The start of April, and Spring is slowly setting in here in Kentucky. I just had my forth lesson with my instructor Jack I. Hall. He and I jumped right in at his studio at the Hurstbourne Willis Music Store here in Louisville Ky. We started out with a review of the material covered in the last lesson (See Drum Lesson 3 - Intro to Paradiddles with Exercises). I explained to him how I had trouble with a couple of the exercises which included ones where I had to hit the snare drum and the kick drum at the same time. He had me pull out the sheet music from the previous week and play the last three measures. We spent a few minutes on this, but then we went into the first part of today's lesson, dotted notes.
Dotted Notes
What are dotted note and are they used?
Dotted notes are essentially a way to represent a time signature for a note that makes it easier to write on sheet music. If you go out to the internet and do a search for Dotted notes, you will come up with endless explanations of what they are, what they represent, etc. I told my instructor that I really didn't know what they where, since I really have not encountered that many of them in the sheet music that I have been using.
Jack pulled out his standard yellow sheets of paper and wrote Dotted Notes at the top of the page for a header. The definition that he included is:
Take the value of the note with the dot and add 1/2 of the value to the note with the dot.
Hmm...note much of a definition I thought and so he said himself, but really means the note that is represented with the dot, is just the note value plus a half; or one and a half times.
So, examples? Sure, what instructor would not include examples. So take a look at the example image below, basic sixteenth notes on the hi-hat and a kick drum on the 1 and the a (first and last note).
So, examples? Sure, what instructor would not include examples. So take a look at the example image below, basic sixteenth notes on the hi-hat and a kick drum on the 1 and the a (first and last note).
Notice how there are sixteenth note rest that appear in the bass drum line in indicate that we should not play the bass drum on the e and & (second and third notes). In comes the dotted note to the rescue, if we replace the first sixteenth note with a dotted eighth note it would indicate that we have a dotted note which would increase the value of the sixteenth note by have its value. Half of the value of a sixteenth note would be and eight note. This means that the first note will take up the first three notes of the sixteenth notes and the next note would be the last sixteenth note. Lets take a look at how it would be written by looking at the example below:
Again, this is a set of sixteenth notes on the hi-hat (first line), no snare drum (second line) and bass drum (third line) on the 1 and a (first and last notes). The thing that you should notice is that it looks cleaner than the previous example in that the rest are not being displayed.
Below I break down the dotted half, quarter and eighth notes to provide further examples in hopes to help everyone to better understand.
Dotted Half Notes
As you can see, the first note is a dotted half note and takes up three note values. A normal half note would take up two notes. Again, counting in sixteenth notes (as discussed in my first lesson, 1, e, &, a, 2, e, &, a, etc), we would play the snare and bass drum on the count of 1, bass drum on the count of 2, bass drum on the count of 3 and snare and bass drum on the count of 4. Remember to count the e, &, a for all counts, they are just note played; same as having rests.
The second measure in the above image starts off with snare and bass drum on the count of 1, dotted half note for the snare and quarter note for the bass drum on the count of 2, and bass drums on the counts of 3 and 4.
The third measure in the above image starts off with only bass drum on the count of 1 and 2. the count of 3 has the dotted half note on the snare and and quarter note for the bass drum. The count of 4 only has a quarter note for the bass drum.
To summarize, the dotted half note represents itself and takes up two other quarter notes.
Dotted Quarter Notes
The above image has quarters notes and noted quarter notes. The first measure count of 1 consists of a dotted quarter note on the snare drum and a quarter note on the bass drum. The count of 2 has a quarter note for the bass drum and a snare drum on the & of 2. The count of 3 has a snare and bass drum as does the count of 4.
The second measure count of 1 and 2 have a snare and bass drum with the snare of the 2 count being a dotted quarter note. The count of 3 has a bass drum and the snare drum on the & of 3 (3, e, &, a). The count of four has a snare and bass drum combo.
The third measure starts off with the snare and bass drum on 1 and 2 counts then a dotted quarter note of 3 along with a bass drum quarter note. The count of 4 has bass drum on the followed by a snare quarter note on the &.
To summarize, the dotted quarter note represents itself and two more positions or two and a half quarter notes.
Dotted Eighth Notes
Finally the dotted eighth notes. The first measure count of one has a dotted snare eighth note and an eighth note on the bass drum along with a sixteenth note on the a. The count of 2, 3 and 4 are the same having an eighth note for the snare and bass drum on 2, 3, and 4 and a snare drum on the & count.
The second measure again is the same as the first except that we move the dotted note to the count of 2 and play a sixteenth note on the a.
The third measure moves the dotted note to the three set of eighth notes and a sixteenth note is played on the a.
To summarize the dotted eighth note, it represents itself and takes up three eighth note positions.
Conclusion
This lesson covered what dotted notes are, why they are used and examples to support the use of these. I also took it a step further and included a break down of the dotted half, quarter and eighth notes and examples to help clarify their use. I hope that you were able to take something away from this lesson and will be able to apply it to what you are working on. Off to the kit, I have plenty of practice to get in before my next lesson along with having to develop the second part of this lesson that will cover setting up to your kit. Also, I included a link to a good resource for the dotted notes just in case you need further examples. Like always, you can leave me a comment or send me a message from the contact me link above and I will get back with you within 24 hours.
Resources
Enable Drums Website : Dotted and Tied Notes
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