Rhythm is often considered the backbone of a piece of music—it’s the underlying structure that supports the harmony, melody, lyrics, and form. This article will show you how rhythmic values are defined and structured, how to read note values in standard musical notation, and how that is visualized in Pro Tools’ MIDI editor and grid mode.
NOTE: this article assumes you are already comfortable with the definitions of “Tempo” and “Meter.” If you need a crash course in these terms, check out one of our previous articles on the topic -- LINK
When we talk about rhythmic values of quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, etc., we need to understand that these values are primarily defined by their relationship to each other, not a fixed amount of time. For example, if someone asks “how long do you hold a whole note?”, the answer is not “4 seconds.” (Though this would technically be true if you were playing a piece in 4/4 at 120 BPM) Instead, we say “you hold a whole note for 4 quarter note pulses.” If that seems confusing, don’t worry—you will get more comfortable with this concept as we talk about the rhythmic hierarchy.
Rhythmic Hierarchy
The picture above is of the rhythmic hierarchy—a list of note values, what they look like, and how they are related to each other. To understand how a note value relates to another, you just need to count how the bigger note value is divided. Starting at the top, we see that a whole note is made up of two half notes. Each half note is made of two quarter notes. Each quarter note is made up of two eighth notes. Simple enough. Now try and figure out how many sixteenth notes are in a quarter note. Well, a quarter note is made up of two eighth notes and those are each made up of two sixteenth notes—therefore, there are four sixteenth notes in a quarter note. You will want to memorize this rhythmic hierarchy as soon as possible—this is the foundation for reading and understanding rhythm.
Now, this is not an exhaustive list of every note value that can exist. Notice as we travel down to eighth notes and sixteenth notes, we add flags to the note stems—an eighth note has one flag on the stem, a sixteenth note has two flags on the stem.
^ This is the flag we are talking about
You can keep adding flags and that would keep the pattern going. A note with three flags on the stem would be a thirty-second note; a note with four flags on the stem would be a sixty-fourth note. These note values are less common, but they do exist. If you’ve ever made a trap beat at a slow BPM, there’s a good chance your hi-hat played some thirty-second notes.
Okay, we are not quite done with music notation symbols—let’s briefly get a bit philosophical. Rhythm is not just comprised of the repetition of sounding notes—equally important is the space in between notes. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart once said “Music is not in the notes, but in the silence in between.” A singer does not sing constantly throughout an entire piece of music—he/she will give space between notes, phrases, and song sections. Not only does a singer need to pause to breathe, but if an instrument or singer is being heard constantly, a piece of music may get monotonous or be perceived as “too busy”. A good composer knows when to give a melody a rest. This leads us to the question: how do we notate silence?
In addition to our quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, etc., we also have quarter rests, eighth rests, half rests, etc. As the name suggests, when you come across one of these symbols, you “rest,” or remain silent, for the appropriate duration. A quarter note and quarter rest share the same beat value (or duration), but you play/sing on a quarter note and remain silent on a quarter rest. Below is the rhythmic hierarchy, but now featuring the symbols for rests. Again, you will want to memorize these symbols and their matching names.
One final caveat that we need to define before moving onto some rhythms in musical context: notes and rests may be followed by a small dot, like this:
When you see a dot after a note or rest, it means to add half the note value to the note value. So, this is a dotted half note. A half note gets two beats in 4/4 time. We then add half of that (half of 2 is 1) to the half note. Therefore: 2 beats (half note) + 1 beat (half of 2 beats) = 3 total beats. You may be thinking: how are musicians supposed to read music when they constantly have to do math equations in their head? The short answer is: the more you read and perform different rhythms, the easier it is to perform these rhythms without counting every beat. Practice writing rhythms and counting rhythms every day to reach this point!
There are some more advanced rhythmic techniques, such as: tied notes, tuplets, polyrhythm, etc., but for the purposes of this beginner guide, we won’t dive into these concepts.
