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Piano Module - Rests

Piano Module - Rests

A mini lesson on how to read piano music rests. 2 min read (255 words)

The information provided in this blog post is for educational purposes only. Please review our Disclaimer.

Rests

A rest is a

  • break from a note, also known as silence in a moment in your piece

Similar to notes, rests also have a significant duration of time, like beats, in a song.

Rests are simple symbols that hold beats, they look like:

A visual guide to musical rests and their values. The image shows six types of rests: whole rest (4 beats), half rest (2 beats), quarter rest (1 beat), eighth rest (1/2 beat), sixteenth rest (1/4 beat), and thirty-second rest (1/8 beat). Each rest is depicted with its corresponding symbol and the number of beats it represents in a musical measure. This image provides a comprehensive understanding of how rests are used to indicate silence or a pause in music.

So when you see a whole rest (similar to a whole note) you know it’s a rest or a break on the piano instead of pressing a key.

Here is a chart to show the breakdown of some rests and their length (beats per rest):

A musical rests chart displaying rest symbols and their corresponding values. The chart includes a whole rest (4 beats), half rest (2 beats), quarter rest (1 beat), eighth rest (1/2 beat), sixteenth rest (1/4 beat), and thirty-second rest (1/8 beat). This visual guide demonstrates how rests are used in music notation to indicate periods of silence or pause, with the rest values broken down for easy comparison.

Basically, the rest with 4 beats is exactly as the whole note, which breaks down the same way as shown below: (rests are taken the longest at 4 beats in this chart)

Good to know

Dotted: rests can hold an extra half of their original beat, meaning they are held for their amount plus half of their amount:

The image shows various musical rests with dots next to them, indicating a dotted rest. A dotted rest extends the duration of the rest by half of its original value. For example, a dotted half rest receives 3 beats instead of 2, and a dotted quarter rest receives 1.5 beats instead of 1.