Rhythm Duple Pattern
Rhythm Subdividing in Two Part Beats

Here we will move into dividing beats into parts. We start with

• Defining how we divide beats

• How to count a divided beat. 

• Start with subdividing the beat by two. One beat gets two counts.

So far we explored rhythm for straight beats. Then we explored what happens when we use notes which take up more than one beat. We also added rests to allow for silence as part of the rhythm. Now we move one more step toward our goal of mastery. So here's a question.

What happens when we use eight notes on a quarter beat pattern? Wow, what a great question. Who asked that? 

Let’s investigate going from half notes on 4/4 time to using eighth notes on that time signature.

Let’s review quarter and half note and whole note in 4/4 time.

Quarter notes take up one beat, half notes take up two beats, and the whole note takes up 4 beats.

Adding eighth notes

Now we add eighth notes. This is going to make us use two eighth notes () for every quarter note ( ).  So we are going to need to expand our counting ability.