Rhythm school: learn to read rhythm, one fruit at a time.
Never read a note of music? Perfect. In twelve short lessons you'll go from feeling the beat to reading sixteenths, triplets and 12/8, which is everything you need for Fruity Beats. Every rhythm is a fruit: say the word, tap the beat.
Each lesson has rhythms you can Listen to and Try: you hear a one-bar count-in, then tap the big button (or any key) on every note and get scored just like in the game.
Every piece of music has a beat: a steady pulse, like a heartbeat or a ticking clock. When you nod your head or tap your foot to a song, you're keeping the beat. It never rushes and never drags, and it keeps going even when the notes stop.
How fast the beat goes is the tempo, measured in beats per minute (bpm). At 60 bpm you get one beat every second; at 120 bpm, two. Try the Speed switch at the top to feel the difference.
Every round in Fruity Beats starts with a count-in: one bar of clicks (1 2 3 4) so you can feel the tempo before the first note. You heard it just now. Use the clicks to lock in, then come in right on time.
A note tells you when to make a sound and how long it lasts. Our first fruit is Grape: one sound, one beat long. Its proper name is the quarter note (called a crotchet in Australia and the UK).
Notes are built from a few parts. A grape has a filled-in head and a stem. You'll meet the flag, the beam and the hollow head in the next few lessons.
Music needs silence too. A rest is a beat where you don't play, but you still count it. The quarter rest lasts one beat, just like a grape, and looks like a squiggle of lightning.
In the game it's the Rest card and its word is shh. Whisper it, or just think it, and don't tap.
Beats come in groups called bars (or measures). A bar line marks where one bar ends and the next begins, and a double bar line, thin then thick, marks the very end.
At the start sits the time signature: two numbers stacked like a fraction. The top number says how many beats are in each bar. The bottom number says which note gets one beat: 4 means the quarter note, our grape. So 4/4 means four grapes' worth in every bar. It's so common it's also called common time.
Count every bar 1 2 3 4. Beat 1 is the strongest because it's where each bar starts; the metronome plays it a little higher so you can hear it.
Pick a slot, then a fruit. Every 4/4 bar adds up to four beats, so with one-beat fruits that's always four of them. Then Listen to it, or Try it.
The game deals four bars at a time. Read them left to right like a sentence, and keep counting 1 2 3 4 through every bar line.
Split one beat into two equal halves and you get two eighth notes (quavers). Say le-mon: two even sounds in the time of one grape.
Two eighth notes are joined by a beam. An eighth note on its own gets a flag instead. The flag and the beam mean the same thing: "half a beat".
Count them 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & (say the & as "and"). The number lands on the beat, and the "&" lands exactly halfway to the next one.
See the coloured beads under the notes? That's the counting grid, the game's Grid view. Each bead sits on the count where you tap, and its tail shows how long the note lasts.
Some notes last longer than a beat. Pear is a half note (minim) and it lasts two beats. Spot it by its hollow head: the empty middle means "longer".
Tap once, then keep counting while it rings: say pe-ar stretched across two beats. You don't tap on the second beat; the pear is still sounding.
Grape, Lemon, Rest and Pear make up the whole Easy set. You can already play it! For an extra challenge, switch on Hold long notes in the game's Settings and keep your finger down for the full length of every grape and pear.
Note lengths work like a tree: every note splits into two of the next one down. One whole note = two half notes = four quarter notes = eight eighth notes = sixteen sixteenth notes. Each row below fills exactly one bar of 4/4, so the notes line up. Press ▶ to hear any row against the beat.
Each note length has a matching rest: the same amount of time, but silent.
Mixing up the two block rests? The half rest sits on top of the line like a hat; the whole rest hangs underneath like a hole. A whole rest also means "this whole bar is silent" in any time signature: that's the game's Whole-bar rest card.
Split an eighth in half again and you get sixteenth notes (semiquavers): four in one beat, joined by two beams. Say wa-ter-me-lon, quick and even.
Count them 1 e & a (say "one-ee-and-uh"): the number on the beat, the "&" halfway, and the "e" and "a" in between.
Mix eighths and sixteenths inside one beat and you get two new fruits. Read the beams: one beam is an eighth, two beams are sixteenths.
So far every fruit has started right on a beat. Now let's start in between. Fig is an eighth rest then an eighth note: say shh-fig and tap only on "fig", on the &. The rest still takes up its half of the beat, so keep counting.
When a strong sound lands off the beat, it's called syncopation. It's what makes funk, reggae and pop feel bouncy. The secret: keep the beat going in your head (or your foot) even when you're not tapping on it.
A dot after a note makes it longer by half its own length. A dotted half note is 2 + 1 = 3 beats; a dotted quarter is 1 + ½ = 1½ beats; a dotted eighth is ½ + ¼ = ¾ of a beat. Try the dot machine:
A dotted note usually comes with a short note that fills up the rest of the beat:
A tie is a curved line joining two notes. Play the first one and hold it for both lengths added together; don't tap the second. Ties let a sound ring across a beat while the beat stays easy to see.
Lemon splits a beat in two and Watermelon splits it in four. Banana splits it in three: an eighth-note triplet, three even notes squeezed into one beat and marked with a little 3. Say ba-na-na, perfectly even, no gallop.
Some musicians count triplets 1-trip-let 2-trip-let. In the game's Grid view the ruler still shows 1 e & a, so a triplet's notes land between the lines. That's how you spot one.
In 3/4 there are three quarter-note beats in every bar: count 1 2 3. That's waltz time: strong, weak, weak. The fruits are the same, there's just one beat fewer per bar.
New fruit: Durian, a dotted half note (2 + 1 = 3 beats), fills a whole 3/4 bar by itself.
In 12/8 the bottom 8 means we count in eighth notes, and there are twelve per bar, grouped in threes. So a bar has four big beats, each split into three: count 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a. It rolls and sways, like a slow blues or a 1950s ballad.
One big beat is a dotted quarter (three eighths). In the game the tempo counts these big beats.
Here's a bit of a Fruity Beats score with everything labelled. This is the game's Timed view: the space after each note matches how long it lasts.
Within 0.05 seconds of the note is Perfect, within 0.12 is Good, anything later is a Miss. Extra taps on rests cost points too. Score 60% for ★, 80% for ★★ and 95% for ★★★.
Listen, then pick the card you heard.
Two bars made of everything you've learned. Shuffle for a surprise, or build your own: pick a slot, then a fruit.
Start with 4/4 and the Easy set, add Medium when you get three stars, then Hard. When the fruit words feel easy, switch them off and read the notes alone.
While a Try is running: Space or any key taps · Esc stops