Learning Rhythm - Musical Rhythm

[Jerome White]

You have to learn rhythm in order to play notes on a piano with the
correct rhythm. There are four steps to learning rhythm, and to begin
with you need to understand that each note has a particular number of
counts. Basically what this means is when playing the piano, you need
to hold down the corresponding key for a certain number of counts. For
example, if you were to play a whole note, which contains 4 counts,
you would hold down that key as you count to 4. If the note were to be
a quarter note, you would count to 1, if it were a half note you would
count to 2, and so on. When incorporating musical rhythm, for quarter
notes you would actually be doing 4 in the same time that it would
take for 1 whole note.
Learning time signatures is another facet of learning musical rhythm.
You will find the time signatures at the beginning of a piece of
music; the most common time signature you will see in music is the
4/4. When you see this it means that the top 4, signals that there are
4 beats in a bar. A bar is the space between the vertical bars in
sheet music. The bottom 4 would indicate a quarter note. So what the
4/4 means is that there are 4 beats per bar and a quarter note gets
one beat. Both the top and bottom number in this symbol can change,
meaning the beats would change.
The next step in learning music rhythm is learning to play notes in
time. One of the best ways to learn to play notes in rhythm is to use
an imaginary drumbeat that keeps time with the time signatures. You
play the notes in time with the make believe drumbeat.
Once you understand these basics of musical rhythm, you will be ready
to try playing a simple piece of music. Find a beginners piece in a
book and start there. Remember that if you do have trouble keeping the
correct musical rhythm, all you have to do is imagine that drumbeat,
and soon keeping rhythm will begin to come naturally to you. To really
get your rhythm technique down, you will have to practice on a regular
basis.
Musical rhythm is important and one of the beginning things you should
work on when you are learning how to play the piano. Learning this
cornerstone early will help you through the progression of your piano
lessons.



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