”