Introducing Eighth Notes

Continuing our work from Chapter 3, where we started to look at different note lengths (quarter notes, half notes, etc.), we're next going to look at the eighth note, which lasts for half a beat.

The eighth note is written with a black (or “filled in”) notehead, a long stem attached, and either a “flag” if the note is by itself, or a “beam” if the note is joined to other notes. Sometimes the beam may join two eighth notes together within one beat, or the beam may join four eighth notes within two successive beats.

The next example shows the various ways eighth notes could be notated (flags and beams) as a demonstration, but normally, the entire example would be notated as in the second measure. Later on, we will learn the reasons for using flags and different beam groups. For now, let's play some eighth notes!

Notice the rhythmic counting underneath the staff, which now uses an “&” between each of the beat numbers. “And” (&) is what we count for notes that fall halfway between the beat.

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Listen to track 7 and then play this eighth-note pattern while counting along. As usual, you have one “count-off measure” before the music starts, and the click is on every quarter-note beat. This means that you will be playing in between the clicks when playing on the “&'s,” as shown above.

In situations where eighth notes are used, the notes falling on the beats (i.e., on 1, 2, 3, or 4) are referred to as downbeats, and the notes falling on the “&'s,” in between, are referred to as upbeats. Also, the eighth note following beat 1 is referred to as the “‘and' of 1.” The eighth note following beat 2 is referred to as the “‘and' of 2,” and so on. So now you know…

So why are these guys called “eighth notes?” Well, we saw in Chapter 3 that note lengths were named according to what fraction they used of a 4/4 measure (for example, a quarter note takes up a quarter of a 4/4 measure). So an eighth note (lasting half of one beat) takes up one-eighth of a 4/4 measure. Eighth notes may also be beamed (or joined) to other smaller note values, such as sixteenth notes (more about sixteenths soon).