Page 40 - Fretband Vol.1

Quarter Notes

In this lesson you will learn another of the notes that appears on the musical staff; the
quarter note. The quarter note represents one beat and in a piece of music that is written in
4/4 time like the one below there will be the equivalent of four quarter notes in each mea-
sure.

(Musical staff, 4/4, key of c, quarter notes on 1st string open e across four measures)

In the example above the quarter notes are all situated on the ledger line corresponding
to your open 1st string. In order to play this piece of music correctly you should pluck the
open e string once for each quarter note in the measure.
Earlier in the lesson you read that there will be the equivalent of four quarter notes
in each measure of music written in 4/4 time. It is important to stress the word equivalent,
as we can replace the quarter note in any measure with a note or combination of notes of
equal value. Since at this time you are only familiar with whole and quarter notes lets look
at an example of the two together.

(same as above with four quarter notes in the first measure on open e, a whole note on g,
four quarter notes on f, and a whole note on open e)

Play the example above according to each notes value. Pluck each quarter note once with
the beat and hold the whole notes for four beats each. This should begin to give you a feel
for the variations that happen when music is played.