--- title: Reading music: notes, beats and rhythm — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Reading music: notes, beats and rhythm», a lesson of the arts course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Written music is a map of sound: notes sit on five lines called a staff (or stave), and the higher a note sits, the higher it sounds, --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Arts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/) / Reading music: notes, beats and rhythm # Reading music: notes, beats and rhythm Lesson 2 of the arts course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/0/) — Written music is a map of sound: notes sit on five lines called a staff (or stave), and the higher a note sits, the higher it sounds, like climbing a ladder. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/1/) — Notes sit both on the lines and in the spaces between them; a clef at the start tells you which line is which note, and silly sayings like FACE for the spaces help you learn them until you just know. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/2/) — Music also has a beat, a steady pulse like your heartbeat; bar lines cut the music into little boxes of equal beats, and the time signature at the start says how to count each box. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/3/) — Picture a class clapping "ta, ta, ti-ti, ta": saying a rhythm out loud before you play it helps your body feel the long and short sounds, and real musicians do it too. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/4/) — People name things differently: in Britain a one-beat note is a crotchet, in America a quarter note; Northerners in England say "nowt" for nothing, Geordies say "howay" for come on and "divvent" for don't, and many players call written music "the dots". - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/5/) — Music is written on a staff, also called a stave, of five lines; each line and each space stands for a different note, and higher on the staff means higher in sound. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/6/) — Five lines give a good range of notes; for notes above or below the staff, short extra lines are added. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/8/) — The treble clef is also called the G clef, because its curl wraps around the line for the note G; it tells you which line is which note. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/9/) — A crotchet (British) and a quarter note (American) are two names for the same note, which usually lasts one beat in 4/4 time. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/10/) — A rest is a written silence with a length you count, so the music keeps moving in your head while you stay quiet. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/11/) — A metronome is a ticking machine or app that keeps a steady beat; groups often rush when they get excited. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/12/) — A time signature is two numbers at the start: the top says how many beats are in each bar, the bottom says which kind of note gets one beat. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/13/) — 3/4 means three crotchet beats in each bar, which gives the swaying feel of a waltz. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/14/) — Bar lines split music into bars (called measures in America) with the same number of beats, and the music flows straight through them without stopping. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/15/) — A sharp raises a note by a semitone, the smallest step on a piano; a flat, which looks like a small b, lowers it by a semitone. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/16/) — Playing by ear means working out music by listening; many famous folk, blues and rock musicians mostly played that way, and many great musicians use both ear and reading. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/2-reading-music-notes-beats-and-rhythm/17/) — In the Kodaly method, named after the Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly, "ta" is said for a one-beat note and "ti-ti" for two half-beat notes. - ← previous: [Music lessons and the recorder](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/1-music-lessons-and-the-recorder/) - next →: [Practising when you would rather not](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/3-practising-when-you-would-rather-not/) - ↑ back to [Arts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/)