The Quarter Rest - Piano Notes

Music Rests in General

Welcome back!
Today I will show you how to read piano notes with musical rests.
Let's first review what we've learned so far.
When we discussed rhythm we divided the beats into groups. Each group ended with a barline. So in a time signature of 4/4 we had a bar line after every four beats.
Within those groups we could play tones with different lengths. We could measure the length of those tones through counting the number of the beats which takes until the tone is through.

Need a reminder? Check out the rhythm basics page.

Now, If would always produce a sound we would get tired after a while from the amount of information we produce and we're going to exhaust our listeners as well with loads of musical information.
further more it will be rather crowded and boring to always make sound.
Leopold Stokowski actually said that "a painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence."
What I like about this saying is that you play the silence. You understand that it provides a beautiful contrast to the sound.

Basically, having breaks in music provides the melody some validity. Or in other words, the musical rests in music allow a musical piece to breathe.

In the coming few lessons I will show you three different rests with three different lengths.
When you see a rest you have to reconize how long it is and then to skip those number of beats. This will become more clear to you as you procceed reading.

The Quarter Rest

And here's a musical piece where the quarter rest plays an important roll, the fifth symphony by Beethoven.
Try to play it and don't forget to count 1.. 2.. 3.. 4..

Now here are a few cool free piano sheets from ebay with different musical rests.

Why should you buy the Easy Piano Sheet music on Ebay?

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In the next two musical pieces you'll have to read and play the quarter rest. Give it a try!

Terrific! let's continue...

In the next piano lessons we're going to learn about the half rest and the whole rest.