The 8 Most Common Rhythms (and how to simplify tricky rhythms)

Rhythm can be tricky.  What’s easy on the ears may look difficult on the page. And vice versa.

And with all the different note values (whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, etc.), how can we make sense of it all?  It can help to clap and count rhythms.

But better yet, how can we learn new rhythmic patterns more easily?

(This article does not deal with triplets, anything triple meter, or mixed meter.)

Note Values (Rhythms) Like to be Doubled and Halved

The beauty of written rhythms is that each note value has double or half the next closest one ( we’re getting into basic music theory here! ).

• A whole notes gets 4 beats
• A half note gets 2 (half of 4).
• A quarter gets 1 (half of 2).
• And an eighth gets a half beat (half of 1).
• And on and on through 16ths, 32nds, 64ths, and beyond.

Note Values are either half or double the next closest note value.

In this way, musical rhythm is like a fractal. It’s the same both large and small. If you zoom in on the small, it looks the same as the large.

We can use this to simplify how we think of complex rhythms.

Narrowing the Options, or, Taking a Count

Western music is divided (on the written page) into measures (aka “bars”) and beats.

In any piece of music with a 4/4 time signature (also known as common time),  you have four beats per measure. And each musical beat gets a quarter note’s duration.

So each measure has a finite number of possible note value combinations.

Using only whole notes, half notes, dotted half notes, and quarters, we come to 8 possible combinations.

The 8 Most Common Rhythms

In 4/4 time (common time) these are the 8 basic rhythms.

The Second Tier of the 8 Most Common Rhythms

These 8 rhythms in a bar of 4/4 can, like the notes themselves, be halved or doubled.

When we half each note in these rhythms, we get the next “tier” of rhythms, which include eighth notes:

• The whole notes become half notes.
• The half notes become quarter notes.
• The dotted half notes become dotted quarter notes.
• The quarter notes become eighth notes.

The second column is a halving of the first. The rhythms sound the same, but occupy 2 beats instead of 4. When we recognize this, we can more easily count the 8th-note rhythms.

So with eighths as our smallest note value, every two beats will form one of our 8 most common rhythms.

The rhythms will sound the same as their double-value counterparts, if perhaps at a different speed.

The rhythms in the second column (tier 2) will sound the same and their double-value counterparts in column one, if perhaps at a different speed.

The Third Tier of the 8 Most Common Rhythms

When our smallest note value is a sixteenth note, our 8 rhythms will all happen within the space of one beat.

There are only these 8 possible rhythms within each beat, with the sixteenth note as the smallest note value.

• The half notes become quarter notes.
• The quarter notes become eighth notes.
• The dotted quarter notes become dotted eighth notes.
• The eighth notes become sixteenth notes.

Here, the 3rd column is a halving of the 2nd column. All 3 columns sound the same. But column 3 occupies just one beat (instead of 4 like the first column, or 2 like the second column).

Again, each possible rhythm will sound exactly the same as it’s double-valued “cousins”. It just happens within a smaller number of beats on the page (which usually means it’s played faster).

Click Here to download the PDF of the 8 common rhythms chart above.

How to Figure Out Tricky Rhythms

When we come across a tricky rhythm in our music, we can use our 8 common rhythms to simplify it and make sense of it.

Whether we are in time signatures we are familiar with or not, we can take a beat or two and compare it to the common rhythms to see which it resembles. From there we can figure out how to count it, and ultimately how to play it.

Related: A Method to Master Tricky Rhythms

Double Everything, or Remove a Flag

One tactic we can use to simplify these different types of rhythm (especially those containing eighth and sixteenth notes) is to double everything.

This means that the eighths become quarters and the sixteenths become eighths.

In other words, we remove a “flag” from each note.

Once we recognize which of our 8 common rhythms we’re working with, we can count it as written. And once we can count it, we can work on playing it.

How to Start Using This Today

To begin using this method of simplifying rhythm, do this now:

1. Look at any piece of music. (Classical music, popular music, or any other genre)
2. Identify the smallest subdivision (eighth, sixteenth, whichever).
3. Select any rhythm, and see how it divides into 4.
4. Compare the selected rhythm with the list of 8 common rhythms.
5. Wash, rinse, repeat. After a few times, you’ll improve your sense of rhythm, and recognize them more quickly (you’ll be picking up some of the basics of music theory as well).
6. Click Here to download the PDF of the 8 common rhythms chart above.