Understanding Rhythm

Beat is the steady tic tic tic of a clock, or the tap tap tap of your foot as you listen to a song. Your heartbeat also has a steady beat. It speeds up or slows down depending on your activity level, but still remains steady. Rhythm refers to the pattern of sounds in music: the ta-ta-ti-ti-ta. The rhythm of a song follows the beat but changes; notes can be longer or shorter than one beat (tic), and the notes can be in various combinations within the beat.

Have your students sit quietly and listen to their heartbeat; feel it with their hand on their chest or their pulse in their neck. Try to find the beat and tap it on your leg. Use a familiar song (a popular song or familiar children’s song) and find the beat. Start clapping to it and encourage your students to clap along. On the next song don’t start clapping right away, encourage them to find the beat, help out when necessary

I like to talk about fractions when I teach note values because musical notes are named after fractions in relation to each other. My Rhythm Pizza is a great visualization of the different combinations of notes that make up a four beat bar. Students can build their full pizza and then clap out the rhythms. I keep a little hand drum on my piano because sometimes it is more fun than just clapping. You can use a variety of percussion instruments to tap out the rhythms to make it more entertaining.

I also find this tool very helpful to explain time signatures. Understanding the top number of a time signature is fairly simple: it is exactly the number of beats in each bar. The bottom number, which tells which kind of note gets the beat, tends to give students more trouble. Understanding that there are 4 quarter notes in a whole helps my students remember that the 4 on the bottom means that each beat is represented by a quarter note.

This Rhythm Pyramid is a great visual for understanding note values. The length of each piece of Bristol board indicates how long the note is. Students can see how long each note is in relation to the others. Rhythm can be a difficult concept to understand, even when counting aloud. Having direct visual cues can be helpful for some students. This can also be helpful to explain why a staccato note is short but not fast: a quarter note, for example, is played short but is still given the same amount of space (1 beat) in the bar.

This game is great for rhythm practice and learning time signatures, and my students love to create their own unique rhythms! The best learning happens when the students are given free reign, and make mistakes with their counting. Prompt them by asking what their time signature is, how many beats each bar should have, and then suggesting that they count and make corrections.

After the rhythm is corrected and accurate, have fun clapping it out using kodaly note names. Try using different percussion instruments, or even create a melody on the piano to accompany it! My students love composing!