Lesson 7: Fifth string notes A, B & C + rests and pickup notes
This lesson starts by introducing the fifth string notes
A,
B &
C played on the open string, fret 2 and fret 5, respectively. Most people find these low notes harder to read at first. Being so low in pitch they are placed below the staff using small leger lines. With practice they become instantly recognisable.
Fig 7-1: Fifth string notes A, B & C
Play the following exercise over and over until you've got it sounding fluent. Notice how many leger lines are visible for each of those notes. Name the notes aloud as you play them
Fig 7-2: Fifth string notes A, B & C exercise
Rests in music are periods of silence. As with notes, they have symbols to indicate their exact duration relative to the beat. Every note duration has an equivalent rest duration.
Fig 7-3: Musical rests
As with notes, rests can be extended by adding dots to increase their duration by half, or they can simply be placed together. Smaller rests are grouped in way that corresponds with the individual beats of the bar.
Fig 7-4: Dotted and combined rests
The important thing to remember when you encounter a rest is that any previously played note must be silenced either by your pick or by your fingers. It mustn't be allowed to ring out through the rest. Read and listen to the following example. A sustaining instrument is used to let you hear that the note stops exactly as the rest begins. Also, in bar 3, notice how two quarter rests are used on the second and third beats. This is preferable to having a
half rest lying across and obscuring the midpoint of the bar.
Fig 7-5: Notes and rests
When the first note of a piece of music doesn't begin on the first beat, it's not necessary to fill up the first bar with rests as shown in fig 7-5 above. More commonly, the first bar is shown as an incomplete bar (pickup bar), begining on whichever beat that note falls on. The first note or notes are called pick up notes. The final bar is also usually shown as incomplete by an amount equal to the value of the pick up notes. Between them they add up to a complete bar. In the example below (fig 7-6) the music sounds identical to that shown in fig 7-5, except that, whereas, in fig 7-5 the introductory rests are repeated, Fig 7-6 repeats from the first note shown.
The final bar
As the first bar is incomplete containing only one beat (the fourth beat) so the final bar is shown one beat short. Between them they make one complete bar. For bar numbering purposes, usually the first
complete bar is considered the first bar, however this convention is often ignored by notation writing programs, in which the pickup bar is counted as bar 1.
Fig 7-5: Pickup bar and note