Tip on reading musical rhythms.

[Toby Walker]

When I was first learning to read music, I found that using words was an easy way to understand rhythmic figures. I had no idea at the time that this was common knowledge. Go figure.

= 'Everyone.'

= 'My Mother.'

= 'Mississippi.'

Later on when I began teaching reading music to kids - as well as adults - everyone found this way of learning to be quite fun.

[guitarmac62]

Thanks, Toby! I’d never heard it explained like that.

[cmd612]

This reminds me of many, many children's violin recitals I've attended where the first performers were toddlers whose recital piece is called "Mississippi Hotdog."

The piece consists of a rhythm you probably can figure out from the title, played entirely on the open A string.

[SunnyDee]

Interesting to me that this works in English because English is a stress-timed language. Many languages are syllable-timed and it wouldn't work the same way in those.

[reeve21]

Great stuff, Toby!

I can still hear my grade school band director shouting "Mississippi down up" for a beat of sixteenths followed by a beat of eighth notes.

When we got that down he changed it to "one-e-and-a-two-e-and-a" for sixteenths so we were also saying (actually thinking as most played wind instruments) which beat of the measure was being played.

I have him to thank for my foot stomping habit, as well. I didn't develop the head bob until taking up the guitar

Mr. Albert didn't use Everyone and My Mother, but I'm sure he would have approved!

[icuker]

This would make a fun game to come up with phrases for all kinds of common rhythm lines. It could be its own website or app. I've been learning to read music and rhythm is certainly the hardest part.

[srick]

Thanks Toby- that works for me!

[srick]

Originally Posted by icuker

This would make a fun game to come up with phrases for all kinds of common rhythm lines. It could be its own website or app. I've been learning to read music and rhythm is certainly the hardest part.

Like this idea!

[DupleMeter]

I still remember my first trumpet teacher introducing triplets by having me say "straw-ber-ry" to myself as I played the rhythm.

[Steev]

This is cute too!

[merlin666]

And examples for dotted notes and triplets are ...

[cmd612]

Triplets: pineapple, pineapple, run pony, run pony, popsicle, popsicle. . . .

[superbitterdave]

For some reason I kept looking for baby back (ribs) in that chart . . .

[vindibona1]

That's fun Toby. That's a great way to explain it. I've been reading music so long that for those types of markings I wouldn't need syllables. But where syllables come in handy is when you come across a weird rhythm marking that you have to fit into the a given time space. As an example, imagine going along with straight 4/16ths notation and then the composer throws in one beat of 5/16ths where you have to throw an extra note into the same space as the previous beat where there only 4 notes in that beat. Now THAT requires a syllable .