Question

[Music] How would you count this measure?

Answer 1

Hi!

I'm assuming you're talking about something like if you had a measure of two quarter notes, it would be counted as 1, 2.

The counting would be the beat which the note starts at, for example taking the two quarter notes, the first one starts on the first beat, counted as 1, and the second on the second, counted as 2.

So we can just take this beat by beat. The first one would just be 1; it's the first beat. Let's look at this note's value to get the next one's beat. This note is an eighth rest, and therefore it's valued at 1/2 of a beat. 1 + 1/2 = 1 1/2

The second note is therefore starting on the 1 1/2 beat. Any beat ending with 1/2, half a beat, is counted as &, or and. The second note would be counted as &.

Let's look at the value of the second note~ it's 1 beat, as a quarter note.

1 1/2 + 1 = 2 1/2

For the third note, 2 1/2 ends in 1/2 as well, so it would be counted as & as well.

Therefore, the counting is:

1, &, &

respectively.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

The first thing presented is an eighth rest, thus being only half a beat.

The next one is a quarter note which is only one beat. The last note presented is an eighth note, which is also half of a beat, like the eighth rest.

Therefore, this measure can be counted depending on the number of beats. Two half beats and one whole beats makes two total beats.

Thus - under the notes should be the beats (1/2, 1, etc), and the time signature should be 2 over 4.

Hope this helps!