In Part II we learned to read above and below the staff as well as figuring out sharps (#) and flats (b).
Now we're moving onto time signatures - Imho, if there's ONE thing to get from this series, it's THIS. While I can't sight read, I can figure out basic rhythm concepts from notation and that's because this is a very useful thing as tabs cannot accurately depict this and sometimes (especially for faster/complicated parts/runs), I just cannot hear what's going on.
Most rock music is in 4/4, as designated by the fraction or “time signature” you see at the beginning of a line. Think of the top number as the number of beats per measure, the bottom as the type of beat, so in this case four quarter-notes (or their equivalent) per measure. If you see 3/4 (waltz time), think three quarter-notes per measure. 6/8 would be six eighth-notes per measure, and so on. But back to our friend, 4/4. You can fill up a bar of 4 with any combination of what you see in Ex. 1. (Yes, Yngwie—you can also cram in thirty-second-notes and sixty-fourth-notes.)
Ex. 1 also introduces whole-notes and whole-rests, which are worth four full beats (or a “whole” measure of 4/4, get it?), half-notes and half-rests (two beats each), and sixteenth-notes and sixteenth-rests—four equally spaced notes per beat. You can count sixteenth-notes as “one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a,” etc.
Check out the article on Guitar Player here
