Here is an example of a simple piece of music consisting of a few pitches (covered in the section on Sound). In this piece the time signature is four-four, so there are 4 beats in a measure and each note is equal to one beat.
Music rarely consists of constant sound. To indicate silence in music, we use rests. A rest indicates that you should not play anything. The quarter rest is the rhythmic equivalent of a quarter note. If the bottom number in the time signature is 4, then the quarter rest is equal to one beat.
A quarter rest looks like this:
Let’s alter our musical selection above by inserting some rests.
By adding the rests, we have created more variety in the music and made it more interesting.
