People who can read and comprehend musical notation are basically able to understand a whole new language.
It has its own set of grammar and rules, and to understand one element of the language, you need to be able to understand the foundations.
Luckily, the notation can be broken down into far more simple elements in order to make it more understandable to newcomers.
To answer the initial question, a half note gets half the number of beats that a whole note would get.
However, as mentioned above, in order to understand how many beats a whole note should get, then we need to know what time signature we’re in, and to know how fast those beats need to be we also need to understand the tempo and what a measure is.
All the rules themselves are pretty simple to understand on their own, but everything is so interwoven with each other that it’s pretty much impossible to talk about one aspect of notation without talking about another.
So, with that in mind, this article is going to break down everything that you might need to know in order to work out for yourself how many beats a half note needs to get.
Table of Contents
First Things First
Sheet music is typically broken up into staves – the five horizontal lines that go across the page – and then into measures – the equal-sized boxes separated by a bar line (the vertical lines in between each measure).
Sometimes a measure is known as a bar, though this is typically a British English phrase.
A measure is a specific unit of time that is set by the time signature and tempo, so the actual duration or number of notes within a measure can differ wildly.
Imagine it a little bit like a paragraph: a measure separates movements of music into smaller sections in order to make it easier to read and understand, as well as practice.
Musicians have been using measures for centuries because it’s much easier to read music when you divide it up into small units of time so that the majority of people will be able to understand where one section of music ends and another begins.
Onto Time Signature
Before you can figure out how many beats each note needs to take up, then you also need to understand what time signature the piece is being played in.
The time signature will show you the number of beats allotted for each measure (the number on the top of a time signature), and the duration of each beat within the measure (the bottom number in the time signature).
The most common time signature, at least in Western music is 4/4, also known as common time.
This means that there are 4 beats in each measure, which will each take up a quarter of the time.
Another common time signature is 3/4, which means that instead of there being 4 beats in each measure, there are only 3, however, the duration of each beat is still the same as in 4/4.
Other signatures might look like 6/4, or 7/8 – they all follow the same rules, though some are a lot more difficult to get your head around than others.
Understand The Different Note Types
So now that you have a basic understanding of the time signature, we can start looking at the different note types in order to know how many beats each of them takes up within a measure.
I will list their US names and their UK names as it can be vital to know both of the terms, just in case you come across resources that are UK-based.
It’s important to note here that, regardless of time signature, the number of beats that each note takes up doesn’t change.
Whole Note Or Semibreve
A whole note has a value of four beats.
That means that when you play a whole note you need to count to four whilst holding the note, regardless of what time signature you’re in.
If you’re in 4/4, then this is really easy, if you’re in a different time signature, you’ll need to practice.
Half Note Or Minim
A half note, easily enough, has the value of two beats, meaning that you only have to count to two when playing a half note – this means that it is played for half as long as a whole note.
Quarter Note Or Crotchet
You may have picked up on the pattern by now, and if you have then it should come as no surprise to you that a quarter note has the value of just one beat, giving it one quarter the amount of value that a whole note has.
When playing a quarter note, you only need to count one beat before moving on.
Eighth Note Or Quaver
Although there are many smaller variations of notes, the last one that I’ll cover in this article will be the eighth note.
These are played for half the length of a quarter note, meaning that you play them for one eighth the amount of time that you would play a whole note.
Final Thoughts
Now we’ve gone through all the different note types, you can see that a half note gets two beats.
However fast this is is fully dependent on the tempo, which is represented in BPM (beats per minute).
The higher the BPM, the fast the beats, the fast you’ll need to play each note.
The values between each note won't change, but the speed at which you’ll need to change notes will. But a half note will always have the value of two beats.
