Dots and ties

At its most fundamental level, music is essentially a collection of notes of varying pitches and lengths. This is represented on the printed page via a system of notation that has evolved gradually throughout the centuries into what we know today, with pitches represented by the vertical positioning of the notes on the stave.

The rhythmical side of things, however, has always been depicted by the use of different note styles that reflect different durations, such as crotchets (quarter-notes), quavers (eighth-notes) and minims (half-notes). That’s all well and good, but to enhance the flexibility of this pictorial representation of rhythm, early musicians devised a system of amendments to these basic note forms,