Reading Rhythm
Now that we have established the foundational elements of rhythm—note values and rest values—let’s look at how these symbols appear in musical context. For the following examples, I’ll be illustrating rhythms in 4/4, as that’s (probably) the most common time signature you will be experiencing.
Here is a simple, three-measure rhythm. One thing that may look different to you than when we looked at note values earlier: in measure 3, you see four notes beamed together at the top. These are eighth notes—when eighth notes appear in succession, we beam them together.
Using the rhythm hierarchy as a guide, figure out how many beats each of these notes get, and then try to clap the rhythm. Turn on a slow-to-moderate metronome in the back to help you keep time.
Rhythm In Pro Tools
Now that we have defined rhythmic values and discussed how they appear in music notation, let’s take these same principles and visualize it from within Pro Tools. If you are a producer that works in a DAW regularly, this will help you better understand everything we’ve discussed. You may be more familiar with reading rhythms via a MIDI editor like this:
If you look closely, you’ll notice that I’ve recreated the exact same rhythm from the previous exercise in Pro Tools’ MIDI editor—I’ve notated it for piano on the note Middle C. My current Grid value is set to “quarter notes,” which means that every vertical bar in this window represents one quarter note. The first note in this rhythm is a half note, so the MIDI event spans the space of two of the vertical bars. The next three notes are quarter notes, so they each span the space of one vertical bar, etc.
At the very top of this window, just to the right of the “Mute” button, you will see two sixteenth notes beamed together. Clicking this will enable Notation Display, which will show your MIDI data represented as music notation.
Here is my MIDI data represented via music notation. Notice the rhythmic values are identical to the rhythm I notated in the previous section.
Going back and forth between these two displays is a good way to accustomed to how rhythms (and pitches) or represented via musical notation.
If you are more accustomed to editing audio tracks than MIDI tracks, we can visualize this same rhythm by looking at an audio clip. I went ahead and bounced the MIDI data from above as audio data by recording it through a piano virtual instrument. You can see this audio clip in the figure below.
We can read the rhythm being performed by comparing our transients (the spikes in audio indicating the attack of a note) with the underlying grid values. My grid value here is still a quarter note, so every vertical line we see overlaying our audio clip represents a quarter note value. It is also helpful to reference the “Bars|Beats” ruler at the top to see where each measure begins. Again, we can see that the first note is a half note, since it spans the duration of two quarter note grid lines; the following three notes are quarter notes, each spanning the duration of one quarter note grid line; the fifth note is a half note; the sixth note is a quarter note. The four notes beginning at measure 3|1 are eighth notes—notice that there are two notes being played per quarter note grid line.
When you are producing, continue to practice your rhythmic counting and analysis. Listen to rhythms with your click track turned on, and determine if you are hearing quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, etc. If you are working with MIDI data, you can then check your work by toggling on Notation Display and reading rhythms as they appear in standard music notation (however, make sure your MIDI data is quantized, or it may not look right in the notation display).
Rhythm is the backbone of a piece of music—to be an efficient producer, you will want to understand how rhythmic values relate to one another. Being skilled in this area will carry over into other music production techniques, such as quantization, elastic audio editing, and even setting delay values as you mix.
Alex Thomen
Author: Alex Thomen
Composer / Arranger / Pro Audio Instructor
ProMedia Training, LLC
www.protoolstraining.com
888-277-0457
Alex ThomenComposer / Arranger / Pro Audio Instructor
Alex Thomen is a producer, composer, pianist, mixing engineer, and music educator based in Kansas City. From small-scale chamber groups and rock bands to full symphonic orchestra, Thomen arranges, produces, and mixes for a variety of ensembles and styles. Thomen earned a Bachelor's of Music in Music Composition from Kansas State University and a Masters of Music in Commercial Composition and Arranging from Belmont University. Thomen’s education and experience have helped refine his skills in contemporary music production for Film/TV/Games. From ambient, musical soundscapes to fantastical, orchestral pieces, Thomen’s creative output evokes a vast variety of moods, settings, and themes.
