Music Rhythm - A Free Piano Lesson

Reading piano notes is the key to broaden your horizons and getting to know worlds you never thought existed. In order to read piano notes you must get familiar with the meaning of musical beats. Let's start from the basics!

The Musical Beats

When playing piano we play the piano keys and by doing so we create different tone lengths.
Piano notes are basically musical signs that tell us which key we have to play and how long we have to play it.
In order to measure the different tones we count beats. It's the same as using a meter for measuring your height.

My Recommendation for the Best Rhythm Book

Pre-School Music, Moppets' Rhythms and Rhymes Child's Book Music Book

Ariel and me are having a music rhythm piano lesson.

To begin with, if you haven't read the introduction to piano playing yet, I suggest that you check it out for a moment before you'll learn to deal with music rhythm. Just click here.

Ariel and me are just about to start our music rhythm lesson

"This page is perfect for people like me who really want to start playing piano from scartch!"

Just like your heart, music is beating. Your heart never stops. You don't pay attention to it but you always know it's there, beating. Same goes for music with one exception.
The distance between the beats is longer in slow pieces then in fast pieces but unlike the heart that beats faster when we're excited the beats in music are always equal to each other

The beats are divided to groups by bar lines. The first beat after the bar line is the most heavy and important one.
The bar line help us to divide the groups to (fours or threes for example) instead of counting endless number of beats.
Every group is called a a MEASURE.
This information will help you to learn to play the piano rhythmically.

Quarter note pattern

In this example, every measure includes a group of four beats. Every note gets one count. 1.. 2.. 3.. 4..

Tone Lenghts

A Quarter Note

When you see a quarter note it means you have to count one beat per note. A quarter note has a stem and a circle painted black.

A Half Note

This is a half note. We count two beats per note when we see this note. Unlike the quarter note the circle of the half notes remains white.

A Whole Note

Last but no least is the whole note, and maybe you've guessed that we count four beats per note when we see it. The whole note has no stem. It's Just a white circle.

Now that we've learned the basics of the music rhythm signs let's see how the song "Merrily we roll along", which we played when we learned to play piano by ear, looks like when we write it with piano notes.

The Music Rhythm in MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

How to play Merrily We Roll along by piano notes

Try to play the song on the piano as we played it before and this time count the beats according to the tone lengths of the notes.

See how you have to count 3...4... When a half note is located at the second half of the measure? (It's still worth 2 counts).

O.k., so now that we learned how basic music rhythm works, and we saw an example of it, let's experience some other music rhythm examples.

Read Piano notes- Play and Count

Read the piano notes and play according to the next rhythm pattern.

When learning to play piano it's easiest to start to read piano notes with an online metronome.

The online metronome is a wonderful practicing tool that produces a steady beat to help us play rhythms accurately.

Do as follow...
1. Click on the link above

2. Point the metronome to 72 Bpm (Beats per Minute). It's a good pace to start with. Place your thumb on the C note, read the piano notes and play the exercise according to the beat.

3. Play again and this time count aloud.

Rhytmic exercises Here is how it should be done.
Click on the audio file. (The first four beats are left empty to indicate the speed of the rhythm).

Here are two more patterns for you.

Rhytmic exercises

Did you make it?
Well done my friend, we're definitely on our way to make you a music rhythmic beast.

Now, if you're serious in turning into a real piano player you should remember that playing rhytmically is the key to playing well.

The only problem is that when we learn to play the piano we have to take care of a few elements at the same time.
We have to remember the piano key names, then read piano notes qua rhythm and in the next piano lesson we'll already learn to read piano notes on the staff and disinguish between the different tone lengths.

We need some help along the way and the METRONOME is exactly what could help keep the rhythm and make sure we stay on track.

So I suggest to purchase a real metronome. You can find them in various prices. A real metronome has much more possibilites then the online metronome like some rhythmic grooves which I'm sure you'll find more inspiring then that monotonic beat you'll hear in the online metronome.

Most of the digital metronomes today have an Accu-Pitch so you can basically tune almost any instrument with it (so if you play guitar you can catch two birds at once).

Don't forget to check our Piano Metronome page page as well, where we recommend a variety of great piano metronomes.

To make a long story short here's the metronome I use at home and I find it the best Metronome comparing to the other (And I checked them ALL!) Littlite 18GHI BNC Style Hi Intensity Lamp
Korg MA30 Digital Metronome

Price $29.95

The MA-30 is the latest offering from Korg's innovative line of metronomes, with new features like volume control and sophisticated rhythms such as triplets and quadruplets with inner beats omitted.....more

And here's a pearl from our piano forum where I explain how to work with the metronome.

The Time Signature

In the beginning of musical pieces you will see numbers. These numbers are called the time signature. The time signature tells us how many beats we have to count per measure and how long a beat lasts. Remember to always first take a look at the time signature. It will save you a lot of time with figuring what you have to play and how to play it.

Ariel and me waving goodbye as we go to the next piano lesson.
Ariel and me are now ready to continue with our next piano lesson. Join us in our next piano lesson where we're going to learn to tell the different piano note names.

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Return from Music Rhythm to the Beginner Read Piano Notes

Piano Notes Lessons
1. Intro	14. Dynamic Signs
2. Piano Keyboard Layout	15. Gradual and Sudden Dynamic Changes
3. Playing Melodies by Ear	16. Eighth Notes
4. Rhythm	17. The Sharp Sign
5.The Treble Staff	18. The Flat Sign
6. Draw a Treble Clef	19. The Natural Sign
7. The Bass Clef	20. Accent Marks
8.The Grand Staff	21. Music Terms for Beginners
9. Harmonic Intervals	22. Sixteenth Notes
10. The Dotted Half Note	23. Tempo Marks
11.The Quarter Rest	24. The Dotted Notes
12. The Half Rest	25. Triplets
13. The Whole Rest	26. Double Accidentals
27. A Review of Musical Terms