Hello, ladies and gentlemen, today's lesson is going to be about not crossing the line. Whenever I was learning how to read and write music is back in Brazil, this was a concept that I kept running into. I would always try and score things out for my friends and show them hey, can you can you play this? And they would say, well, man, you're crossing the line. I didn't even know what they meant by crossing the line. Today we're going to look at this crossing the line in music.

So here we've got a measure, and it's four, four. There are four arrows here. I even put a little time signature there for you. We got our 1234 Okay, let's look at some rhythmic cliches that you've already seen. And let's show you an example of crossing the line. And I'll show you how to avoid it.

Okay, so first thing, maybe we can start with a quarter note. So we know the quarter note is going to take up this box here. But now what if we wanted to put four eighth notes? So we would have two eighth notes here and two eighth notes here. We know that we can totally tie these together. Often referred to as a beaming, beamed notes.

We can put our quarter note here. And technically we've got a quarter we've got a quarter to a quarter at least To make a quarter, everything adds up. But this starts to get a little confusing. When people are used to sight reading, getting in books where you have a bunch of sheet music, you're probably not going to see this grouping of notes, you're not going to see four eighth notes, crossing the two to three. This is not something that you're normally going to see. Normally to to facilitate sight reading to make it easier to minimalize some of the combinations that we can put together.

What they like to do is they like to put an imaginary line in between the second beaten third v. So they Basically you're chopping the measure in half. And all the information that can fit here, we want to keep it here in all the information here, we want to keep it here. If we have information like a beam note, crossing this line. Normally what they would do is take this beam off, so that this beam doesn't cross the line. So now if we erase this imaginary line, now we can clearly see this cliche, this rhythmic cliche, you've got a quarter note with two aids, boom, that's a unit that's together. Okay, now we have two more Ace, and then a core, boom, that's the unit.

So someone reading sight reading, they're going to look at this almost in half. So there's gonna be like, a group of information here and a group of information here. When you start crossing that line, it's going to confuse them because they're looking at it in halves. And basically, you've now taken this and split it up almost into thirds, three or something. So very confusing. All right, let's look at a few more examples of how not to cross the line.

And I'm not saying that if you do cross the line that a musician, I'm not saying that he will not be able to read it, because mathematically, it's correct. I mean, they will be able to figure out but it's just for facilitating the quickest sight reading possible is setting them up for success. And this is what they're used to seeing. So you need to try and speak the same language as everyone else, you know. Here we go. Let's try this guy.

Okay, so we've got a quarter note. I'm gonna Write an incorrect sequence and then we'll correct it. So we've got a quarter. Let me draw our imaginary line, and I'll cross it. Okay, so we've got our eighth note. With the eighth rest.

We've got an eighth note, eighth rest. Let's do a quarter note rest. So here's our eighth. Little calm, crossing the line there. Okay, so this was the cliche, but because this cliche is crossing that line, we want to separate this to make it easier. Make it easier on everyone.

So we and beam it. We just create this, like a single eighth and then hear a single eight. So for me if I were reading this now, I would see this question. Note with this eighth and eighth rest, boom, that's a unit that's together. Here we've got an eighth note, an eighth rest, and then a quarter. So that's the unit.

So here I see two units, two groups. If we were to bring this together, we would almost be creating three. And that's a little confusing. One thing to look at, you'll probably ask yourself this. What about a dotted half note with your quarter note here. Obviously, this half note is crossing the line.

But a dotted half note is kind of easy to read, and we don't have any beams going across. So for me, this still feels like two units, even though this.is bringing this half note into the third beat. Deal, I kind of look at it as two units there. Let's look at two more examples. So we're gonna start out with our quarter note, rest. We're gonna have three eighth notes, which we can tie together.

We're going to have ourselves a eighth note rest, and finish it off with a quarter note. Now let's draw our imaginary line and see if we've crossed it. So right in between the two and three, so two, we know two, eight notes can fit into one box, the two box this line here we have our beam going through the lawn so that's not that's not correct. It is correct mathematically and it does add up but this would not be the easiest version for someone to read. So what we would do is we would erase this beam and simply just take this guy and make him into a single eighth note. So now when I would look at this, I would see this quarter and two eights as a unit.

And then I would see this eighth and the rest, and this quarter note as a unit. So these are very familiar rhythmic cliches that we've been showing you. The second you start crossing this line, you're going to start creating some rhythmic cliches that are so recognizable, they will be able to read it but they're gonna have to like look at it twice, like hmm, we just want to avoid that we want to make everything as smooth and easy as possible. Let's look at one more example of crossing the line and then I think you can you can get the picture And start paying attention to this concept. And slowly you will start to not cross the line when you write your music. And then all your friends will be able to read your stuff even faster and good times.

Okay, one more. We're gonna start out with quarter note rest, eighth note, eighth note rest here, this third box will have an eighth note rest will have this eighth note here, we time together. Let's just do a quarter note wrist just to make things easy. Okay, we can see in between the two and the three. We've got our imaginary lawn, our beam has crossed the imaginary line so we don't want that. So what we can do is erase this simply just make this an eighth note and make this an eighth note.

So now we've got this unit, this group here, a quarter rest with an eighth and eighth rest, and then an eighth rest with the eighth note, and a quarter rest. There's your unit and the unit. It might not seem like it makes much sense, or it's not even that important. But as you start reading music more and get a little better at sight reading and in writing, you're just going to find that this is really just the easiest way. And they've been writing music for a long time now and they've come up with a system that's pretty practical and logical. By not crossing the line.

You make sure you make it easier for people not crossing the lawn with the beam. But sometimes you can go overboard by following this rule and is it's too much let me show you so if we had a quarter note Then I had a half note didn't know the quarter note. Here we can see we've got a half note that is actually crossing the lawn there. But because there's so little information here, it's actually easier just to leave it as is. Okay, I think that's enough about crossing the line for this lesson. Um, make sure to keep that in mind.

When you see the the past examples. And you see future examples of different cliches that we string together. You're going to notice that we don't cross the long and I think it's a good idea for you not to cross the line.