Basic Counting:

One of the most obvious questions is how musicians know when to play. Well, it’s easy. They learn to count the beats.

First let us present you with this.

1 whole note = 2 half notes = 4 quarter notes = 8 eighth notes = 16 sixteenth notes.
Keep that in mind while looking at these examples.

Let’s start with this example.

First off, looking at the time signature you know that there are 4 quarter notes per measure.

In the first measure the whole note gets all the beats (1, 2, 3 and 4) because 1 whole note = 4 quarter notes, and there are a total of 4 quarter notes per measure.

In the second example, each half note gets 2 beats because 2 quarter notes = 1 half note.

In the third example, each quarter note gets its own beat because there are 4 quarter notes per measure (time sig).

Let's intermingle the 2 quarter notes and a half note.

The half note get the first 2 beats, and each quarter its own beat. This makes sense because the 4/4 time signature means there is 4 quarter notes per measure. 2 quarter notes + 1 half note (which is really 2 quarters) = 4 quarter notes, the total number of quarter notes for that measure (time sig).

Lets add in the eighth notes.

In this example there is something new. The + sign. It just means "and". If you said 1 + 2 + ... out loud it would sound like this.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and

Each eight note is 1/2 of a quarter note, therefore it takes 2 eighth notes to equal 1 quarter note.
Think of it like this: the 1 and the "and" are both half of one quarter note and together they form 1 quarter note and from the time sig we know there are 4 quarters per measure.

This may seem a little confusing now, but all of the sudden it will click. You will hit yourself in the head and wonder how you never understood it.

I Believe 我相信

No matter what, you have to believe in yourself. Just like these two boys.
Take note of the lyrics too, very meaningful! ^O^

Bass Clef

Beams:

Before we move on let’s explore the beaming of notes. Connecting together the flags of eighth and sixteenth notes is called a beam. It simply means pairing up the notes so there isn’t a big long stream of individual notes. They would be hard to read, but instead, by grouping the notes they are much easier to read.

Compare the following:
8 eighth notes

8 sixteenth notes

Grouping provides a great way to easily read and recognize our rhythm pattern for these notes.

Rests:

     Our next symbol concept is the rest. The rest will represent when an instrument or beat is not played.
     So we will not strike a beat or beats when a rest appears. You get to relax and allow silence to be part of your rhythm. Silence is just as important as sound. It allows you add space and accents to your music. Keep this in mind when you listen to your music choices and see if you can find the rest points.

The rests:

These are the five basic rest symbols we use. So each note has an equal rest.

Dotted rests:
And for our dotted notes we have dotted rests. They are applied as with notes.