RESTS

To understand the duration of different musical symbols, we usually start with notes rather than rests. This is because silence is the default condition in which we are immersed, and in order to highlight the duration of a phenomenon, a sound must be produced as a contrast. However, if we were immersed in a constantly sounding environment, silence would become the best way to measure the duration of an event. With this seemingly obvious observation, the point is that in a musical context where sound events are numerous—almost overwhelming—silence becomes as powerful a tool as sound itself. In practice, this means that when approaching rests, their value should be respected with the same precision as that given to the execution of sound.

One of the most common mistakes when doing solfège is to cut off the sound of the sung notes too early, resulting in a kind of dotted execution. In such cases, the following rest loses its meaning and is deprived of its full value, making it impossible to appreciate its true expressive power. For a description of the symbols and the durations they represent, one should refer to their sound-based counterparts.

The task here is to carry out the exercises by rigorously respecting the duration of the sounds, in order to internalize the rests and fully grasp their expressive potential: a downbeat eighth note, if stopped at the right moment, will lend strength to the upbeat silence that follows—recalling the effect of an actual upbeat sound.

QUARTER

WHOLE

HALF

EIGHTH

SIXTEENTH