You might imagine music as something vivid and alive, something that flows from one sound to another one, circling into a melody that you can even remember in your dreams. But try to imagine what happens if to much sound adds ups and there is no stopping. It gets louder and louder, more and more music is mixing until the wonderful melody disappears and only a horrible roar is left behind. Music needs silence, so out of silence there can raise wonderful music that also will end in silence again. A perfect wonderful circle. That is what a rest in the music is made for. Sometimes a little rest, a little holding back makes music even more beautiful.

As with the notes that can bee seen as the opposite to the rests, rests have different values. Those values are also fitted around the beat. If you have read the article about notes first you might remember about beats, but if not I give you a quick summary. You can imagine the beat like a steady beating of a drum, a rhythm , a pace that gives the musicians and the music a speed to follow. A note can have different lengths which means it can be different times of drum beats long. The same goes for rests. They can be very very short and very very long, just as the musician or composer wants it to be.

The longest rest possible to be written in the music is the “Long” rest. As you can see in the image above it has a number four which means it is four “whole notes” long, this equals sixteen beats because a”whole note’ holds four beats. When I say “the longest rest” It doesn’t mean that there are no longer breaks or rests in the music than four beats. No,of course as with notes, in music one rest can be followed by another and lead to a longer rest in total. It is just the rest with the highest value in the music. The next rest with the second highest value is the “Breve” rest, written as shown in the image above. It only counts two “whole notes” now, half the value of the “Long” rest. The next rest with a value of one “whole note” is the “Semibreve” rest. It has halve the value of the “Breve” rest and is four beats long, just like one “whole note”. Just like the “half note” is half as long as the “whole note” the “Minim” rest is half the length of the “Semibreve” which equals two beats. If you follow the pattern like you have seen it now that one rest lower in value is exactly half of the value above you can just follow the image above and learn about every single break that exists in the music.

You might be thinking that the rest takes a insignificant role in the music but let me tell you with my experience as a musician that has played a lot of music alone and in an orchestra, that rests are nether unimportant for a music piece nor easy to follow. You need to point the exact point down that you have to start playing again after stopping because of a rest. It has happened often to me that I have missed my start. And sometimes rests are even lifesavers because they give you the opportunity to rest just as the name says.