Rhythm Reading With Sixteenth Notes: Which Audio?

Read a two-measure (UK: bar) rhythm made of quarter notes (UK: crotchets), groups of eighth notes (UK: quavers) and sixteenth notes (UK: semiquavers) and quarter rests, and listen to the four audios: only one sounds as written. Check each group of sixteenth notes in the score: in the right audio, that beat has four notes, and a group of eighth notes has two.

How to use the exercise: press Start, read the rhythm and listen to audios A, B, C and D (each up to three times, in any order). When you know which one it is, press This one under that audio. You can only choose an audio you have listened to. After you answer, the right one is marked and, if you missed, you see written what the one you chose actually played, with the differing beats in red.

How to take a rhythm dictation with sixteenth notes

Set the pulse before you compare. Each audio starts with one measure of metronome clicks, with the first beat stressed. Count along and keep going silently while the rhythm plays, rests included, so that the notes on the page and the sounds line up.
Find the time signature and count its beats. Count them from the metronome measure. Start again at 1 in each measure, even if the first beat does not sound.
Count the notes in each beat. One note that lasts the whole beat is a quarter note. Two notes are two eighth notes. Four notes are four sixteenth notes. If the note keeps sounding on the following beats it is a longer value, and if nothing sounds it is a rest.
Use your listens wisely. Every time you play an audio, both measures sound, and you get up to three listens of each. Check the pulse and the first measure first, then the second, then the whole rhythm; or rule out at once the audios that clearly do not match the score.

The most common error is mixing up eighth notes and sixteenth notes, or rushing the sixteenths and reaching the next beat early. Four sixteenth notes last as long as two eighth notes or one quarter note. Keep your foot on the beat and say "ti-ri-ti-ri" for sixteenths, "ti-ti" for eighths and "ta" for the quarter: each syllable lands where it should.

What the exercises are like

Every dictation is generated on the spot: two measures of 2/4, 3/4 or 4/4 using quarter notes, groups of eighth notes and sixteenth notes, and quarter rests, all on G4 played by a piano at a tempo between 60 and 72 quarter notes per minute, a little slower than in the groups without sixteenth notes. Sixteenth notes always come in fours, joined by a double beam and filling one beat, and eighth notes in pairs: in this group there is never a loose one (a lone eighth note appears only in the groups with an eighth rest). Every dictation has at least one group of four sixteenth notes and some quarter rest. A measure of metronome clicks plays first, at the same tempo and with a stronger first beat. A dictation may start with a rest, but it never has more than two beats of rest in a row or a completely silent measure.

Each note sounds for nearly its full length, so four sixteenth notes are heard as four very short notes dividing the beat into four equal parts, twice as fast as eighth notes. Each test has 10 dictations: 3 in 2/4, 4 in 3/4 and 3 in 4/4, none repeated.

Frequently asked questions

How do the four audios differ?

All four have the same time signature and tempo. The wrong ones change one or two beats from the score, often four sixteenth notes in place of two eighth notes or a quarter note. Count how many notes each beat holds.

How long is a sixteenth note?

A quarter of a beat in 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4: four sixteenth notes last as long as two eighth notes or one quarter note. That is why they always come in fours here, filling one beat.

What is the metronome measure at the start for?

To give you the speed and the downbeat. Before every audio you hear one click per beat, with the first one stronger, at the tempo of the rhythm. Count with it, and keep counting inside your head while the audio plays, even through the rests.

How many times can I listen to each audio?

Up to three times each before you answer. After answering you can play them as many times as you like.

For the road from sound to score, there are Which rhythm is playing? and the dictation, where you write the rhythm. The same exercise without sixteenth notes is quarter notes and eighth notes.