Ties and sixteenth notes
Join notes across a bar line with a tie, and count rhythms with sixteenth notes.
The tie
A note cannot cross a bar line: the bar ends, and so do its note values. When a sound must go on into the next bar, it is written as two notes of the same pitch joined by a curve, a tie. The second note is not played again: it lengthens the first.
A tie adds the values together: a quarter note tied to a half note lasts three beats. This writes a length that has no single sign, or a sound that starts on the last beat of a bar.
How the bar "quarter, two tied quarters, quarter" sounds: the middle sound lasts two beats, like a half note
A tie is easy to mix up with other curves drawn over notes of different pitches. A tie always joins two neighbouring notes of the same pitch.
Practice: What a tie adds up to
Sixteenth notes
Halve an eighth note and you get a sixteenth note: four sixteenths make one beat. A sixteenth has two flags; in a group, sixteenths are joined by two beams.
Quarters, eighths and sixteenths: one, two and four sounds per beat
The most common figures: an eighth and two sixteenths, two sixteenths and an eighth
Count quarter beats: "one-and-two-and" becomes "one-e-and-a". Each syllable is a sixteenth. An eighth and two sixteenths is "one — and-a"; two sixteenths and an eighth is "one-e — and".