Quarter rest

Silence has a value

Every note value has a rest of exactly the same duration with its own symbol. The page Rhythm puts it like this: silence is as much a part of rhythm as the note. The quarter rest is the rest for the quarter note, in four-four time it lasts one beat.

The table shows the four rests that the Rhythm learning path lists. The duration is, as with the notes, purely proportional: two quarter rests fill a half rest, four a whole rest. Whether a beat is long or short is decided solely by the tempo.

The sign

The quarter rest has the shape of a curved zigzag in the middle of the staff. The symbol library describes it as “one beat of silence”. Besides today's form the library knows an old form that looks like a mirrored eighth rest and occurs in older prints. Both have the same value; the library adds the note not to confuse the old form with the eighth rest, whose hook points to the left.

How you count it

On the page Rhythm the most important rule is: count along evenly and aloud. A quarter rest gets exactly one number on which you play nothing:

• Quarter note, quarter rest, quarter note, quarter note is counted as “1 – (2) – 3 – 4”, with you staying silent on the 2.
• The foot goes on tapping the basic beat, also during the rest.

Rhythm Dictation names rests expressly as the third typical area of error. A rest is not nothing but a measured stretch of time. If you treat it only as a chance to take a breath, you lose the beat.

An example from the sheet music archive

Song

• Der Tod und das Mädchen Franz Schubert, D. 531 · voice and piano · 2 pages

  In bar 8 in the vocal line there is first a half rest, then a quarter rest, then an eighth rest, and after that the girl enters with an eighth note as an upbeat. The quarter rest fills the third quarter of the bar. The piece is in alla breve time.

Effect

A rest structures the flow of the music. A rhythm with a beat left out sounds different from one that runs through, although the pulse stays the same. The Rhythm page describes this pulse as what holds the tempo even in difficult passages if you tap the basic beat with your foot and speak the subdivisions.

When you practise a piece with many rests, you therefore count them along instead of waiting them out: the foot goes on, and the rest ends exactly when the beat is over.