What about the dots?
Sometimes you will se a dot after a note (donʼt confuse this with a dot above or below the
note - that is something totally different and weʼll look at that in a different chapter). A dot
placed after a note makes the note 50% longer than it is. So, if a dot is put after a quarter
note (crotchet) (normally worth 1 beat), the note will now be worth 1 and a half beats (1
plus a half).
Student Question - “Why do some notes have beams?”Many of my students get confused over beamed notes - the good news is that they are actu-
ally very simple. If you put 2 eighth notes (quavers) next to each other, instead of writing 2
separate notes with 2 tails you join the tails together to make a beam. So, all the notes in the
score below are the same length....You can do the same with 2 sixteenth notes (semiqua-
vers) by joining both the pairs of tails together to make
2 beams....You can even mix and match....