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Grade Three Music Theory - Lesson 8: Adding Rests & Beaming Notes in Groups
Rests
Make sure you know how to draw all of the rests you need to know for grade three music theory. Here are the rests in order of length, starting with the longest (semibreve / minim / crotchet / quaver / semiquaver / demisemiquaver).
The semibreve rest is also used as a whole bar rest, even when the value is worth less than four crotchets, for example in this 3/4 bar:
Choosing the Right Rests
- Rests are written so that any incomplete beats are completed first, and then the largest possible rest is used for the remaining space.
- Rests are usually written to reflect the strong beats of a bar.
- In classical music, the usual accent pattern is “long-short” and not “short-long”. We often see a long note on a strong beat, followed by a shorter note on a weak beat. We don’t often see a short note on a strong beat followed by a long note on a weak beat. This pattern is also reflected in the way we write rests. (The patterns long-long and short-short are both fine.)
Long-short patterns – these are very common and the way we right rests is based on them:
Short-long patterns – these are much more unusual:
- Rests can be included in triplets.
Here are some examples:
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6/8 = two dotted crotchet beats per bar. The first rest we write needs to make up a complete beat when added to the C crotchet, so we write a quaver. Now we have a complete first beat of crotchet (note) plus quaver (rest). The rest of the bar is filled up with a dotted crotchet.
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3/4 = three crotchet beats. We write two crotchet rests here and not one minim. (Crotchet + minim = “short-long”)
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9/8 = three dotted crotchet beats. Here we start off by completing the first beat with two quavers (not one crotchet, because that would be a short-long pattern). Then we write two dotted crotchets (not one minim).
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4/4 has four crotchet beats. We start off by writing a quaver rest to complete the first crotchet beat. We then write a crotchet rest (not a dotted crotchet which would be short-long). We then fill up the rest of the bar with a minim rest.
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The first two beats have a minim rest. The third beat is a triplet figure, with only two quavers. We need another quaver here to complete the triplet. The rest is written inside the square triplet brackets.
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The first triplet figure is completed with a quaver rest. The second triplet figure is complete with a crotchet rest.
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Adding Rests to a Melody
You may be asked to add the correct rest(s) at the places marked * to make each bar complete in a short melody.
First, look at the time signature, and make a note of the number and type of beats per bar.
Write in the rests, making sure that you complete main beats before anything else, and that you always keep the “long-short” pattern.
Here’s an example:
Bar 1: complete the first crotchet beat with one quaver.
Bar 2: complete the first crotchet beat with one quaver, then write a crotchet rest to avoid short-long, finish with a minim.
Bar 3: whole bar rest.
Bar 4: finish the bar with a minim.
Bar 5: Crotchet rest for the first beat, quaver rest to complete the triplet on the second beat.
Here’s the answer:
Grouping & Beaming Notes
A beam is the bar that joins quavers, semiquavers or demisemiquavers together.
You might be asked to rewrite a passage with the notes correctly grouped, or beamed.
- Beam notes together in complete beats
- You might need to change the direction of the stems on some notes in the group.
- Beams follow the pattern of the music – if the music is rising in pitch, they slope upwards. If the music is falling in pitch they slope downwards. If the music stays at the same pitch, they are horizontal.
- If you have several notes in a group where some go up and some go down, look at the first and last notes in the group to decide whether the music is rising or falling.
Some examples:
  beam slopes upwards
 beam is horizontal (flat)
 beam slopes downwards
Here is a badly beamed passage:
The time signature is 2/4, so we should have two crotchet beats per bar. The groups of quavers and semiquavers need to be beamed together to show this, and we also had to change the stem direction on a couple of notes:
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Grade Three 
