If you look at a piece of music, there are two types of symbols that permeate the score — notes and rests. Notes represent the sounds we hear, while rests represent the sounds we don't hear. Rests are musical symbols that indicate the absence of a sounding note.
Every note value has an equivalent type of rest. For example, quarter notes and quarter rests occupy the same amount of time, as do half notes and half rests, whole notes and whole rests, and so on. But while we count notes and rests in the same way, they are in a sense, opposites. They don't look very alike, either.
Ulysses the unicyclist helps us examine the idea of rests — what they look like, what they mean, and what their durational values are — in the Class Notes™ video "Rests: Sometimes Music is Silence."
To view more Class Notes™ videos, go here.
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