top of page
Understanding Basic Rhythm
Music on a staff is broken up into groupings of counts called measures.
Each measure contains a certain amount of beats based upon a set of two numbers placed at the beginning of a staff called the time signature. This is a 4/4 time signature.
What this essentially means is that, because the top number is 4, within each measure there are four equal beats, or counts.
Likewise, if the top number of the time signature was 3 this would mean that within each measure there would be 3 equal beats.