How To Read Music: Beams

A beam in music is a line that connects notes together rhythmically. By themselves, 8th notes are really hard to tell apart, but once we add beams to them, understanding the rhythm becomes much easier. This is Part 20 of the How To Read Music series.
Beams only work with 8th notes and shorter, like 16th notes, 32nd notes and so forth. You'll never see a beam connecting quarter notes. These flags I’ve mentioned in previous videos are just one type of beam.
Beam groupings are determined by the time signature - in a 4/4 measure, for example, you will usually see 8th notes grouped together like this. If any 8th notes are by themselves, however, then you'll just see the normal 8th notes with flags. Notes will never be beamed together if they overlap beats in the measure, or the measure itself.
You can also combine different rhythms under the same beam. You can alway tell if a note is an 8th or a 16th by counting the amount of beams on a stem.

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